#likeminds - How can organisations take the first steps towards integrating People-to-People?

Olivier: Every organisation has people who want to do this. Management need to understand how it's going to benefit them in the long-run. Until you get management buy-in, you're never really going to move forward. It's always be at arm's length. 

Benjamin Ellis: Not a fan of specific social media strategies. Installed a wiki in an organisation where you said anything out of management line, you got into trouble. You need the culture to enable it. Job description: I've never seen one that says that you should answer e-mail or letters... We're moving from a world where you only publish the good stuff to a world where everyone publishes. 

Steve Bridger: On the other hand, a diktat where everyone must participate is bad. You need to go with the flow. 

Gabrielle Laine-Peters: Most employers know hat younger people are already on these platforms. Educate before you set guidelines. Social media: they're tools in a toolbox. It's about integration and evolution. Find champions in each department

Olivier: Lots of social media people are hired because they can blog and know Facebook, but they have no operation experience. Data analysts should not be community managers - totally different skills. 

Gabrielle: Tweeted that my Moo Cards had a problem - they biked me replacements.

Andrew Gerrard: Difficult for big companies to do that.

Benjamin: The power has moved from inside the organisation to outside it. It's a hard time to be a big company. 48 hours to reply to a tweet, while all the boards approve it - you can't operate like that. 

Steve: If you try to layer this over a company that's closed or hierarchical, it won't work. "the line" isn't always in the same place - even companies can change their minds on the basis of new informations. 

Tools for internal communications hub? Olivier recommends Yammer [we use that successfully]

Interesting side debate about the problems of government - and, in particular, the clash between internet time (seven times faster) and government time (seven times slower)...