Page 90 - Ekonomija i Biznis_juli-avgust 2016.indd

РDУIGБITРAИLКCАOMMUNICATIONS
Darko Buldioski
@darko156
newmedia.mk
Four practical ways how to
integrate the social media in
the company culture
The inclusion of social media in every company communication is no longer an issue of
choice, for this reason it is necessary to strategically approach and get the most out of ev-
ery situation.
When something goes wrong
with a company, or when
it suffers a great crisis or
a negative impact from a
brand, the expert often say
that the solution is to change the company
culture. This is being endlessly repeated for a
long time, and without consideration of what
is the thing that creates and develops the com-
pany culture. Contrary to the consultants and
the experts, the ones who experienced chang-
es with their companies, their leaders, define
the company culture differently. According
to a research of “Harvard Business Review”,
where a conversation took place between sev-
eral CEO’s of companies that were susceptible
to great changes, it is concluded that the com-
pany culture is not something you can repair
or change through specific measures. On the
contrary, the company culture changes when
new processes or structures are introduced,
whose goal is to overcome specific business
challenges such as a new development strate-
gy or a new business model, etc. They say, the
culture develops as a specific important work
is finished within the very company.
In accordance with this, if you want, and
you must want to include the social media
in your company culture as well, you must
ground them in the basic communication
processes of the very company. There are
numerous examples, both positive and nega-
tive, where a specific conscious, and usually
unconscious public communication of a spe-
cific employee of the social media resulted in
90 July-August 2016
crisis communication, viral sharing, and con-
sequences for the very company.
The social media are omnipresent. We no
longer think about social media, and about
their use, as we used to only several years ago.
Social media are here, they are an integral
part of our life, and they affect every part of
our behavior. To a great extent they affect the
increased blurring of the line between work
and home, between private and official, and
for this reason, their ignorance means only
greater risk for a negative experience and
greater chances to miss the positive potential
that they offer.
The inclusion of the social media within a
company is far more than their use for mar-
keting purposes. Today every employee from
the company, in a given situation represents
the company publically, before a larger audi-
ence. For this reason, one should think how
to make this situation positive for the very
company as often as possible, rather than
negative. This definitively is not achieved
with prohibitions and threats, however cer-
tainly there must be some rules of behavior
and activities that will encourage the employ-
ees to be the positive person of the company.
Here are some ways through which you can
influence on better establishment of the so-
cial media in the operations of your company.
1Create a policy for use
of social media
This is a document that provides the gen-
eral directions for use of social media within