Three Common Reasons for Social Media

In our experience at Room 214 we typically see three major reasons organizations dive into social media:

1. Product Development/Feedback
2. Sales/Marketing/Brand
3. Customer Service

Each one of those “reasons” requires its own cast of characters to “own” the process. In addition – each carries unique key performance indicators to measure the health and success of the project. Because function-specific business goals, community value and KPI’s are all different – it’s critical for anyone heading social media efforts in a particular channel to have a clear understanding of the impact measures.

Know Thyself

To steal from Farmer Ted ask: “Who Am I?” In a recent webinar delivered by the Altimeter Group about developing a social strategy one key point was to consider how your company will run things. Will it be Organic, like a Microsoft, where it’s loose and open? Centralized like Starbucks, where it’s controlled by one department? Coordinated like HP, where all departments are participatory but guided by strategy and rules?

The success for a social media program increases significantly when the structure matches the culture – in the beginning that is. As the organizations ingests social media into its culture it will change things – but to begin with – know who you are. Natural leaders will emerge.

Structure Your Team Based on the Golden Rule: You Respond To It – You Own It
The rule is if you respond to an online conversation you own it. For that reason you don’t want PR people responding to a customer service issue because more than likely they don’t have the authority, or resources, to drive resolution. If you’re not driving resolution with customer service issues you’re doing more harm than good.

Conversely you don’t want a product developer in charge of creating a response to an attack (justified or not) on the brand.
Know the conversations happening around your brand and make sure the right people are there to own it.

Ensuring a Common Thread

We do believe Corporate Communications should have intimate knowledge of the organization’s social media activities. Reason: a disturbance in the force requires a quick and professional response. The organization does not want the 24-year old tasked with community management on Facebook stoking consumer ire because they didn’t keep their cool.

Competent Sounding Board

Even if the Corp Com team gets pulled in there needs to be an individual(s) acting as a competent sounding board to provide insight into the rules and structure of the community. This keeps from crafting a response strategy that unintentionally throws fuel on the fire.

So Who Owns It?

Answer the questions:

• What’s your reason for getting into social media?
• How will you measure success?
• What’s your corporate culture?
• What are people saying?
• Who’s got the budget?
• Who’s got the time, energy and willingness to do it right?

Envelope Please
And the answer is: It Depends

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

- Dr. Suess

….glad you asked though.

Personally the most interesting line in Marshall’s post was the summary of The Financial Times article on the belief that the shortage of marketers skilled in negotiating sites like MySpace and YouTube is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of advertising online.

We can attest to the truth behind The Financial Time’s position, as the largest and most sophisticated brand and marketing agencies are getting stumped on how to enter social media sites. We are seeing a sharp increase in curiosity and questions about how to capitalize on the growing popularity of MySpace and YouTube, and a lot of that interest comes for large established brand agencies that are use to dropping a few million on traditional main stream media campaigns.

Sure there are companies and people right now setting up clandestine marketing programs in MySpace, hoping their message will go viral. But our perspective lies in leveraging the deep niche interest areas of the site that bring people together because of shared passions. It’s one thing to make a funny video and see it spread like mad through YouTube, it’s another to reach out to a particularly small group of people that have chosen to communicate with each other because of like interests and provide something of value to the conversation.

Reaching out and spending time communicating with small niche groups is not a skill set most marketers are good at. In social media the idea of marketing needs to be replaced with the idea of having a conversation. Buying your way in doesn’t cut it – you need to actively join and participate to gain credibility and confidence from your peers. Hmm, sounds a lot like real life doesn’t it? Maybe that’s why it scares people.