social media Archives - Page 3 of 5

Where do you put ‘Social’ in your business?

There is still a lot of debate who should be in charge of Social Media. I believe no department should be “in charge”, unless it’s a department run by the CSBO, the Chief Social Business Officer.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Social Media is not a fad, not a trend, not a fleeting gimmick and it’s not a bubble. Granted, some platforms may come and go, money will be made and money will be lost, Digg and MySpace are good examples, both are still alive though.

Ignoring Social as a company can be a fatal mistake. Unless you operate in a vacuum or are a true monopolist in a strict B2B market, then maybe you can ignore it. But, anybody else, simply cannot.

It never rains, but it pours

When Formula1 is racing, and the rain comes, the teams have to change to rain tyres. You can gamble on the weather clearing up, save your self a pit stop, or maybe two and win the race. But, by now we know, it will not stop raining. And keeping your cars out on slicks will, inevitably loose you the race. And, it no longer rains, but it pours.

We also know that “Social” goes well beyond just customer care, and well beyond marketing. Also, for communication or PR it’s just another channel. And this is just one part of where Social touches Business. For every department within a company there is a possible scenario where they themselves, independently, use Social to communicate with their audience. Whether that be via Tweets, a community forum or a blog (or some other platform). And we’re still only talking about ‘external’ communication.

Internal

All these channels and platforms must have an impact on the way people communicate. The more Social is being used, through company structures or through personal use, the more people expect to communicate like this all the time.

The structures that need to be in place to satisfy these needs are unified under Social Business.

A New Product

Wouldn’t it be cool with a the launch of a new service that all departments are on the same page at the same time? Yes, that would be cool.

Imagine, before the launch individual employees can drop hints with their audience, or get valuable feedback for the developers, that HR can recruit on specific set of skill, that PR can prepare the press release, that customer care can access the knowledge base with updated info, and that Marketing has its campaign all ready to go.

All these Social Business efforts need to be synchronised and coordinated. This can never happen when every department kinda just does what it wants.

One Big Happy Family

When a company has everything well organised and employees use new ways to communicate with each other and with customers, brand ambassadors and partners, then everything becomes one integrated system. A system that grows organically, because technology gives it the opportunity to do so.

But, as with all business processes, you need to be able to control it, or at the very least, monitor it. You need to know what’s happening. Giving employees the power to broadcast can be a powerful ally, but it also harbours potential risk.

The system needs to provide a way to control that risk. The system (whatever that may be) needs to be monitored. And depending on the size of your business, this can not be done by a single person, you need a department, run by someone who can wear many hats and can talk to every other department in the company.

Because Social touches every aspect of a business, it has to be, by it’s very nature, a department of its own. And every Social endeavour needs to be aligned with this department.

Interim Social Media Consulting, Something to Think About

I was reading a post by Mike McGrail (of Velocity Digital) titled “Social Media – Stop Thinking Tech & Start Thinking Why!“

It struck me that after all this time a professional like Mike still sees the need to write a post like that.

Apparently we still stumble headlong into social media without thinking and planning.
Like Mike says, at least social is on the agenda, but at what cost.

Point of the matter is that by now we know better. We know that without proper goals one is just poring time and money down the drain.
Not to mention the frustrations that go along with an inevitable failure.

At some point some manager will want to know if the whole endeavour is worth it, if there is a ROI. And the person in charge might only be able to show a graph of the number of Likes the Facebook page has, or how many Retweets (if any).

And if that same manager has been reading up on social media he or she will know, by now, that these are not key performance indicators.

Then, like with any other failed process there comes a time to clean up.

This is where the Interim Social Media Consultant comes in (I just made that up, but it sounds good and really plausible).

“So what does a ISMC do?”, I hear you ask.
“Good question”, I say.

There is a difference between a ‘normal’ consultant and an ISMC.
Because, with any luck, a normal consultant starts out with a clean slate. A pristine environment where an enlightened manager gives you free reign on how to set-up their SoMe.

I know, this never happens, we do not live in an Utopia. Although, if you ever encountered a situation like that, tell us about it in the comments, please?

A Mess

Anyway, the difference between a situation where a client is enthusiastically looking for something new and a client that is looking for someone to clean up the mess can be quite striking.

And it will take a different, more ad-hoc approach to get things done.

The Manager

For instance, the manager hiring you is quite likely frustrated through the lack of (real) results from his team. She also, probably, has to answer to somebody higher up. Making results an urgent matter.

And we know that results take time. Building significant relationships take time.

The Appointed Social Media Person

In many cases somebody is made to volunteer for ‘doing’ SoMe. Preferably somebody young, because they understand all this modern stuff. Or an intern, the cheapest we can find.
Or, if we’re lucky, somebody who is really trying, reasonable dedicated, but no expert.

In any case, here too you might find a lot of frustration. The ISMC will be in a position where they need to explain what went wrong and bring this person (or multiple persons, depending on the size) really fast up to speed.

No, multi-week training schedule here.

Politics

When stepping into a new job/assignment/project you always have to be aware of the internal politics.

With social business, and a more open and respectful structure, we hope to limit the amount of politics, but until then it is something you have to be very sensitive about.

In a situation where things have gone wrong even more so.

Neutrality is very important, but you also have to make a stand. There is a right way of doing things and the ISMC has to find the balance between all involved to get things done.

The bigger the company, the bigger the investment done, the more politics are involved.

And somebody might be looking for a scapegoat.

A New Breed

In many different disciplines the Interim Manager is a common appearance. For the financials, the human resources, the IT processes, the customer care. All have their experts in cleaning up.

This is because most departments, where things can get messy, have been around for quite some time.
People have come up and grown out of these departments, and now they use their expertise to troubleshoot and get things back on track.

The discipline of Social Media has not been around long enough for people to already have grown out of it. Many are still learning, and with the current rate of change, we probably always will be learning.

So, it’s the “before” experience that counts, the seniority if you will. Combining years of working in different environments with the (relatively) fresh SoMe learnings.