Precept Employee Benefits Blog

I recently attended an educational workshop on how to network (presented by the owners of the non-profit BreakThrough Networking, Inc., who were great), which, funny enough, is the first how-to session I’ve ever attended on networking. Everyone always tells you how important networking is, but no one actually tells you how to do it. Being an introvert, I’m not very talented at walking up and starting a conversation with someone I don’t know.

Now, of course, it’s much easier to connect with people through all these social media sites. Facebook, LinkedIn, even Twitter, are becoming so common that not being on these sites is considered a social and/or professional faux pas.

I never did join MySpace or Friendster or any of those, but I was finally convinced to enter the new millennium (yes, I’m a little behind my contemporaries – being on the tail end of Generation X, I should have been on all of these sites years ago; but alas, I’m apparently a late bloomer) and join Facebook. Shortly after, Facebook launched their Pages, which I think is great way for companies like ours – B2B service companies that are not marketing to teenagers – to get our name out there in a new, modern, techno-savvy way. Plenty of our employees are on Facebook, as are many of our clients, and isn’t bringing all of these people together the point of social media?

Now, I can understand the corporate communication benefits of blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like, but Twitter? One of the presenters at the workshop mentioned that he heard a social network expert say that companies should go in and squat on Twitter (grab their company names) so that when Twitter becomes the major source of corporate communications in the next few years, they’ll already have the names. I don’t know about you, but when I think of Twitter, I think of celebrities who share way too much personal information about their lives with the world. I don’t think of CEOs or HR departments communicating with their stakeholders (although I have heard that there are some who do). Is this really where corporate communications are headed?

My fear is that employee communications are difficult enough – getting your employees to truly understand what it is you’re trying to communicate, whether it be a benefits package, company finances, or big news (good or bad). For those of us who spend the majority of our time trying to design communications that are effective and can be understood clearly – now we’re supposed to openly accept a tool that only allows you to use 140 characters at a time? Are we becoming so ADD as a society that we can’t take the time to read a full blog posting or an employee memo? No wonder nearly 50% of employees read only what is needed to enroll (or don’t read any enrollment communications at all). Someone else at the workshop said that she doesn’t even read blogs anymore because she relies on Twitter so much. I know that you can post links in your ‘tweets’ to direct your readers to further information, but if the way of the future is shorter and shorter communications, how are we ever going to be able to guarantee that people are going to take the time to read the “further information?”

I’m not saying Twitter is bad. But as a communications professional, I shrink from this form of technology as a form of mass corporate communication in a world where people far too frequently base opinions and decisions on too little information. If we’re encouraging people not to read the fine print, we’re never going to be able to get our real point across.

What do you think? Are you ready to accept social media as your main form of corporate and employee communication, or do you think that certain forms – such as Twitter – are trends that are going to fly south permanently?