Thoughts on social media for internal communications

So my good friend and client Lisa Van Riper from the University of Richmond asked me to give a talk to her strategic PR grad school class at VCU.  The topic?  The use of social media for internal communications.

While I have read and thought a great deal on this topic THP’s client are only beginning to scratch the surface in their use of social media tools for internal comm.  I am a big believer that the brand begins within an organization and that employees can be your best spokespeople and evangelists, so using social media tools to create this “community” is a logicial step.

 After doing some research on the topic I found that a couple of my Twitter friends, Amber Naslund of Radian6 and Justin Goldsborough of Fleishman-Hillard had presented recently on the topic.  Both of their presentations are available on Slideshare.  I am stea….I mean using them liberally in my presentation Saturday.  With permission of course.

After noodling it around in my brain and seeing some work that others have done here are some best practices.

– Blogs/videos:  Not always on the core business but on other topics they can all related to.

– Brainstorming:  Creating platforms or using existing intranet tools to get people from all over the organization to brainstorm ideas is a no brainer.

– Basic information/news:  Intranets and wikis to provide updated information about the company helping make sure all associates are on the same page

– Social networking sites:  Think Facebook or Twitter but only for employees to communicate to other employees to talk about things (or share picture or videos, etc.) related to their work.

– Recruiting/retention:  More Linkedin-ish, helping employees network within the organization to move up or to find out what internal positions are available.

– Online training:  Videos, presentations, live tutorials.

– Online events: Through Ustream or Skype or existing intranet everyone can see what the leadership is up to.

– The future: Mobile:  Texting, training videos, podcasts, all to keep execs and rank and file engaged.

All exciting, all useful.  Many big name companies like Best Buy, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Dell, etc. are the one’s putting these tools to great use.  But there’s one thing that can hinder social media from becoming the norm in business.

Money.

All of these tools, especially if they are custom-made portals, will cost money to personalize and build out.  Sure there are platforms one can access for free like Yammer and Ning that can get you part of the way there but how can smaller companies take advantage of these approaches?

I’d love to hear you thoughts on how social media for internal communications can become available and affordable for all businesses, not just the big ones.  Thanks.