Corporate Control

At Alterra, we meet businesses of all sizes who are keen to embrace social media.  But very often they don't have a conherent stratgy.

When platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are essentially public spaces, how does a company monitor what is written about them, posted, forwarded and regurgitated around the internet?

For business to business on-line networking the fastest growing website is LinkedIn with over 80 million users worldwide.  Nearly 1 million members are located within 10 miles of the centre of London.  There are an increasing number of 'private' groups set up by companies so that intra-corporate discussions can be held.

Yet I still see incomplete profiles with no photographs and inconsistant employee lists on the Company pages of LinkedIn.

Well you might say that it is not that important:; but consider this scenario - I meet a senior manager at a conference and type his name into Google.  If that person is active on the internet his LinkedIn profile will appear high up in the Google ranking.  If I click through I will see his Profile and a further click and I am on the Company's LinkedIn page.  So three steps to an unattractive message would worry me.

Worse still are the updates which are totally inappropriate for the platform.  How does a company control this in this free publishing space?

Our series of strategy posts will be coming out soon - watch this space!