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The rules of the game are changing, and they’re changing faster than ever before. You’ve seen the signs because they have been there for quite some time. Yet, if you’re like many organizations out there, you’re not sure how best to engage or even where to start.
You know you can’t afford to wait much longer and you’d like to develop a comprehensive strategy but that takes time, expertise and resources, all of which have become a scarcity in today’s harsh economic environment.
Are We Wasting Time?
With more than a billion users now online, every minute of every day millions of people participate in online conversations that take place across a multitude of social networking sites, blogs, discussion forums, wikis and topical communities. Included is the exchange of information and opinion around well thought out and researched articles, shorter more concisely written blog posts or 140 character tweets on services like Twitter, plus everything in between.
The collaborative architecture of today’s social technology has rapidly become a key enabler in providing users with the capability to publish any thought, idea, feeling or opinion on any topic at any time, for free. As a consequence of the inherent nature of these participatory social systems, average users have gained an increasingly higher level of leverage due to the ease with which their perspectives can be virally spread from person to person and community to community with little or no effort required on their part. As the number of users continue to grow, so too will their involvement, further compounding the already exponential growth of information being generated.
What if the messages dispersed are of detriment to your organization? How long will it take for you to hear about them and how will you react? Alternatively, what if they represent an opportunity? Will you be ready to take action by being first to respond?
The real challenge for any organization becomes how best to filter through it all and place it into a context that’s not only relevant but actionable. If done correctly, it has the potential to offer a gold mine full of insight into your industry derived from those that matter most, your customers.
The Importance of Restraint
As simple as it is to just jump into the social infrastructure and get started, the best approach is to use a little restraint. Starting with the technology and approaching social media with a mind-set of “let’s just get out there and be a face in the crowd” is sure to result in a disastrous outcome.
An earlier report by Gartner predicted that by the beginning of 2010 more than 60% of fortune 1000 companies will have had participated in some form of online community for the purpose of building customer relationships. At least half of these they said, were expected to fail due to an inability “to establish mutual purpose, ultimately eroding customer and company values” (see A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media for a list of some examples where this has come to fruition). There’s a lot at stake with arguably the most important being reputation.
Consequently, as a first step, it’s crucial you take time to gather, document and gain a clear understanding of your goals and ultimately, what you’re trying to accomplish through social media. How will you know if what you’re doing is successful unless you first define what that success is going to look like?
There are typically many internal stakeholders with oftentimes conflicting perspectives and it’s important that you make every attempt to break down those organizational silos to get the right people, from the right groups, in the room to ensure everyone works from the same basic set of fundamental principles with respect to the organization’s overall goals, marketing objectives and key messaging. The wisdom of the crowds, as they say, need also apply internally as well. Successful strategy is a cross-disciplinary responsibility.
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