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Businesses have come to accept social media as a standard. Brands can thrive and fail depending on how well managed their social media channels are. Some networks can be very strict. Campaigns and tweets can be ingrained in customers’ minds for a long period of time. Who can forget the Colin The Caterpillar struggles? (#FreeCuthbert!) They even made it to the primary school curriculum.
Primary six learned to write balanced arguments today. There were some great arguments in support of M&S suing Aldi for Cuthbert, and in defense of Aldi. Overall, a positive lesson that can be used to help you improve. We look forward to week 3. #freecuthbert#strathBA ? pic.twitter.com/1aeThs3UwB
Miss Hair (@MissRHair), April 30, 2021. Who would have thought that watching tea brands chat on Twitter would be so much fun?
Social media is more than a way to keep in touch and sell stuff to friends. In a business context, social media is about collaboration and communication with purpose with customers or internal teams.
Twitter and the blogosphere have transformed every employee and customer into journalists. Customers can easily comment on your business online, and those comments last a very long time. Businesses should listen to what customers have to say about them online and make sure that their projects meet their expectations.
If they don’t, you’ll hear about it quickly.
Social media and project communication plans
This makes communication plans for projects more complicated. Do you need to include social media outreach efforts into your communications plan? How can you reach stakeholders while they’re on the move, using their mobile devices, to get information about project news?
There are two ways to deal with the complex organizational environment social media creates.
You can first make sure everyone understands the project and its progress. You can also let everyone communicate in their own way.
We live in technologically advanced times. Your team can use Facebook from their office PCs. However, they will be able to access it from their smartphones while sitting at the water cooler. You can make sure that everyone communicates in a way that is most comfortable for them. If that is not possible, you can force them to find creative ways to work in a way that suits them.
Get everyone on the same page
When it comes to project status communication, all members of the project team must be on the same page. You must be able trust your project team members to manage the complexities of a project environment that includes collaboration tools.
Boundaries are the foundation of trust. Have you established social media policies that allow for the use of apps like Twitter to communicate with external stakeholders? Is the team familiar with what ‘commercially confidential” means? Are they familiar with the basics of blogging and best practices for responding to comments from corporate clients?
Make a social media policy
Project team members can’t operate without clear guidelines. Social media policies are the lighthouse. They provide the guidelines that will guide your team through the challenges of communicating in this brave new world of social media.
If your company doesn’t have a social-media policy that’s relevant to project work and it doesn’t exist, create one.
Identify the behavior you expect your team members to exhibit when dealing with customers and when communicating with one another via social media. Establish policies, get people to agree to them, monitor compliance and adjust the policies as necessary until you have something that works in your complex environment.
Be the
