Digital Dudette: Are Malaysian Bosses Embracing Social Media?

Here’s a poll done by The Star Online in August 2010  and 68% of them said that some (if not, all) of the social sites have been blocked in their working place. 

Following that, there was an article from The Star about “Net Surfing ‘Freedom’ Too Costly“. In short, the article states that:

1. Employees on social networks are causing lost of productivity & money.
2. Cuepacs advised civil servants against accessing social sites because they believe it’s distracting.
3. Malaysian Employers Federation says BAN SOCIAL MEDIA!!!
4. 54% of the companies in the US has already banned it.
5. However, not all local businesses are against the use of social networking sites.

I personally think that this is a typical case of one man’s meat, the other man’s poison. Perception is not fact, hence how does one derive to a conclusion that social media is causing lack of productivity when tons of creative ideas are mostly shared via social media?

With more & more people worldwide embracing it, we’ll be at the losing end if we choose to shut it down instead of developing with it.

A post by Marshall Kirkpatrick says it well – using social media provides a mental break for employees, thus increasing productivity by a whopping 9%.

“The activity helps keep the mind fresh and helps put you in a better place when you come back to working on topic”, the scientists said.

And this 9% is merely the minimal increase as some users do productively use social media to share experiences that are work-related.

So it’s important to first study the motivation one has to use social media, before accusing that all pots are black.

This is a repost from TalkPower, my previous blog.

Related Post: Why Immediate Fix is Crucial During a Social Media Blunder

OPINION: Planning for Social Media Campaigns

As I was crafting my previous blogpost, Facebook's new metric to measure engagement and it spurred me to think about how publishers and media owners have been selling the idea of "viral" and social media "influence". 

I don't understand the logic behind selling/buying Facebook updates/tweets based on the number of fans/followers. Heck, it's like newspapers and magazines selling their ads on a value based on readership, not circulation/subscription. 

Fine, with that being traditional media, we have to make the assumption that you could potentially reach xxx number of people provided all readers flipped through every single page of the magazine and shared the paper/magazine with two other people. 

But we're talking about digital media where almost everything was supposed to be trackable, and it's a sad story to tell that we're tolerating this buying/selling media based on assumption. I would rather pay a minimal "ambassador-ing" cost + premium price on CPC once we're able to gauge how many people clicked on the "celebrity's" post. 

What would you prefer - pay per fan/follower or do you know of any other buy/sell methods?