Social Media: Creating Richer Relationships in the Workplace

Jeanne and Karie's mythbusters are great and well-intentioned to a segment of business leaders who secretly or openly challenge the rising tide of change brought on by social media. Perhaps social media's problem in the workplace is its name. Somehow 'social' sounds frivolous (a la 'I'll have a chardonnay to be social') or dangerous (e.g., 'be careful of social diseases!'). Let me first rebrand and redefine social media for the workplace. Then, I'll come back and defend why 'being social' is key to developing an engaged workforce and why that's all business.

Let's think of social media differently. Call it Utility Media- digital workforce platforms to drive engagement. Here are three ways you can make it useful:

1. Recruitment Relationship Marketing - A common practice for some companies is to blast mass reaching approaches to 'fish in the ocean' for talent when needs arise. Utility Media like Facebook, LinkedIn or Plaxo allow companies and recruiters to cultivate relationships with potential hires over time. These deeper relationships before hiring logically lead to more of the right people coming onboard. These platforms allow companies to manage relationships with whole segments of your candidate pool (think of it as group intimacy) as one might have had...