Yes, they are the same guys you call to complain about: e-mail failures, spam, restrictive firewalls, your clumsy laptop, your lazy desktop, your old blackberry, no remote access and slow internet.
Well, say hello to your new best friend. The digital and social media revolution has ushered in a new era for communications professionals where technology is not just a nice-to-have enabler of more efficient communications. It is an absolute imperative for all communications (internal and external). While IT is probably only 20 percent of the total solution (80 percent is people and process), it’s an absolutely critical 20 percent. Without IT, you are pretty much dead in the water.
The problem is most IT departments define “strategic IT” around three key deliverables: Reliable email communications, mission critical applications and data security. That’s right, digital and social media are not at the top of the agenda. So, when you come forward with your wish list for new blogging platforms, Twitter and Facebook applications and your desire to establish new communities to facilitate customer conversations, you will likely be told to “get at the back of the line.” In fact, you may be labeled a communications pariah, who has totally lost his mind. “We can’t relax our firewall! We can’t let employees have free access to YouTube. We will lose productivity. It’s not secure.”
Get the picture?
All the new digital and social channels you depend on to unlock the full potential of your communications team require the absolute support and commitment of your CIO and IT team. So, the days of communicators only casually engaging with IT to set up e-mail addresses are over. The “geeks” must be your new best friends. They will play a vital strategic and tactical role on your new communications team. So what do you do?
• Engage them early and often. Remember how many times you felt like the “outsider looking in” when you were asked to write the press release long after the strategy had been determined?
• IT should be represented on your digital media strategy team. Get them to help you define the new opportunities presented by digital and social media. Make them part of the social media policy team that ensures important IT policies are enforced and creates new ones to enable and guide digital communications.
• Involve them in software selection.
• Make sure they are ok with your interactive firm and other outside consultants.
• If they can’t meet your timetable, work with them to determine alternative approaches that meet your needs and adhere to their policies. For instance, they may let you host applications outside the firewall at approved hosting companies as long as there is a provision to move to transition the applications inside at some point in the future.
• Involve their team in training sessions you will implement to reeducate your more traditional communicators.
• Tell them you are going to make them famous with the CEO and CFO by projecting them as the strategic drivers of the new communications platform. Tell them your goal is to set the new standard of excellence in utilizing digital and social media technologies.
In short, make them your new best friend. Make them a hero. In the process, you will be putting your organization on the path for success in the new world order of digital and social media communications.
