SoMe CPR

A thought occurred to me today as I was surfing the internet…I wonder how many people working within corporate social media maintain their own reputations online? I mean, it’s one thing to worry about the reputation of the company you’re working for, but what about yourself?

One of the first things I thought of when choosing this path of social media corporate PR was the need to find someone more experienced than myself to guide me. Easier said than done…the field is so new (at least in the sense of talking years, rather than decades), that we’re almost all still at the learning stage.

I’m guessing one of the main reasons why social media doesn’t have as strong a foothold in the corporate world as it would like, is the difficulty in defining the return on investment (ROI). Well, some companies have been able to deliver more successfully than others, the most obvious being Dell. This post at Mashable reflects the technology company’s victory over social media ROI’s, demonstrating its revenue of $ 6.5 million via its Twitter presence.

Google the terms “corporate” and “social media” and you’re sure to get several examples showing how corporations are using social media. And yet, for every Dell, Starbucks, GM or Cisco, you’ve got a company that holds both hands up and makes the sign of a cross as if to stave away the bad influence of the platform on their brand.