Welcome to the first issue of the Melcrum Social Media Newsletter
Love it, loathe it or just very scared by it, social media is taking over the online world. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking, RSS and even Second Life are playing increasingly major roles in organizations as their popularity continues to rise with every passing microsecond.

But, while it's all very well people saying this, you as a communicator working inside a large, complex organization face numerous problems when trying to implement social-media technologies and initiatives. You're hamstrung by IT's vice-like grip on "the system," your senior execs think social media is for their 12-year-old kids and other skeptics call it "yet another way of wasting time," right?

Well, quite simply, they're wrong. There are already thousands of organizations, from small to large, finding better ways of working and communicating internally with employees and externally with customers and other stakeholders. New technologies are making it easier for them to engage and we want to share some of these success stories with you.

As a subscriber to The Source for Communicators, we've sent you this first issue as a taster, but you can subscribe here. Twice-monthly in every issue of The Social Media Newsletter, we'll bring you great examples, top tips or case studies that will show you how organizations are already winning in this new world of instant communication and conversation.

To kick off, in this issue we have some great advice from Richard Dennison, head of group communications and social-media strategy at UK telecoms giant, BT. Dennison provides three important tips to ensure your social media program gets off to a flying start.

I'd also like to draw your attention to our own efforts to join the conversation. The Melcrum Blog has given us an opportunity to write about life at the company, internal communication and more. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Enjoy the issue!

Alex Manchester,
Editor

P.S. We'd love to hear your feedback on our new e-zine – good, bad or ugly! We'd also love to hear what your organization is doing – or not doing – with social media. Just e-mail me at: alex.manchester@melcrum.com

Three top tips to launching your social media strategy
By Richard Dennison, BT
At BT, we’ve been experimenting with Web 2.0 tools such as RSS, wikis, podcasting and blogs for some time now. This is what we've learned:

1. Don’t position Web 2.0 as something completely new
   People are instinctively fearful of radical change. We’ve altered our approach and positioned Web 2.0 technology as an evolutionary step: “We’ve been doing this for years with e-mails, discussion forums and so on. This technology just makes it easier and faster to communicate and collaborate.”
2. Don't get hung up on measurement
   Web 2.0 is about succeeding or failing fast and cheaply. If you have an idea, knock up a quick beta site and let it loose on the users. They’ll tell you if it’s any good or not, what needs changing and what needs adding. If it takes off, the users will write the business case for you. In most cases, with this technology you can instinctively feel if it’s the right thing to do.
3. Don’t focus on risks, focus on benefits
   We don’t allow anyone to publish into any of our Web 2.0 tools anonymously. The ethos we're trying to engender is: “say what you like, but you’ll be held accountable for what you say.” When we reviewed our security policies in the light of Web 2.0 developments, we found that our existing policies already covered the potential risks associated with these new tools.

Richard Dennison is speaking at the Melcrum Social Media Forum for Internal Communicators London, March 22-23.