Social Media and Corporate America - A love-hate relationship

[MktgRob]

Mashable is reporting that the results of a survey of 1.400 CIOs from companies with 100+ employees (conducted by Robert Half Associates) show that over 50% of companies totally block employees from accessing Facebook, Twitter and MySpace while at work. Of the companies that do not block access, 10% limit the use by employees for business reasons only and the rest have no restrictions. Also, of the companies that allow unfettered social media access, 8% have fired staff for abusing the privilige.

What does this all mean. One can make the broad assumption that adoption of Social Media in the business world is almost 50% but that would be a bit of a stretch because it appears that the specific question about use of social media as a business tool was not asked. I think these numbers will change in time to reflect broader acceptance of social media as a business tool but I doubt it will get beyond 65% because I feel that there are some industries out there that view social media as more of a hinderance than a tool. What do you think?

[Shade01]

I think social media should remain just that....social media. People tend to deviate when given the freedom of Facebook etc. If one has teenage children with cell phones and mixit is a good example.

[MktgRob]

I think social media should remain just that....social media. People tend to deviate when given the freedom of Facebook etc. If one has teenage children with cell phones and mixit is a good example.

There are ways to limit use of social media within the office environment so that it is used solely to serve the business interests. It is a nice, if somewhat utopian thought, that social media should remain for personal use only but the very nature of business is to go where the people are and market your products to potential customers.

[Shade01]

I do agree about the marketing idea and using social media is an ideal tool. My comment was not aimed at opposing the idea but at human nature when working. People tend to forget the reason why they receive a salary at the end of the month, because just using a couple of minutes checking for message in facebook (twitter, etc) becomes a lot more than a couple of minutes. Productivity suffers. Used in the right way, there is no problem but not during office hours.

[MktgRob]

I do agree about the marketing idea and using social media is an ideal tool. My comment was not aimed at opposing the idea but at human nature when working. People tend to forget the reason why they receive a salary at the end of the month, because just using a couple of minutes checking for message in facebook (twitter, etc) becomes a lot more than a couple of minutes. Productivity suffers. Used in the right way, there is no problem but not during office hours.

Absolutely agree that Human nature is the monkey wrench that is thrown into the mechanism of many good ideas, especially when it comes to the work place. What a lot of companies are doing is sort of cutting off their nose to spite their face in that they are just killing all social media use rather than taking the time to set up the proper protocols to ensure that it is being used properly and in a controlled fashion.