The year 2013 is the year that companies will take social media seriously. Facebook opened 2013 with news of its Search Graph wherein intuitive searches can be made, with a strong focus on connectivity and people's interests. Pinterest's fast growth has also caught the eye of many marketers, who by now are drawing solid visual content blueprints.
Engagement, transforming unstructured data to meaningful, usable metrics, and communication adjustments are some of the few compelling aspects of social media marketing that will see tremendous, upward (or downward) movement this year, depending on how social networks will continue to improve their service. However, I find it really worrying that companies are not writing down employee monitoring on their social media conversion pipeline.
There have been numerous cases of employees commenting on undesirable workplace culture, many of which had been documented by go to resources on employee-employer relationship. Social media is a freedom wall, free with space and growing in conversations day by day. Professionals understand that there are limitations, but the entire concept of it being free is just as tempting and rewarding.
Companies should by now grasp the knowledge that in every workplace exists an individual or group committed only to their personal goals - not everyone is loyal or understands their employer's mission and vision. This scenario is repetitive, though I'm not sure if organizations outside my country's boundaries (I'm from the Philippines, by the way) have retaliated back against employees who use social media as a tool to embarrass co-workers or destroy company image.
Cases like this and this make up a small chunk of international social media crimes wherein the suspects are employees themselves. Privacy? Not everyone is aware that they can shut down posts to the public, which had me thinking that if social media has reached global impact to businesses of all sizes, why are individuals struggling to keep pace?
Truthfully, companies are making strong progress in understanding that social media will soon devour anything outside what consumers think are disrupting the whole buying experience that channels like Facebook and Twitter have given them. If companies truly wish to make social media work for them, they've got to start internally, educate employees what their role should be in building credibility and enforcing guidelines of what people should know and what should be kept locked inside the office's shining treasure chest of organizational secrets.
At least, maybe, through monitoring toolkits like Addvocate, companies can genuinely track and endorse people who they want to serve as a social media envoy. The additional responsibility of putting a product/service on the shoulders of a particular employee, through social media sharing, is a concept that businesses should quickly master.
A business should implement should not be tyrannical, rather it shoudl provide instructions to promote the employee as a brand messenger capable of influencing friends to engage with the business as either a customer or conversationalist. Companies may know that social media is a stampeding beast that is slowly crushing traditional marketing whelps; organizations may not have the investment in creating/curating awesome content, spend marketing money on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, but transforming employees into social media trumpeters is definitely worth a shot.