There is a huge power that can be tapped by using social media to institute change. Here are some examples;Internal organizational web sites that are a communication channel that can reach everybody in the company
- populating these with daily updates means that people will go look every day because they know this is where they'll find out what's new, and will be likely to see messages you need to communicate
- applications that you use within your organization that are web-based will always land on a starting "home page" -- figure out how you can get your message on that home page
Providing internal wiki sites can give a group of practitioners an opportunity to communicate with each other - comment on each other's work - and supports a back and forth exchange of ideas that can engender other new ideas and keep the creative juices going for a group of people with a common interest. This is one of the methods that we've talked about before for supporting an internal community of practice (CoP).Several companies are considering opening up social media to employees as a way to provide for collaboration and idea generation. Things like encouraging their employees to establish Facebook or Twitter accounts, for example, that they use for work purposes and allowing employees to access these capabilities from inside the organization's firewall provides an avenue for people to throw ideas out and get feedback pretty instantaneously.And, having social media capabilities that are accessible to people outside of the internal organization's firewall can also provide an opportunity for somebody to comment and log an idea when they are not at work. Sometimes the greatest ideas can surface when you you're focused on something completely unrelated to work, but there's a cross disciplinary relationship that turns up. Make sure that anybody who comes up with an idea has a way to express it and get it communicated to their peers!