Manager's Guide to Social Media

Chapter 2Social Technology and the Organization

Before we address best practices for managing social tech, we need to look at how it’s being used inside our institutions. Technology has a way of infiltrating businesses and organizations through several avenues. Sometimes tech comes in the front door because the organization purchases new applications or hardware and legislates its use by the team. More often, it’s brought in the back door (figuratively), as team members simply bring a new device or application to work and teach others to use it. To understand this backdoor dynamic, we can go back almost 30 years and look at what happened with personal computers, as this was the dawn of technology creeping in through the back door.

Setting a Historical ...