Adopting Social Media in Your Organization? A Few Considerations

Here are few things to consider if you want to help your organization adopt social media tools for learning.

• Cultural influences in terms of sharing and open information is more important than the technology. An atmosphere of sharing is required for Social Media to be adopted. If people feel they will be punished or “get in trouble” for postings, Social Media will not work within the organization.
  
  
• Social Media cannot replace all e-learning or stand up instruction, but it can reinforce, enhance, and enrich it.
  
  
• Give people a few simple but firm guidelines and rules and then enforce that small set of rules vigorously. Expect mis-steps and wrong information but use those events as learning processes for the organization and individual.
  
  
• While many of the Social Media tools seem intuitive, some learners will need to be oriented to Social Media in face-to-face sessions. Providing up-front assistance and training is essential for the majority of employees to adopt. A small group will adopt irregardless of training.
  
  
• Consider starting with a simple, low risk item like a glossary of acronyms to allow employees to get comfortable with the concept of editing materials and then work to more comprehensive collaborative sites.
  
  
• Prepare to scale quickly. One or two people using Social Media tools does not change an organization, even 200 makes little impact but 2000 people using Socail Media effects change.
  
  
• Start with “seeded” wikis which provide basic information onto which others can being to add links, images and other contributes.
  
  
• Create a rating/ranking system to identify widely popular or important Social Media elements and incorporate them into more formal learning process such as e-Learning modules.

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