Fear the Ostrich

“Social” and “public” are not synonymous, but a lot of companies shy away from social media because of a fear of losing control of private information.  Among my clients, I find the greatest fear among organizations whose work touches financial or health care considerations or who deal with security issues.  They worry about personal data being released inadvertently; they worry about social harm resulting from social media.

To a point, I agree.  In fact, I am glad that they have these concerns! 

But avoiding social media altogether, and ignoring internal management and usage, is a red flag.  Remember the ostrich?

Social media is a fact in financial services.  Socialware’s June 2010 Advisor Survey found that 60% of financial advisors use social networks for business purposes and an additional 11% plan to do so.  Unfortunately, 43% of advisors who use social media either do not have or do not know if their firm has a policy.  Add those ostriches to the firms that prohibit advisors from using social media (85% of advisors not using social media pointed to their firm’s prohibiting it as the reason), and the ostrich herd starts to grow.

In working with financial services firms, I have found that the fear is internal as well.  Executives fear that opening channels of communication among departments will prompt employees to share information inappropriately.  But implementing social platforms internally has proven to provide tremendous value, helping companies learn how to manage social networking interactions.  The learnings are broad:

Ø  How do you answer questions that seek information you don’t want to share without torpedoing the connection?

Ø  How do you recover from a mistake?

Ø  How much oversight is appropriate for a community?

Ø  How open should a community be?

Ø  Which organizational silos are unnecessarily duplicating work and data?

Ø  How do you train employees to use the social networks effectively and appropriately?  Written policies are necessary, but the poorest of teachers.

Internal networks start a cultural shift; they drive employee engagement and create new governance structures.  They develop confidence and skills.  They even drive greater efficiency and productivity.

In the Socialware study, almost 50% of respondents who used social networks said they had gained new referrals from them, and about 1/3 of these could identify new customers.

But company fear isn’t helping: 40% of the advisors believe that the firm’s social media policy is detrimental to their performing their jobs!