Get With It already. You sound like an old fogy

   

     It's one thing to say you don't listen to hip hop music. Or that you are bewildered with the fascination of tattoos and body piercings.

It's an entirely different issue when you don't see the 2000 pound gorilla in the middle of the room. The gorilla is the impact of social networking media on corporate America. It seems that executives just don't get it.

Recently Industry Week ran an article called "Unconvinced: Corporate Blogging."

Just 5% of executives said they were convinced "to a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a communications medium, while the percentage dropped to 3% of executives who were convinced "to a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a brand-building technique. As a sales or lead-generation tool, the percentage dropped to less than one. The survey on corporate blogging was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of New York-based public relations firm Makovsky + Co.

While the executives certainly have a right to their opinion. History is not on their side. Corporate culture is changing and online social networking is the technological equivalent to a corporate cultural tsunami. that is going to force organizations to reexamine how they interact with employees, customers and shareholders.

Matthew over at  Blogging4Business has a warning for these executives.

But perhaps the most interesting stat is the one that shows just how out of touch many top execs may be when it comes to new forms of business communication.

Less than one-third (30%) reported having a thorough understanding of the term “Internet blog.” (A blog or weblog combines text, links and images to form a personal journal full of news and opinion.)

If two thirds of the recipients don’t even understand what a blog is, then a, they can’t really understand what its potential impact might be, and b, blog evangelists obviously doing a particularly good job illustrating to companies why an open form of online conversation can help their business.

Turns out Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand....

If threatened while sitting on the nest, which is simply a cavity scooped in the earth, the hen presses her long neck flat along the ground, blending with the background. Ostriches, contrary to popular belief, do not bury their heads in the sand.

Looks like that leaves corporate executives as the ones who are burying their heads in the sand hoping beyond hope that these new fangled ways of sharing information will just go away.

Image credit:  Flickr member bingbing