Imagine it is New Years Eve 2011, just 2 short years from now and you are having a conversation with a buddy from work and you are remembering the days when your firm only had 4 people actively engaged in Social Media. Its now 2011 and everyone in your company has access to and the ability to jump and engage in Social Media.
I liken this to the early days of email, when only a few people in the company had access to email. “Not everyone needs it” I remember hearing! But now that statement seems so “out of touch” it’s comical!
24 months from now will your company seem comical? Will you have rolled out, recruited and trained everyone on how to use and engage with Social Media?
Will your Contact Center be able to handle the flow of inquires coming in from not just the phone and email, but from Twitter, Facebook, Forums, Blogs, Comments, and other social networks yet to be invented?
If you are one of the lucky 4 right now – you job is not only to listen, share and engage on Social Media – its also to educate the folks around you in your organization and get them up to speed on what you are doing and how they can get engaged as well.
Social Media won’t burn out and go away; there are too many effective uses and adoptions of Social Media into the hands of your customers to stop. So it’s not a question of if you need to roll out Social Media even wider – it’s a question of when are you going to roll it out wider!
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Is not balck or white and the 2001 for the social media will be the more
highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.
@webandrank – I know but someone had to put a stake in the ground
Social Media has not only given business amazing new opportunities, it has also given voice to many smart people who are now engaging the minds of others with new suggested solutions to many problems we face.
Thanks for a reminder of how quickly our communication tools are updated and changing.
This is a fantastic way of looking at it. Everyone needs to be involved. It really is just a matter of time before it's mandatory to use these new media tools. Mandatory is a word that scares business owners. They don't want to be told what to do. But looking at the example you illustrate here should hopefully show how quickly things can change
People don't realize the value of social media at the moment but slowly everyone will catch on.
Social Media will stand for a long time because it is people interacting with people what better way to get a feel for sumone or there thoughts and business….to me its a hands on approach!!
@David – totally agree – thanks for commenting!
Paul is absolutely right in stressing the importance of training people to deal with the new realities of the social media beyond the basics.
Proctive companies would do well to listen to the advice of this post and create job specs for 'social media administrators' and the like.
Nice thoughts. I apprecite your vision that you have peeked into the future.
@cadie – thanks for commenting
As for 2009 status of resources — it is pretty bare, given all the hype. For the average large ($5b+) tech vendor the allocation of spend for social media is less than one-half of one percent of the discretionary marketing budget!
Rich Vancil
@ Rich – clearly we have a long way to go but the adoption curves on Social have been outstanding – to think that Facebook didnt exist 5 years ago and now has 300 Million users is outstanding to me. Now that I think we have crossed the point of no return within the enterprise – I am betting we see much more adoption
thanks for commenting
You’re analogy comparing the usage of social media to the usage of email is hilarious. I forgot that email was introduced fairly recently and not everyone had it back then. Now every single company and person has an email address and if they don’t, they’re considered obsolete! Social media is going to be everywhere!
@Kristen – I was one of the lucky few in my office that had email when the company first got it. I remember thinking some very similar thoughts to what we say about social media – What if I send someone outside the org a confidential document or What will happen if a customer complains via email. Now those scenarios and tons more are a thing of the past and we are having those same conversations about Social!