About a thousand years ago, when I took my first job in the corporate world, my boss’s secretary gave me a little tour. We saw the Corporate Overlord floor , we saw the typing pool (yes, those were real). There was a switchboard with crusty operators, a well-medicated tea lady and Dolores.
“Dolores”, the secretary whispered, “is the Telex Operator. Best steer clear.”
“What’s a Telex?” I asked.
Apparently it was an early form of Twitter only with more characters and an important sounding noise. Dolores, it turned out, also had the fax machine. The kind with a giant roll of thermal paper and a top speed of six pages an hour.
A fax or telex was received like minor royalty by our Dolores. She gently cut it out of the machine, carefully recorded it in her giant Book of Things That Came From Space and then placed it into a Special Folder before calling the recipient. A failure to retrieve your Special Folder earned a public, shaming the next day, when Dolores would page you to pick up your neglected Thing From Space.
As reverent as Dolores was with incoming messages, she was equally obstructive when it came to actually sending any out. “Where’s this going, then,” she would gruffly inquire. “and you’re sure it can’t go by mail or messenger?” These things are not toys, she would remind you, as you filled in a three page form explaining just why you felt it necessary to use such advanced tools to ply your trade.
I quickly learned that for a buck I could send anything I wanted from the fax at the shop in the lobby. No questions asked and I could read a magazine while I waited.
I’m sure Dolores has been wandering the halls of a retirement home with triplicate forms for some time now. Indeed, it wasn’t long before the Telex machine was taken out of service (check under Dolores’ bed) and soon fax machines appeared on each floor.
Dolores may be gone but her spirit lives on in the tiresome battle over who “owns” social media in the corporate world. Some say corporate communications should own it. Others would make it marketing’s spot. In a few places it sits in Productivity Prevention (remember what a great job IT did when it owned the website?).
Folks, nobody owns social media any more than they own email. Sure, some of us use it to generate revenue, serve customers, trade recipes and shamelessly promote our personal blogs. A few of us are stupid, thoughtless, drunk or angry while we use it. And that is always bad. Just as it was always bad to fax a photo of your middle finger to your supplier. Just as it was always bad to telex crazy investment offers to strangers on other continents and just as it was always bad to leave bags of burning dog poo on your neighbour’s porch. People can behave in appalling ways in a variety of media and we can’t stop them.
In 2015, let’s send Dolores packing and stop arguing about ownership. Far better to argue about opportunity, content and measurement while punishing the occasional idiot.
Next week, we’ll talk about how to get social off the ground at your company.
Related Posts:
Social Media is the Lighter Fluid, Not the Barbeque
Why It Doesn’t Matter that CEOs Aren’t Using Social Media
Interesting Things I Found This Week:
Predictive Intelligence Still Requires Sales Engagement by Brian Hansford
The Most Important Elements of an Email Campaign by Ayaz Nanji
BizMarketer is Elizabeth Williams
You can reach me at escwilliams@gmail.com
or follow me on Twitter @bizmkter
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