Pentagon shows a lesson in managing social media goals within an organization

Even the Pentagon is learning how to manage social media

The Pentagon may not be the first place to think of social media, but then again innovation or interesting perspectives come from the least likely and most uncorrelated sources.  Wired reported that the Pentagon is no longer operating a separate social media team to run their Twitter and Facebook accounts, opting to instead incorporate its social media department into its PR communication department.

The decision is understandable. After two years of maintaining a singular communication source, the Pentagon has gained enough insight into what kind of communication should be maintained.  After all, not every business has updates that are a clean fit for social media. The government contracting industry, for example, has some struggle with social media only because many of the ideas typically advised can be detrimental.  For example, some contractors can only announce a win of a contract but not the details of ongoing contract performance, for concern that competing bidders can use the information against them.

The struggle to integrate social media into a large corporation certainly is not  new.  The book Empowered by Groundswell author Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler addresses the concerns and struggles to integrate employee social media usage into company strategy (I wrote a book review for Small Business Trends here). The major concern for the Pentagon mirrors the book's most overarching topic -- establishing a social media policy for its ranks.   The lack of a policy has not created a significant problem yet, but its mention in the article shows that the military has a way to go to ensuring that no information leak damages its intended image.

Having a dedicated social media team has advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few:

Advantages

• Dedicated listening that can aid response to online audience concerns
• Dedicated search of customer comments that can aid new product or service generation
• Augments a highly centralized organization
• Can establish an polished image if managed by experience social media or marketing professional
• Can prevent sharing proprietary information -- allows for a coordinated disclosure of information

Disadvantages

• Creates silo -- shared knowledge and insights across organization is limited to too few folks
• Limits account response creativity that can draw followers and interest
• Can be difficult to establish a social media objective when tool usage is disconnected from organizational objectives
• Can create a "too polished" inauthentic image among followers if manager lacks marketing savvy

Read the Wired article for more details and interesting perspective on social media from a highly centralized organization.