It's interesting that whenever a major disruptor like social media, the Internet, etc. comes along, inevitably there are many traditional managers and practitioners who don't understand it and label it as a 'fad'.
Just because you don't understand something personally, doesn't mean it is a fad. That's the realization that industry is going through right now, that is -- social media isn't a fad, it isn't going away, we need to deal with it. Just because we don't understand what the fuss is about doesn't mean our customers won't use it, and if they're talking about us we better be listening.
No Facebook allowed here, unless you're a marketer
So the first trick with social media and how it's going to effect the business is learning about how it works. The knee jerk reaction for most banks when social media came along was two fold; The first was to try to figure out how to dump traditional advertising and PR campaigns down the pipe. The second was to shut down any access internally within the organization because it was risky for employees to talk directly to the public, and also because it was feared there would be wholesale time wastage from staff playing Farmville and other sorts of unproductive, non-work related tasks.
The problem with this mindset is that is was fundamentally wrong. Primarily, the organization was prevented from learning about the real capability of social media, and this hampered the brand from creating advocacy and engaging customers. Additionally, the reality was that employees were simply pushed away from the desktop internally to their mobile device and the risks that employers were hoping to prevent by shutting off access weren't prevented they were simply pushed outside of a controlled environment.
Social Media ROI is not a marketing metric
The marketing-led thinking about attempts to control or spin the brand message out through social media characterized as just another broadcast channel, are also fundamentally flawed. Social media is more akin to a dialog with your broader customer audience, not a channel for slamming more corporate comms or campaigns down customer's throats. Thus, the traditional marketing metrics don't apply either.
The ROI of Social Media is that your business will still exist in 5 years -- Erik Qualman, Socialnomics
What is Social Media for?
It's a dramatic opportunity to listen to what your customers are saying and form useful strategies for advocacy, to inform product and marketing strategies based on real-time feedback from customers and it is increasingly a very powerful servicing tool. While there has been some viral marketing success on social media, if it social media is classified as a marketing tool or channel within your organization it means two things:
So now that we know social media isn't a fad - what happens next?
Who's responsible?
One of the biggest challenges is figuring out who is going to manage social media internally in the business today. Often this falls to some junior marketing staffer, maybe someone in the online team or perhaps a corporate communications or PR team member. All of these decisions would be wrong.
Social media can be used to build brand and advocacy, support and service customers, research new strategies, design new products, create new markets, and to educate and inform. This is going to require a whole kaleidoscope of supporting skills sets and capabilities underneath to do this properly. So if you limit it to being pigeonholed into the current organization structure, somewhere along the line your social media strategy is going to be deficient.
Do you have a head of call center? Where does he sit in the organization chart? The head of social media should be at least equivalent in the organization chart to this resource. Why? If a customer like Ann Minch, David Carroll decides to target your brand because of poor service, bad policy or just plain ignorance, your share price is going to start to take a hit.
The strategy shouldn't be to try to shut it down or attempting to force employees to refrain from social media activity. When Commonwealth Bank attempted this it backfired badly. The strategy needs to be one of informed engagement and encouraging positive use.
Mobilizing the forces
Jaime Punishill of Thomson Reuters made some fantastic points at his recent SXSW panel on Social Media. He showed the tricky balance of building budget for the rarely understood medium, and protecting the organization from risk and itself. While realistic in his reflections on how Citibank, his previous employer, dealt with social media, his musings showed that every major organization needs a more open engagement approach on this front. This is exactly the sort of thinking we need from major brands like Thomson Reuters.
The biggest risk businesses face today is clearly reputational risk associated with a social media blowout. You need someone in charge with common sense, but also with the organizational wherewithal to actually get something done. This is not a junior role. You need a policy that encourages participation across the organization, but that provides strong guidelines, supported by training, on how to engage customers and how to support the brand through social media. But most of all you need a mechanism to take what you hear from your social media listening post and inform strategy, change policy and improve customer experience. That is the potential of social media that is so underutilized today.
Follow Brett King on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brettking
I just can't agree - Just assume a company decides they will get personally in touch with their top 500,000 customers. To many this seems impossible. But the reality shows that this is absolutely doable and actually makes a lot of sense. We need to stop thinking that social media is just another marketing channel where we can through stuff at people.
Now - If you calculate a personal touch in the social web takes 60 seconds and you want to touch each of the customers twice a month and take the same time for a response, you need a team of 200 to that for your 500,000 clients.At $100,000 per employee per year all in cost, you'll spend $20 Million for that team. You better be able to calculate an ROI - don't you?
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
My point is that despite the fact that ROI is calculable, even if it wasn't that still wouldn't be enough of a reason not to deploy a serious social media strategy right now. As you've seen in my article, I don't say that social media is just another marketing channel (in fact I specifically say the opposite). So the issue is how are you listening and responding?
If we get focused on ROI on this emerging capability I believe this in itself is a risk to a rapid adoption of social media and leads to internal conflict, lag and dispute over metrics - rather than just getting on with the job.
BK
It's a long story - so I try to make is as short as possible:
>>> Imagine a company with 5,000 employees where a social media team of 5 is doing the "social thing" and the other 4,995 do business as usual. - Not good at all.
>>> Imagine the same company where 100 random people believe we ned to do better and do some social engagement - more or less as good as they think they do it and 4,900 think that is a waste of time... Not good either.
>>> Now imagine their competitor understand the dynamics and invests $20 Million in doing it right. - The above two competitors would not only crumble but the 100 from one company and the 5 from the other would leave and join their competition. This is a real case and happened. Here is the story:
http://sobizco.com/index.php/2011/03/16/a-social-media-strategy-story-3-years-in-the-making/
If we *do not* focus on ROI, the chances to get a significant investment, which is very much needed, is rather slim and we do the company a disfavor.
Any and all of these organisations today must have a ‘Listening’ capability – the ability to ‘hear’ these conversations on the social web and in turn be able to analyse the resultant data to understand the impact of those conversations on sales, service, marketing, product development, policy formulation, policy execution and to understand the behavior and impact of customers, citizens, influencers and other conversations on your actions.
The social web and social media have a remarkable depth of information. It is possible to uncover detailed information on sentiment, demographics, locations, influencers, reach, amplification and more through the capturing and analysis of online conversations in social media.
“If a conversation took place on the social web and you weren’t there to hear it did it really take place?”
@michae1green
Behavioral and sentiment analysis via the social web is critical for policy and strategy formation.
BK
However we also believe that you CAN go further with financial ROI, and it starts with clear goals and objectives, and needs to utilize the current CRM system and other customer data. "High Impact Enterprise Social Media Strategies with ROI way above 100%" is a free webinar April 28 which addresses these issues, and informs our approach. http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/index.php/events/roi-impact-webinar/
Walter @adamson
Cofounder Social Business Consulting Group #sobizco
BK