As communicators, we’re excited with the opportunity that this newer channel provides to build relationships. My experience with management, though, is that there is little conclusive proof (statistics, numbers– the product of evaluation) that they should buy in to these tools. It’s difficult to evaluate a relationship building strategy. How do you give a numerical value to something that works best when it’s devoid of the sales pitch?

This is why we’re seeing an astronomical attrition rate with corporate social media campaigns (75% of these campaigns fail). We have two dynamics: the communicator who sees the value of social media as a relationship building tool that builds brand recognition, expertise and customer loyalty VERSUS the corporate manager who see’s this as a new sales tool.

Plenty of evaluation tools may exist, but I’m not seeing any of them deemed as a best practice.

Our bok (body of knowledge) is dense with hundreds of foolproof measurement systems (frankly I much prefer to use the term evaluation…).

Clearly -as we all of us have been saying and writing all along before and since the inception of this blog- public relations (in my view… definitely a profession) containing a myriad of specific practices, it is only consequential that these systems be many and diverse, to be applied according to the related practice.
But isn’t this true for any other profession?

What we are striving for in this specific circumstance (transiting personal influence to organizational influence by the adoption of ad hoc km systems) is to add value to the contribution of the function.
Certainly, once we have the framework of the system in place, the next step would necessarily be how to evaluate its outcome.

Management-types sometimes have difficulty buying into the use of social media/networking tools; they find the results “soft.” My response is this: Never has there been an easier way to conduct free market research on the group of people who care most about your product. Each organization goes about this im it’s own way (at Juice, we use a survey tool called the Juice check. This tool has been evolutionary in helping us understand the needs and realities of our client base). Where organizations are failing, notes Kristen, is in properly managing this information (i.e. making it usable!).

Anytime PR is shifted from media relations to relationships, I breathe a little easier. The next step towards institutionalization, I would think, would be coming up with a fool-proof measurerement system.

That same day I finally sat down to read Kristen Johnson’s (excellent) graduate paper, only to discover that forward-thinking organizations would greet my personal network and me as a great strength, potentially adding to their knowledge management process and/or competitive advantage. Very exciting ideas in that paper, I hope many more have taken the time to download and read it from the IPR’s website.

Another ah-ha moment occurred last evening, when I attended Third Tuesday Toronto Meetup (yes, it was held on the first Tuesday). This month’s event featured Niall Cook, worldwide director of marketing technology at communications consultancy Hill & Knowlton, who was speaking about his recent book, Enterprise 2.0. (You can find out what Niall talked about last night, simply by downloading the forward/first chapter, which made up at least 80 per cent of last night’s presentation.)*

I was thinking that perhaps the melding of Kristen’s employee external networks/personal-to-organizational influence model, together with the best practices of Niall’s enterprise 2.0 model, could finally provide us with relevant and valid reasons for incorporating social media platforms into the 21st century workplace, including buy-in from the leadership team. This would certainly be a great opportunity for the public relations/communication management function.

*Note: If you want to learn more about Niall Cook’s Enterprise 2.0 presentation at Third Tuesday Toronto, check out the recent blog post by Ed Lee over at Blogging Me Blogging You.