The Social Media hype cycle seems to have leveled off a bit over last few months, and we are seeing more examples of large organizations using these new tools and sharing their successes and lessons learned. The promise of social media for business includes real-time customer feedback, trend identification, additional brand loyalty, and a richer relationship with customers.
A small sampling of recent examples include:
- A passenger on Virgin America doesn’t get his meal, tweets about it, and the airline is quick enough in its monitoring that it can contact the flight crew and get him a meal before the flight ends
- Comcast, a member of an industry not known for terrific customer service, has a team of people monitoring the web and attempting to provide instant responses to those with a complaint, or considering moving to another provider
- TI builds a community portal for its engineers to directly connect with external customers (also engineers) and share best practices, bypassing the standard help desk interface
Customers experiencing product or service issues have several new channels to ask questions or vent their dissatisfaction today, and rather than suffering in silence, may be able to reach hundreds or thousands of others, influencing their behavior, and causing a great deal more damage to a brand. Organizations of every size are not only reacting to this new dynamic, but actively experimenting, and we will likely see hundreds of new and innovative uses for social media tech in the coming years.
Now regarding the hype, and let’s be honest with ourselves. From the published expectations that every Fortune 500 CEO should “get with it” by posting hourly Twitter updates between Board meetings, to the race for the most followers by celebrities sharing their party antics, the social media hype has seemed more like Dutch Tulip Mania than a serious business opportunity.
If an organization had desired to dip their toe in the water and try these new channels, there was certainly no shortage of expertise to draw from – thousands of new, self-described Social Media Experts (or better yet Visionaries), most with the thinnest of actual resumes but hoping to charge a company hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars per hour for their services (gotta love the optimism there).
If members of many C-suites were even aware of all the commotion, they had likely determined that there was a great deal of silliness going on in this new industry, and it would be a while before they really needed to engage in it.
Like it or not, larger enterprises tend to be more conservative and thoughtful when making forays into new communication channels. These organizations have established brands worth millions of dollars, and do not relish jumping into high-profile adventures only to pull back a week later after a poorly-executed rollout. The penalties for individual failure are greater than they are in a 5-person development shop. There are careers to be protected.
Or consider the melding of professional and personal, internal and external company information that comes together in many of these use cases, and the potential risk to a larger enterprise. One example: The same innocent discussion of personal health issues “between friends” in a 5-person development shop, can become a significant lawsuit over the inappropriate disclosure of employee health information at a larger firm. That’s the reality.
With that knowledge, is it reasonable to assume that HR and Legal would need to be involved as social media tools are implemented for staff, or that company leadership might initially be a little wary of it? Yes, of course. We can expect that getting all this figured out, especially internal social media guidelines for organizations, will be a messy business for some time to come.
With that as some background, it would appear that, once your organization begins discussing social media opportunities, a real opportunity presents itself for IT leadership within each organization. Why is it potentially so attractive?
- Social media has a technology component, but benefits the organization in multiple ways.
- New initiatives may have an impact on any number of departments – sales, marketing, communications, HR, legal, etc. The more cross-department linkages, the better for a forward-thinking IT leader.
- Working on a new initiative such as this can cement relationships across departments, building trust and political capital that can be used in the future.
- The C-suite will be looking for thoughtful and mature leadership, someone to help cut through the hype, make sense of it all, and assist the organization in choosing the best investments. Who will be that person?
This is a great opportunity to be “the adult in the room”, bringing a measured, realistic and collaborative approach to social media opportunities within your organization. What department owns social media in your organization if not IT? Are you involved in that process? Should you be?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Scott, great post, thanks for sharing your insights.
Companies can choose to view Social media:
- As simply another channel, another way of engaging with your clients, and potential clients. Companies must must step back and consider how social communication tactics fit into their current strategic goals.
- As part of a new strategic direction. This is too much for most public companies to fully embrace as it would require a level of transparency that could have legal ramifications if not carefully managed and monitored.
In my opinion companies should consider the following:
- If you are an SMB, non-public company, make the use of social media a strategic initiative, you will be richly rewarded if done well. Of course, if done poorly you will be penalized.
- If you are a publicly traded company consider Scott’s advice carefully. If you begin by exploring social media as a new communication channel you could find great rewards for applications like support, marketing/branding, and possibly even social CRM in the very near future.
John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnfMoore
Scott – nice article.
I think the issue with Social Media is that people see it as ‘the next big thing’ even though the ideas around SM have been around for a long long time.
Social Media today is another tool to engaged clients. It’s as simple as that. As John said in his comment, Social Media can be another channel.