People have been socializing at work since the mill girlsmill girls broke the chains that bound them to their looms in Lowell, MA. But it has only been since the advent of social media platforms, specifically Twitter and Facebook, that sociability has become an existential threat to the factory model of business.

Prior to 2009, production-focused employers could dismiss out of hand the value of conversation. They would limit, without fear of financial loss, water cooler time, bathroom breaks, personal telephone calls, web browsing, email, etc.

But now there’s this suspicion that sociability might be something businesses want to capture. Is it possible that the time employees take to talk might contribute more to product development and marketing communications than it subtracts from scheduled production?

Welcome to the Twitter revolution. Social media is not only screwing up old marketing models, it is challenging traditional business (and political) hierarchies and relationships.

In his article for Harvard Business, “Five Challenges Social Media Will Bring to Business,” David Armano writes, “Becoming a ’social business’ (meaning true participation as opposed to leveraging social media as a new form of marketing) can impact nearly every function of a business. Marketing, PR, communications-even supply chain and any function that deals with employees.”

I think Armano is spot on.

Yes, it’s all a bit unsettling. But when integrated, coordinated and managed with a light hand, we at Media Logic have found that social media liberates creativity, efficiently distributes promotion and communication across a network of invested partners, creates and captures organic success and sends SEO/SEM numbers off the charts.

Categories: Conversation-Centric Marketing, How to Go Social