Think about how you talk currently. Do you use traditional advertising and PR with centralized controls? Or is there a vibrant community of communicators inside your company? Even if you might not know it, there are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of people inside your company who are blogging, tweeting, or even stumbling. Wouldn’t it be cool to take all of that communication and turn it loose to make more people passionate about your company and what it does? We know—there is probably some rule in an employee handbook somewhere that spells out guidelines for what people can and can’t talk about. Sure, every company has secrets that need to be kept secret; but most of these handbook guidelines may have become a bit antiquated. It’s probably time to change them.
Once they’re changed, it’s time to start allowing people who work with you to use the new media to your advantage. Threadless has it dialed—its internal folks are communicating in a way that has invited passionate fans who want to participate in the culture of the company. By becoming more like a media company and putting communications at the center of your company, magic starts to happen. Think about how you might bake more
media into your products.
