Irony Alert
August 11th, 2011
Yesterday I received the following email with the following subject line: “Email is Dead: Embrace Social Media”
Hi Craig,
Social media, despite its centrality in our daily lives, still causes most businesses to tremble with fear. They fear liability over what employees may post in their official capacity. They fear embarrassing information posted by employees, both current and potential, in their off hours. They conduct social media “background checks” to ferret out anything that might reflect poorly on the business. Such is this fear that social media sites are discouraged or outright blocked at many workplaces.
As modes of business communication, social media channels are treated as loudspeakers, with messages painstakingly cleared through legal and public relations, polished to perfect sheen and void of real meaning. Meanwhile, email remains the central trusted tool of business communications. Used internally, it is the official channel for directives, meeting planning and document-sharing. It is the central way to communicate anything that matters both within your organization and to any collaborators. For external communications, email lists are built, maintained and bombarded. Huge marketing dollars are spent formulating email segmentation strategies, word-smithing, and tracking open rates.
All of this is entirely backwards.
To learn why, check out the link here: http://www.txchnologist.com/volumes/advanced-manufacturing/to-corporate-america-subject-email-is-dead-embrace-social-media-by-jacob-kramer-duffield
We’d love it if you could share this story with your readers. You may link to the story, run part of the story with a link back or share the story on your social networking sites.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
To which I responded:
Thanks for reaching out – which, ironically, has taken place via email and not social media. Thoughts on that?
I’ll update this post if/when I get a response.
UPDATE: Please be sure to check out the comments for this post.
August 11th, 2011 at 11:14 am
I think its a fair point, though you’re really responding to the headline, which is necessarily hyperbolic, rather than the content of the story. Of course, email isn’t actually dead, but new modes of communication are better suited to intraoffice conversation or reaching out to customers.
I think Jacob does an excellent job of fleshing out what people actually mean when they make pithy statements like, “Email is dead.”
Your thoughts?
Matt Van Dusen
Editor
Txchnologist.com
August 11th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Hey, thanks for responding, Matt. I agree in principle, but in practice the short answer is: “it depends.”
For one example: I do a lot of work for one of the top banks on the planet, and productivity would grind to a halt without instant messaging, but in this case there’s been an enterprise-level decision to integrate Communicator into the way the company does business, and it would make zero sense to try and incorporate Google Talk into the workflow.
For another example: A sales person at a midsized company might be using LinkedIn discussions to identify a potential new customer, then follow up with some combination or permutation of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any one of a dozen others. In that case, the company absolutely should not be slapping that sales person on the wrist for using “non-approved” channels to bring a new customer into the fold.
I agree 1,000% with Jacob’s opening line: “Social media, despite its centrality in our daily lives, still causes most businesses to tremble with fear.” (I’ve even spoken at a regional business communications conference on “Social Media and the Fear Factor.”) Businesses need to be open to all the relevant new tools that are out there … and that are emerging on an ongoing basis.
But email will never be dead. For some companies it may be THE primary marketing and communications tool; for others it may recede into the background.
The bottom line, again: It depends … ultimately, on the strategic need of the business at hand. Once the strategy is in place, then the communications tactics (from email to social media and beyond) will follow.
Couldn’t resist the irony of the subject line, though! 😉