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Jul 11, 2018 Felipe Torres

5 Social Business Fears that Communicators Need to Face

Let’s be honest: being a communicator and embracing social business effectively and organically is no easy feat. It’s a path riddled with challenges, experimentation, learning and fear. Just to put things in perspective, no distress can match the fear of missing out: staying away from social looks far more dreadful than struggling to keep it up. These are two concepts we need to face and redefine: “easy” and “fear”.

Whether external or internal communications, the ever-increasing social media adoption has changed how we operate. Even late-adopters are coming around, and more companies feel that social media is essential to their businesses’ success. It may not be “easy”, but the disruption is extensive on:

  • Communication touchpoints between business and customer
  • How fast communication travels and how far it can reach
  • How we must engage and motivate clients, partners and employees

Communications is an intersection for the business, and there’s a pivotal role for communicators to perform as evangelists, influencing stakeholders and make smart choices to benefit employees and the company. 

5 Social Business Fears that Communicators Need to Face (1)

Download our FREE Social Media Policy eBook to turn employee risk into  opportunity on social media.

Communicators can help business swapping from an “easy/hard¨ approach to an “important/not important” mindset. We need to convince ourselves, and others, that difficulty leads to fear; importance leads to opportunity. The first step is to turn crippling fears into opportunities to achieve essential business goals.

Here are 5 Social Business fears that communicators need to face in order to benefit employees and the company:

1. “Social is overwhelming and disperse”

There is no one size fits all approach to social business. More important than being present in all platforms is to find where your customer is, deliver relevant content and scale it up if needed. Slowly, but surely.

2. “Social sits with marketing, not comms”

There’s a departmental grey area between communications and marketing, which can leave digital actions in a processual limbo. Social business won’t work unless communications, marketing, sales and HR are aligned.  

3. “There is no way to measure the impact of social business.”

There are several attribution models available to acknowledge leads coming from social. If none of them work for you, it is possible to develop your own. Chances are your competitors are doing this. 

4. “I don’t have time for social”

Embedding social into our work life is not about working harder, it is about working smarter. Social media should be a part of how we measure success and our professional progress. These are platforms that will save you time, not take time away from you. Take a look at our 10-Minute Coffee Cup Routine to support you to fit social media into your schedule.

5. “Social is not for me”

Same as the internet once was, understanding social business is a hard skill that is not going away in the foreseeable future. Our employees expect us to guide them; our execs hope we can lead them. Refusing to embrace social is a step towards becoming professionally obsolete.

As communicators, it’s our job to embrace change and face the fears of its challenges with credible, relevant information to our stakeholders. A piece of information we often need to deliver is that “we have always done it this way” won’t do it anymore.

The same is valid for us: conquering social is one of our new digital requirements, and fear is part of the natural process of adapting to them. These fears exist because they touch on things that matter, and there are solid business and professional rewards for overcoming them. As with life, most things that are important aren’t easy, but worth the trouble.

Download our FREE Social Media Policy eBook to turn employee risk into  opportunity on social media.

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About Tribal Impact

Tribal Impact is a B2B Social Selling and Employee Branding Agency.

We're a team of social media strategists, trainers, coaches, content creators and data analysts who are passionate about helping our B2B customers develop and scale their social selling and employee advocacy programs.

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Published by Felipe Torres July 11, 2018
Felipe Torres