The Institute of Internal Communication has their Super Thursday on the 13th of November: launching the Communicator of the Year, illness celebrating the ICon Awards, FEIEA Grand Prix and Under 30s all interupted and supported by an Insight Seminar.
My talk on social media and internal cross-cultural communication aimed to challenge current practices while also acknowleging the barriers – social, cultural and technological – that social media presents. During my talk, I have expanded the definition of social media to include not only public facing and popular channels but also collaboration, communication, training and productivity platforms. I have also asked participants to apply the same strategic thinking, steps and planning as they would for their external communication:
- remember their goals and objectives
- identify their target audience
- identify the needs of their target audience
- craft their messages around that audience and its needs
I building my argument, I made reference mainly to Hofstede’s dimensions of culture, Simon Kaplan’s and Gov.co.uk’s design principles, indicating that the expectations and relationship with technology are different around the world and understanding this would be essential to communicating effectively.
In the end, the idea was to use the platforms that get the work done and that included forgetting email and including, as often as possible, elements of face to face communication whether mediated and recorded or in person.
You can read the organizer’s summary of my talk here.