How FedEx uses ‘social courage’ to engage online

A few years ago, FedEx determined that social media is more than just a channel or a fad.

“We have agreed to address it as a practice,” Renee Horne, director of digital and social media engagement, told an audience at SocialMedia.org’s BlogWell Chicago conference last week.

With that perspective, FedEx has dealt with some big crises, built successful venues for communicating with customers, engaged employees, and changed its culture as a whole, Horne said. It took what she calls “social courage.”

Building a foundation

Making social media an integral part of FedEx took more than just setting up a Twitter account, building some Facebook apps or making use of internal social media tools.

“What we quickly found out was that it was more about change management,” Horne said. Everyone at FedEx had to get used to a new way of communicating, one that was more about dialogue than one-way communication and giving subject experts and other employees the opportunity to shine.