Are Corporate Communicators Hopeless in Social Media?

Have you ever heard someone say something that made you immediately cringe, even though you knew that person was partly right? I had that reaction while listening to an episode of SocialMediasphere.tv in April. The topic was "social media rock stars" and featured Amber Naslund. Naslund was asked if she had to replace herself as director of community at Radian6 (which monitors and analyzes social media for PR and advertising efforts), what would she look for in a candidate? The first thing she said she wouldn't want was someone with a communication background.

Ouch! Here's her response: "I actually probably don't want somebody with a communications background ... the truth is there's a lot of preconceived notions in corporate communications that are very, very difficult to undo, and part of the reason that social media is struggling for adoption inside established companies is that they're having trouble jettisoning old ideas about how and what to communicate to their customers.

"... I came up through a nonprofit fundraising background.... We were taught that connecting with donors about the story behind the organization was what was going to compel them to support it. I go back to those tenets a lot in my community work.

"So I would probably look for a grassroots, nonprofit-type person who is really plugged in to the people and not so much plugged in to their MBA textbook that's collecting dust.... And I'd look for somebody that has a bunch of unrefined skills ... with kind of a fresh slate, because I don't want somebody whose ideas I have to undo."

My initial reaction to Naslund's answer was to wince and recoil. I've got six years of corporate communication under my belt (and a shelf of dusty MBA textbooks, for that matter), and now a "social media rock star" is telling me I'm not likely to be a good fit for a social media job?

But Naslund's basic tenet is that a lot of corporate communicators still want to control how, when and what is communicated to customers. We're trying to fit a square social media peg into a round corporate communication hole, and it's not working. We rely on models, rules or PowerPoint slides to define effective communication. I admit that I sometimes tend to fit communication strategies into my company's current operating framework, rather than challenging that framework and looking for more effective ways of reaching customers. Sometimes I get caught up in the process of communication and forget to focus on telling a compelling story.