Cultivating corporate communications: A social media community of practice
The ubiquity of social media has caused many organizations to develop social media programs to increase employee and community engagement, promote the brand, enhance the effectiveness of communication, expand audiences and improve retention and recruitment. The corporate communications department at Canadian Pacific has expressed interest in expanding their social media presence. Social media is collaborative, interactive and democratic, similar to the foundations of Communities of Practice (CoP). To support the expansion of social media at Canadian Pacific, a community of practice has been established within the corporate communications department to 1) assist with the creation and delivery of relevant content 2) to learn and share experiences as they occur internal and external to the organization 3) to develop general and industry specific best practices and 4) monitor and evolve practices as required. Focusing on Facebook, department members will be given questionnaires to determine existing ideas and attitudes about how participation in the CoP serves the social media agenda. This analysis will contribute to organizational knowledge pertaining to factors that influence how corporate communication departments can use the CoP model to support social communication technologies.
leahmcyyc 
howdy, comments/questions as follows: do you want to reference CP directly? what info or theory will you use to build your questionnaire (i.e. do you have a study you can pinch questions from? if so what is it?). do you have any examples of the factors that may influence corp. communication? (… pertaining to factors such as…).
just my 2 cents.
thanks for the feedback John. I will be referencing CP for now, I may need to change this at a later time depending on how the organization feels about the context of my research. I am also going to take your suggestion and mention how theory will frame the mode of attack.
Thankfully I have room in my word count to include one more sentence:
Social cognitive theory will be employed to assess value preferences, efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and the perception of opportunity structures.
I think you have this very well laid out, Leah. All the steps are covered, as much as you can when you are just starting the planning process. The details will adjust as you start doing the work, but for this I think it’s fine. Also I have a HUGE collection of CoP literature for sharing…
Thanks Trish – I will be taking you up on your CoP collection for sure!
Hi Leah,
Great idea to get feedback. I will do the same once I have time to write up my abstract. Just got home and I have two loud boys who think they’re having “a few friends over” tonight. Honestly!
About your abstract; I looked over the layout that Prof Ann gave us and I agree with Trish that you’ve covered all the many points. I think John’s points are good to consider for the poster, but we were limited on word count. You may want to reword your title a little bit so it says something about the research you plan to do. something Like:
Cultivating corporate communications: An examination of CP Rail’s efforts to create a social media community of practice
I’ll let you know when mine is up.
I would welcome a bit of a distraction right now as I feel like I am imprisoned in my hotel room – void of human interaction!
Thanks for the suggestion on the title, Teresa has a similar comment. I was a little worried about the length but agree its more valuable to make it more explanatory.
I will for sure take a look at yours when it is up 🙂
Hi Leah – Yay – you found a theory!! Ok, I would point out that her handout point #8 might want to address. “A good title includes information about the study design, one or more of the variables and the population”. Talk to the survey methodology in the header?
Yeah! I knew it would take some mild torture to find one!
I am taking your suggestion as Joan had a similar comment.
If you want me to take a look at yours, Ian is starting a Drop Box for us to load our abstracts and posters into for communal review.
Hi Leah, looks good to me. The first thing I noticed was that the “research design” was not in the title but I see that Teresa had a similiar comment. For example my title is “A Case Study of……”
Hi Leah, it looks great and the only comment I had was covered by Teresa. Good job! 🙂
Very nice! Succinct and well laid out. Only question & was mentioned before … do we need to include our theoretical frame of reference …
Looks good. Any comments I had look like they’ve been covered by others already.
I think you have a really intellectual abstract on your hands there lady! It’s a shame your office couldn’t be here on Friday for your poster presentation.