10 Reasons Why Corporate Australia is a Social Media Laggard

Where the bleeding hell are you?

OK, I want to start this post with a disclaimer. There are plenty of companies operating in Australia that are active in social media. I have seen some great case studies…

Examples include – wikis at Janssen-Cilag, BlueTube for the Victorian Police Force and the ever present case study: Now We Are Talking.

And I have worked with companies in this sphere.

As a side note: It seems to me that Telstra entered the social media space with a very specific agenda (T3) and objective. The approach delivered value and has since permeated other areas of their business in a positive way.

For the purposes of this post, I want to focus on externally facing social media projects by Australian corporates.

Laurel Papworth recently posted on the topic of CEOs that use twitter, as a follow up to a BusinessWeek story about tweeting chief execs in the US. The list is made up by the leaders of web 2 and tech companies on both sides of the Pacific.

Talk to any PR in Australia and they’ll tell you that the corporate sector remains unwilling to dip its toe into social media in a meaningful or strategic way. Maybe that’s an exercise in PR business development, either way I’d like to suggest a few reasons why this might be the case.

1. A small corporate sector which remains well connected via traditional offline networks
That sense of the old boys network in Australian business still feels very prevalent to me. That concept of mateship and personal connections comes through quite strongly. The people that run Australian businesses are not using social media as a prmary means of communication.

2. The retail sector has not led the way
Amazon and eBay were the Web pioneers in many ways. Their success gave the Web a lot of credibility in a market (the US) which has a very rich catalogue mail order retail culture. The Australian retail sector on the other hand has been very cautious and reticent when it comes to establishing an online presence, resulting in a lack of leadership.

Too many cultural stereotypes for one post?

3. The old chestnut: Australia the follower
Why would we expect Australia to lead the rest of the world or even be up there when history tells us that this market is typically a follower? Corporate Australia is watching to see what happens in the US and Europe before it dives in.

4. Abscence of high speed national broadband
Internationally, Japan leads the way when it comes to national broadband speeds. The NBN project in Australia has a long way to go still – a nationwide broadband network in Australia is five years away, at the very least. This has impacted the sophistication, the uptake of Web applications, interaction etc. Australia is way down the rankings in terms of broadband quality, as this study shows.

5. There has been no high profile reputational crisis on the Web in Australia
Corporates will only recognise the power of the Web when they see one of their peers suffer major reputational damage as a result of online activity. Until then, corporates will sit back and focus on the risk of getting involved.

6. Corporates aren’t being sold on the benefits effectively
Marketers, consultants, PRs have to accept some responsibilty for the current state of affairs. It’s their job to educate decision makers. It’s their job to prove the business case. Marketers and communicators in Australia aren’t strong on this stuff.

As I said at the beginning, there is activity out there. It’s happening but Australia continues to lag behind the rest of the world. My sense is that the multi-nationals operating in Australia are leading the way. It can only be a matter of time until we see the large corporates follow Telstra and usurp the telco as the outstanding Australian corporate in social media.