Social Media Show and Tell

Mary Abraham's post 'The Four Chickens Problem' got me thinking. She's been writing and thinking about e.g. enterprise 2.0 (tools) adoption and warns not to throw tools/solutions at the "nearest group of people. She says:

In order to achieve changed behavior (or adoption of a new tool) we must:

• Educate people as to the actual cause of the problem.
• Educate people as to the theoretical benefits of the proposed solution.
• Prove the solution in such an obvious way so that you make the theoretical real.
• Include monitoring and evaluation to keep proving your case as you implement the solution in their community.

The comments made on this post are interesting to read too.

As I said it got me thinking (and that's why I commented on her post). Because in my experience showing people how I use and enjoy social media applications also helps the 'selling' and 'adoption' of social media/enterprise 2.0/...

I find that with social media you have to dip in to experience it. Can you explain what the use of Twitter is, before you've used it? I couldn't. And by trying it I understood (or try to).
To give you an example. I've been talking to colleagues about social media for some time (- the underlying mechanisms, theory, etc). And some of them caught on quickly. But not many actually went out and tried using the tools. So, I looked for some cases, set up the tools for them and helped them start using them. Now, they're really getting it.

It's a "social media show-and-tell". (Or should it be tell-and-show, relating to Mary's list?) And I don't think this only works for social media, by the way.

Does this make sense? Or are you already doing this in your company? Please share your ideas and experiences!

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Tags van Technorati: social media,adoption,web 2.0,enterprise 2.0