I have been critical, at times, of social media "experts" because the vast majority of them feel that they can go into an organization, give a presentation and overnight they will embrace social media and start to leverage the channel to meet business and brand objectives. This just isn't true because organizational cultures don't change very quickly.

It's true that consumers have changed more in the last 2-3 years since the onset of mass media and that companies need to change the way they approach marketing but every company has its own culture; that is the way things get done and how people think. Try and change this culture too fast can result in a lot of lost opportunities and employee defections.

When a social media expert or new marketing persons strategy puts the culture of a company at risk, the culture will trump the strategy, almost every time. There are good reasons for this. Every company's identity - the body of capabilities and practices that distinguish it and make it effective - is grounded in the way people think and behave. Granted consumers are changing marketing and branding but a companies culture changes far more slowly than marketplace factors, and cause significant morale problems.

You can't go to a social media conference or hire a social media expert to come in and present to your people in one day and expect changes to happen. When overlooked, the hidden power of a company's culture can thwart any strategic initiative even if your companies very life depends on it. In addition when you fight your culture head-on or ignore it altogether during a change initiative, you lose the chance of reviving some of the attitudes and behaviors that once made your company powerful - and might do so again.

Don't blame your culture; use it purposefully. View it as an asset: a source of energy, pride, and motivation. Learn to work with it and within it. Discern the elements of the culture that are congruent with your strategy. Figure out which of the old constructive behaviors embedded in your culture can be applied to accelerate the changes that you want. Find ways to counterbalance and diminish other elements of the culture that hinder you. In this way, you can initiate, accelerate, and sustain truly beneficial change - with far less effort, time, and expense, and with better results.

The first thing to change is the view that, as a social media and marketing person, you can fix your culture byworking on it directly. Rarely is that the case. Just as you typically can't argue someone out of a deeply held belief, you can't force people to change the way they think and feel about customers and prospects. Instead, you need to focus on specific behaviors that solve real problems and deliver real results. This, in turn, enables people to experience the results of thinking differently. Experience becomes a better teacher than logical argument.This means that you have to identify the influencers within your organization and communicate to them why social media is important. Get them excited and they will in turn spread the enthusiasm for change within the whole company.

Where to begin ?

• Start pragmatically. Don't try to change everything at once. Focus on a few critical behaviors that resonate with your current culture, but that will raise your organization's performance. Explicitly identify the target group - the employees whose behavior needs to change - and bring the necessary changes to life by demonstrating them the value of social media.

• Reinforce the new behaviors through formal and informal means. Provide formal metrics, incentives, and process guidance that lead people to practice these new behaviors again and again, until they experience their value.

• Seek out role models for the new behavior. Start with the most effective practitioners, the people who distinguish themselves by the way they act. These are the Linchpins within your company the ones who "get it" and know want change to happen faster and for everyone to get excited about future opportunities via social media and new marketing.

• Use the culture you already have. Take pains to stay within the most essential tenets of the existing culture. Make sure you understand clearly the reasons that current practices exist before you try to change them.

Change is best when it is evolutionary not revolutionary. A lot of social media programs and people fail because they often clash with an established culture that see's what they are trying to do as disruptive. This is why so many social media experts work for agencies rather than big companies. They may know what needs to be done but they often don't have the business savvy, skills or patients to get it done within your companies culture. They just want to do what they need to do and want others to leave them alone. This is a recipe for failure.

Consumers have changed but the changes necessary for marketing organizations take time and a lot of them are running out of time. Make sure that when you hire a social media or emarketing person that they have the business savvy to work within your culture and plant the seeds of change.