Social Networking on Intranets looked at the use of social media within organizations and found that “Underground efforts yield big results. Companies are turning a blind eye to underground social software efforts until they prove their worth, and then sanctioning them within the enterprise.” This is true not just for internal, but for external social media use. Whether you call it underground efforts or rogue tweeters, the idea is still the same: to let people loose to use social media using their own judgment. It’s not that the attention to social media governance is misguided, but social media successes are more likely to spring from creativity and initiative. One of the ways that governance can help is by encouraging people to use social media who might not otherwise, bringing in fresh initiatives and perspectives.
I dabble in social media, with a less than astounding 253 tweets. Jill Duffy, my editor at ACM, brings more personality to eLearn Magazine on Twitter and to her personal account than I do. (My guess is she spends more time on it than I do.) But even better than Jill or me is Mark Senk, who works at NIOSH and divulged many of his secrets in an interview. My favorite is how he “lays bait” to reach new groups that he believes will benefit from NIOSH messages and sees if he is retweeted.
I noticed a more official looking background on NIOSH’s Twitter page and wondered if that means Mark is above ground now. That is part of the bottom-up social media process: try it out, break some ground, and let governance evolve based on what is already working.