In 2007, while leading a Fortune 1000 company’s charge into the exciting/scary world of New/Social Media, I devoured books that taught me about the corporate use of New Media:
- Levine, Locke, Searls, and David Weinberger’s seminal The Cluetrain Manifesto, predicting that the power of communication would reside in the hands of the consumer
- David Meerman Scott’s, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, that taught how to harness the power of online communications,
- Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers, that taught about a new breed of online content creator, who has as much (if not more!) influence on our brands as we do
- Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book, that taught the importance and role of the company blog.
But as I attempted to incorporate the ideas contained in these great books, I encountered something that none of them prepared me for–huge internal resistance to their innovative ideas. For example, marketing wasn’t willing to release control of corporate messaging; PR fretted over rogue bloggers; and gatekeepers such as the “Web Team” and Information Technology (IT) were terrified by opening a technical Pandora’s box–the fact that anyone within the organization could post text, audio, or video onto the corporate website…without going through them!
The experience did two things for me:
1) taught your New Media Evangelist much about the political ramifications of introducing New Media channels to those wedded to Old Corporate Communications thinking
2) provided the inspiration to share the lessons that I’ve learned.
I’m happy to announce that the fruits of my labor are nearly complete. Last week, I got the news that my book, Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media–from blogs to social networks has gone into production.
- If you are an executive looking to adopt New Media technologies into your corporate communications strategies, I suggest that you Read This First.
- If you are a Social Media consultant who’d like to help your prospects understand the fundamental foundation by which to build their Social Media strategies upon, I highly recommend that you have them Read This First.
I don’t have an exact publishing date yet, but I do know that it will be available in October of this year. Please subscribe to this blog for updates as we get closer.
Tags: Read This First New Media Evangelist Traditionals Debbie Weil Paul Gillin David Meerman Scott Cluetrain Ron Ploof
