1. Get your culture right & the
tweets will look after themselves
Martin Thomas
@crowdsurfing

2. “Digital communications is a
destabilizing force in a bureaucratic
environment. And I am sitting right
in the middle of a bureaucratic
environment.’”
Senior corporate communications director
“We’re not set up for this shit”
UK CEO

3. Social media dramatises cultural
& operational weaknesses
Connected Disconnected
meets
Consumer Corporation

4. New behaviours & heightened
expectations
“Amplifying the volume of moaning”
“The trouble with McDonald’s is it’s too
bloody slow”
Instant access, instant response, instant
gratification “living life through shortcuts” MTV
Real time problem solving  Real time
expectations

5. Why many institutions struggle
o Not configured to work in real time, in terms of speed
or resources
60 minutes 10 minutes
* Critical response time for responding to negative comments

6. Organisations & people that
struggle with this new world
 Slow
 Hierarchical
 Bureaucratic
 Process oriented
 Distrustful

7. No surprise that public sector finds
things difficult

8. Alternative perspective
Social media as a positive force for
cultural & organisational change
Good social = Good business
Good business = Good social

9. Operational & cultural traits of
successful organisations
Trusting
Open
Agile
Informal
Collaborative

10. 1. Trusting
o Bedrock of strong internal culture
o Allows shared responsibility & real time decision making
 The best company rulebook ever written?

11. Trust the people
“How many of your
90,000 tweets have
been pre-approved by
senior management?”
“None of them”

12. Trust the people
in uniform
"It comes down to culture of an organisation & degree of
trust you have in your frontline officers. You have to allow
them to make mistakes and deal with them as a mistake,
rather than coming down heavily on them.”
"The message has to be: 'We trust you with a baton
and with the right to take away someone's liberty,
I think we can trust you with a Twitter account.”
Gordon Scobbie, police national lead on social media

13. 2. Open
o Transparency & honesty non negotiable
o Capable of transforming reputations & address trust
deficit faced by all institutions
o Thicker skins essential

14. From litigation to ‘civil dialogue’
“the one thing we’ve changed in recent years is we have
been a lot more open about engaging in dialogue with
people so long as they aim to be constructive”
(Steve Easterbrook, UK CEO, McDonalds)

15. 3. Agile
o Ability to improvise & operate in close to real time
rather than institutional time
 Crisis management at hyper-speed

16. Speed of response
o Photo hoax went viral on Twitter
o Quickly countered by social-media
team with Twitter statement
o Stock price rose 5% the following
day

17. Agile creativity


18. 4. Informal
o Being willing to show a human face & a personality

20. Think human … not corporate

21. A human response to human error

22. Authenticity & timeliness more
important than production values

23. 5. Collaborative
o Tapping into spirit of collective self expression
o Leveraging people’s willingness to shape service &
product offers
 70% of companies regularly create value through use of web-
based communities (McKinsey)

24. The Power of Communities
Mutualisation: Collaborating with readers and communities to better
understand, explore or reflect situations, topics, perspectives or experiences

25. The Power of Communities
10,000 people have paid to become part of an
online community that debates & votes on key
decisions involved in running a farm

26. The Power of Communities
• Over £200k saved
• Over 250 photography ambassadors
• 50 million views

27. Social customer service
• Community-powered customer service
“Using customer communities to solve customer
problems costs 10% of traditional call centres”
 HP claim saving of $50m in support costs
“Each view of a YouTube customer support video
equates to an £80 saving”
Laura Price, social media manager

28. If you want to succeed as a social
business
Trusting
Open
Agile
Informal
Collaborative

29. Get your culture right … & the
social media will look after itself
@crowdsurfing