This post started as a com­ment on my friend, Lee Hop­kins’ post, The state of comms in cor­po­rate Aus­tralia. Then I thought I had enough to say that it needed to be here. So here it is.

Cor­po­rate and pub­lic sec­tor Aus­tralia, it’s time to wake up! The ben­e­fits of using social media in a busi­ness set­ting are many and well researched, yet you seem not to have realised. You are falling behind your over­seas coun­ter­parts and you are expe­ri­enc­ing a brain drain the likes of which you have never seen before.

As evan­ge­lists like me and Lee encounter resis­tance to these ideas, some­times it cer­tainly feels like were smack­ing our fore­heads against a brick wall.

With a small effort of inves­ti­ga­tion, we gather and can see the ben­e­fits to com­mu­ni­ca­tion through the use cor­po­rate social media, we can iden­tify and high­light the research, we can talk to what seem to be the deci­sion mak­ers. Yet noth­ing happens.

Yes there are iso­lated high­lights where cor­po­rate social media is prov­ing a suc­cess for Aus­tralian com­pa­nies. But that’s the very point, isn’t it? It’s iso­lated. It’s yet to approach the left-​​side upswing on the bell curve in terms of pen­e­tra­tion. Exam­ple after exam­ple and study after study high­light the ben­e­fits to com­mu­ni­ca­tion, knowl­edge shar­ing, attrac­tion, reten­tion, moti­va­tion and engage­ment. You’d think this ought to be bleed­ing obvious.

There are so many things that can be done sim­ply and with very low risk, kept inside the wall. Here are a few quick examples:

  • allow a cou­ple of projects to try project blog­ging inside the wall as a way to keep track and pub­li­cise how the project is going. Let every­one who might be inter­ested know so they can take part too;
  • use a wiki as a knowl­edge and plan­ning repos­i­tory for a project (either hosted or installed — hosted is easy and secure if you choose well). Let other projects know so they can watch and see whether this might work for them;
  • try some inside the wall cor­po­rate blog­ging. It doesn’t mat­ter who or what it’s about, it just mat­ters that they blog. Mar­keters, techies, sales, the cafe­te­ria, whoever;
  • get brave and use Get­Sat­is­fac­tion for some (or all) or your cus­tomer ser­vice online. With respon­sive and timely action, you will build sig­nif­i­cant social cap­i­tal by open­ing up your suport chan­nel to scrutiny.

These are small, low-​​barrier-​​to-​​entry steps that you could try before really get­ting your feet wet on a major social media strat­egy for your organisation.

My friend, Matthew Hodg­son, who I regard as a seri­ous expert on KM and social media, posted this week dis­cussing the pub­lic sector’s fail­ings around com­mu­ni­ca­tion. His thoughts are worth reading.

Taken from a strate­gic view­point, I can only con­clude that man­age­ment in Aus­tralian busi­ness and the pub­lic sec­tor fails to see com­mu­ni­ca­tion as a key issue and con­se­quently fails to treat com­mu­ni­ca­tions issues with the seri­ous­ness they deserve. The fact is, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is every­thing. With­out com­mu­ni­ca­tion, your staff have no idea what they should be doing. They have no con­text for their work, and are thus dis­en­gaged. Your abil­ity to attract, moti­vate and retain good peo­ple is lim­ited. And, pos­si­bly worst of all, your abil­ity to con­nect with, engage and moti­vate your com­mu­nity — whether they be clients, cus­tomers, stake­hold­ers or the pub­lic — is severely limited.

Aus­tralia, it’s time to dras­ti­cally revise your cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­egy and delivery.