Getting paid to be social

So an article posted on Simply-Communicate.com talks about how a company in England is promoting the use of social media by its employees while the common trend is to shy away from it. What’s intriguing about this is that the company, BT, is asking its young graduates that they hire to spearhead this campaign. And why not? With the proliferation of social networking tools and solutions in the past couple of years, doesn’t it make sense that the main advocates and users of these tools & devices would be young adults – mostly those that recently graduated from college? This would be your best target audience…most suited to being the leaders of the social media industry and capable of rapidly spreading it around to their friends and network.

So what makes this so surprising? Well basically it’s common sense. A lot of times, you might be constricted in how you conduct yourself in the workplace. I know that in my situation, being the sole person responsible for a lot of the online happenings with how the city is viewed online from a tourist and convention standpoint, I’m drawn different days constantly. From putting together online invitations to crafting e-mails to visitors and business folks, to updating a website with the latest happenings, news, or travel advisories, and ultimately to making sure that the news is sent out promptly and efficiently, a person can only take so much. But I’m glad that I’m in the same position as those at BT and can take advantage of the social media afforded to me.

The young graduates at BT are asked to set up blogs, form social networks (which I assume is Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Mashable, Utterz, Seesmic, etc.) and this is a good thing. A co-worker of mine happened to come across my Facebook page and saw that my status was managed by my Twitters. So they asked me what “Twitter” was and I gladly and graciously told them how applicable it is for business purposes. Social media is always a good thing. Definitely used in moderation, some of these tools developed over the past year can be quite potent in driving traffic to your site, spreading the word, or simply raising awareness.

So out goes the old model of PR…hire some of the latest up and comers in the social digital word and make room for the influencers. These early adopters are the ones that’ll get your product going.