Changing culture is often difficult but there are some basic strategies centering around job descriptions/performance and accountability that can help change an organization.

Every employee should have a line or two in their job descriptions on their web responsibilities. Even clerical staff can be responsible for deploying content within the CMS, Intranet, etc. We should be mentioning this at the onset of the hiring process.

The other piece is accountability. If someone is reponsible for a web site, are they evaluated on traffic? Are they required to provide reports that are included with the rest of the monthly reporting cycle?

Advancement offices are stuck in the "Leave it to Beaver Era"

If you were in charge of your business and had limited resources, where would you put your time and effort? Think about the time and effort you put into events and activities. How many people do you interact with on a yearly basis at these events. What's the cost per person for all this interaction? Now think about the number of alumni you can connect with online each year? What are you spending per alumni for your online "events" or interaction? If I were in charge of your alumni association, I'd ramp up the staffing and budget. I'd have at least as much budget as the magazine has and as many staff members!

How do we provide the right professional development to make an organization more "web centric" overall, rather than just having communications or technology staff understand the concepts? Guest speakers, webinars, conferences?

We've only just started seeing the uptick in job postings and descriptions that reflect how the communications world is changing. Some examples: Online Engagement Manager, Director of Interactive Communications. Positions specifically related to e-communications help ensure that the budget is applied directly to these activities, rather than having "soft" budget amounts related to the "other duties as assigned" line in the job description.

Here's a good one that is related to Facebook:
Data Analyst Facebook is seeking a Data Analyst with strong communication skills and a mild obsession with extracting useful information from data. The ideal candidate will read Matthew Hurst, the Juice Analytics blog, paidContent.org, information aesthetics, and Many-2-Many; that is, they will be interested in the business and product of an online social network while having a passion for data analysis and visualization. The position is full-time and based in our main office in downtown Palo Alto, CA. This position will report to the Senior Manager of Data Insight. Responsibilities: * Work closely with business users and product managers to determine how the data we collect could help solve their problems * Apply your expertise in statistical inference, data mining, and the presentation of data to help inform and support our business and product decisions * Work with the data infrastructure team to translate the business requirements into technical specifications * Possess a thorough understanding of our data collection methods * Develop reports and monitor the validity of the data being reported Requirements: * Data junkie * The ability to communicate the results of your analyses in a clear and effective manner * Crazy Excel skills or experience with data reporting and analysis tools such as Spotfire, Business Objects, Cognos, Tableau, et al * Experience with R, Matlab, SAS, SPSS, or a similar tool for data analysis * Understanding of the methodologies of the major internet audience measurement firms: comScore Media Metrix, Nielsen//NetRatings, Hitwise, Quantcast, Alexa, Compete * Basic knowledge of relational databases and SQL * Strong willingness to contribute to a small team


The business world is on "fire" for people with online community skill sets or experience in social media. Anyone who is in this area, would benefit from the advice shared above.