Slashing Red Tape to Revolutionize Corporate Communications

Posted by admin on Mar 20, 2010 in Social Media, SXSW | 0 comments

Presenter: Paula Berg – linhartpr.com – formerly at Southwest Airlines

When Paula Berg started in the customer service area at Southwest Airlines, she never thought she’d end up where she did – with a seven personal social media team.  She started doing some of the social media stuff on the side and made it her goal to integrate social media into every internal and external communication effort in a way that made sense for the community and brand.  She offered five tips for inspiring organization change and helping both the organization and its executives to “get it.”

1. Make jaw-dropping reports – Don’t just focus on the numbers and great looking charts (although great design helps).  Be sure to thoroughly evaluate what the numbers mean, especially in terms of your business and communications goals (make sure they care about the results).  Include what you learned and your intended next steps to do things differently.

2. Launch an Internal PR Assault – People can’t just hear about social media, they have to live it.  Insert social media into every newsletter, magazine, mailer, department update, every meeting, lucheon, summit, etc.

3. Make your executives love it – Make sure you dazzel them, scare them, hypnotize them, and whatever you have to do to get them to understand and appreciate social media.  They need to understand that the risk of not going into it is greater than the risk of doing it.

4. Get your house in order – Social media is more than just PR and/or marketing.  It’s about engaging with consumers when/how they want.  This requires speed, agility, and trusted employees who know the business.  Too often companies try to hand this job over to the “young guns” – the interns or first year people – who must know social media.  It’s better to get people who know your culture implicitly and teach them how to use the tools to communicate.

5. Get tough – It’s a new world, and it’s not going to be easy.  You have to be willing to fight and you have to be willing to take risks and be wrong.  No matter what, things are going to fail, or things will go wrong, and you have to be ready and willing to personally take it on the chin for your company.