SCHWARTZ CROSSROADS

Stop using Lord Salisbury as a social media guide

When talking about social media, the truism is that people need to try it for themselves to truly understand it. That much learning comes from trial and error.

Over the weekend, I was reading Dreadnought, by Robert K. Massie. The book focuses on naval developments and politics of the later Victorian Age, leading up to World War I. One of the passages in the book struck a strange (and unexpected) chord with me.

Robert Cecil, Third Marquess of Salisbury (and three times Prime Minister of Great Britain) was one of the key political figures of the time.

He was a quintessential early adopter – having some of the first telephone lines and electric lights in all of England. Yet his approach to child rearing is what struck me.

Lord Salisbury believed in letting his children explore on their own to develop a passion for learning. Most notably he left one of his sons alone for a few days, and (as he wrote) “Having tried all the weapons in the gun-cupboard in succession – some in the riding room and some, he tells me, in his own room – and having failed to blow his fingers off, he has been driven to reading Sydney Smith’s Essays and studying Hogarth’s pictures.”

It’s an amusing, and slightly scary, anecdote to read. Now, to me any gun going off is a warning sign, let alone firearms being discharged in my house. Yet unfortunately, it too well describes the way many companies approach social media. Powerful guns (social media tools) are available to every corporate communications department. They think to truly engage in it you need to let people play with the guns first, and if nothing too bad happens, they can get down to the serious business of learning and fix things for the second attempt.

Schwartz is a strong advocate of everyone being engaged. But instead of seeing if people blow their fingers off, Schwartz is a proponent of rigorous training and guided engagement. Social media needs to be integrated at all levels of a company. Not something less experienced people play with and see what happens, hoping not to blow anything up too much. Experienced, senior level people need to be guiding the discussion and plans. That is how you will get the best results. If your agency or your company does not have senior level resources dedicated to social media engagement, training and strategy, you need to take a step back before any fingers get blown off.

I am not saying anything revolutionary here, but I was just stuck that the same philosophies that were used more than 100 years ago, are unfortunately all too prevalent today when it comes to social media.

We should know better.

Posted by Mark McClennan on April 26, 2010 at 10:26 AM