PurpleCar

Social media as a practice and theory is a new phenomenon. That newness has led traditional businesses to either disregard utilizing social media or to neglectfully hand over the company Twitter account to a few college interns.

Don’t Leave It to the Young

If you can make a flow chart of it, it deserves it’s own VP.

Each new tech advancement meets very similar public reaction: “Oh, that _____ is for the young.” This “for the young” label has been plastered across the top of every new advancement since the 1890s. That phrase reflects the grief for death of the old ways of life and an awe-slash-fear of the broad, sweeping lifestyle changes the new tech brings. Older generations are at the keepers of our most ideal societal norms, but the senior CEO’s are still in the fear stage with social media.

Older generations tend to be late adopters, as their wisdom about fads and trends is based on decades of experience. Late adopter skills are fantastic in helping us identify crap trends and hop off bad bandwagons, but too much bias against the new is just as damaging as getting swept up in the latest fake-buddhism cult.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

Society integrated machine-powered transportation into our lives. We require licenses to drive, train tracks are designated solely for companies or public transportation organizations, and private plane pilots have to follow air traffic control commands. Structures exist to allow for the best use of transportation machines.

Society is still working on Communications best practices. It’s up to individuals to build a structure around social media that works for themselves. Social media is already being generated around your company and your product. Social media is already surrounding your family and your livelihood. It’s best to build a structure for it now.

Just like the job of “limo driver” came out of the automobile revolution, a “social media manager” is a specialty all to itself. Most companies seem to be handing social media duties over to PR and ad agencies, many of which are barely prepared for such endeavors. My friend Rick Becker outlines 5 “monkey wrenches” to throw into the theory that social media is the responsibility Public Relations. He hits on a great point that we early adopter GenXers have noticed since the ’90’s: Social media doesn’t fit well into pre-existing business structures.

Let’s think on this:

• Social media isn’t only a PR or advertising duty
• Social media doesn’t fit under an IT administrator’s job
• A company historian isn’t meant to tweet out official photos
• A webmaster isn’t expected to make sure every update is pushed out to G+
• Customer service people can certainly use social media to listen for customer complaints or issue support solutions, but they cannot plan out and monitor online communications or design a social media flow chart.
• Your customers would be all “Good feeling gone” about your brand if the lawyers were in charge

So where should social media sit in the company’s infrastructure? It’s time for a new department.

Introducing the CCO

Business communications have been so severely shaken up by the advent of social media and pervasive high-speed Internet that an entire department should be generated to house social media and its related offices. A Communications department with a VP-Chief Communications Officer (CCO) directly reporting to the CEO is the solution.

The Chief Information [Technology] Officer (CIO) should be under the CCO. Information and information technology is ultimately about communications, and all business infrastructure is based in good internal or external customer service. (Believe me when I tell you I had to learn more communications procedures than I did command line code for the systems administrator jobs I had.) Because Communications is a larger umbrella, the IT department should fall under it. I know CIOs across the world will balk at this, but a further examination of the structures and purposes of the departments would clear it up. At the very least, though, a CCO should be a VP/Board position that is equal to and a partner with the CIO.

Humans and businesses are not slaves to technology. Technology is a tool made and controlled by us. A CCO would be a person who understands how best to utilize all information and communications technology as well as manage internal and external IT, PR and Legal vendors to achieve the business’s goals.

More Reading

Another article on PurpleCar you may like about tech adoption (linked above): Fear of Facebook: Lifecycle of New Tech

 PHOTO CREDIT: David Bruce Jr. on Flickr

We don’t all look like robots at the Philly Geek Awards. We actually dress quite nicely.

On August 17, 2013, The tech community in Philly will be honoring this year’s most geeky of the geeks at the Philadelphia Geek Awards.

Check it out. Consider a sponsorship (starts at $250) if you want to reach the who’s who of the city’s fun start-up culture.

Here’s a comrade-in-arms in the world of Psychology of Information Technology: Dr. Jamie Madigan of The Psychology of Video Games blog.

His latest post The Psychology of Video Games | The Psychology Behind Steam’s Summer Sale tells us the exact behavioral cues and common human pitfalls that Steam (a downloadable video game retailer) utilizes to get more of your money. Even if you aren’t a gamer, go take a look at the article. Lots of research there.

Being aware of tricks retailers play to prey upon your wallet helps you become less of a victim.

This Miami Herald article does a good job in mentioning some of the influence the national press and social media had on the events surrounding George Zimmerman’s arrest and eventual trial.

The basic theory is that the prosecution probably wouldn’t have opted for trial at all if it weren’t for all the attention. Online petitions sprouted up calling for the Florida police to arrest Zimmerman, and social media meddling in the case continued from there.

The whole thing reminds me of the prosecutor Marcia Clark in the OJ Simpson trial. Clark (who is writing legal thrillers now) hired image consultants and was said to complain about the amount of wardrobe she needed for a televised trial. To deny the pressure of public scrutiny in a highly-followed trial is to not worry about details like wardrobe. Clark felt the pressure down to her very stockings.

No-one can tell for sure what influence the public had on the OJ trial or the Zimmerman prosecution. Pundits are still wondering if social media had any influence at all on the Arab Spring, even though to us Internet denizens, the answer to all of this is quite obvious: Of course social media has a say. Of course human discourse shapes behaviors. It’s like wondering if chicken soup is good for colds. Who even asks this?

My server administration side has a few technical questions, though. Why, for the love of Pete, was a Skype-in testimony allowed to be on a publicized (or easily found) Skype ID? Getting around that would have been quite easy. Perhaps Skype should set up a process through which witnesses can register a temporary and secure ID for courtroom use only. This testifying-by-Skype thing is here to stay. May as well monetize it, make the defense or prosecution pay for the secure (and specifically-designed) connection. My next question is WTF is happening with the IT manager deleting files from Trayvon’s phone? Next question: Did anyone contact the NSA to see what they might have collected? I’m sure they’ve got something.

It’s over for now. Civil rights petitions have started up, asking for a civil rights infringement charge against Zimmerman. This, to me, seems to hold a lot of weight. What was it about Trayvon that aroused Zimmerman’s suspicions? So far, it seems like only Trayvon’s skin color. That’s a civil rights issue if that turns out to be true. I’m also curious if a wrongful death suit will arise, as OJ Simpson’s not-guilty verdict morphed into in the months after his trial. (OJ was found responsible for the two deaths in that civil trial).

What isn’t over is the permanent presence of everyone. We can’t deny social influences on our behavior. We can’t deny the Internet’s influence in our lives. We need to find fair ways of living with it.