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Thursday, July 2, 2009
Inside Social Media
Recipe for social media success
MHT's Galen Moore: New 'hyperlocal' web trend
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: How social networking is changing business
MHT's Jim Connolly: Social network sites focus on niches, sports
Entrepreneur Paul Trevithick says, “We always get the technology right and the sociology wrong.” In other words, we’re great at installing new software and hardware solutions. But how often do we implement solutions that people never use to their potential?
Today, with more attention being paid to social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s tempting to sign up and start contributing. Unfortunately, success is not so easy. Less than 25 percent of online communities have more than 1,000 members, even though more than half of those businesses have spent more than $1 million on their community projects, according to Ed Moran of Deloitte.
The Right Technology for Your own Company
While it’s easier than ever to trade ideas and communicate across organizational boundaries, it can be difficult to choose the right application and make it work for your company. Defining organizational goals is step one in the process of choosing the right technology. For instance, a goal to increase revenue suggests a different kind of technology with respect to a goal to spur the sharing of knowledge.
Twitter enthusiast and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has explained that corporate culture was the goal behind his use of Twitter. He has said that company culture is Zappos’ top priority, and that if they get the company culture right, “most of the other stuff (including great customer service) will happen on its own.“
For Hsieh, Twitter was a natural way to encourage aspects of the culture he wanted to develop: transparency, connection and customer service. Today, Zappos is a Twitter exemplar. Over 680,000 people follow the company, rave about its products, and receive quick responses to their questions.
Aligning a social media strategy with organizational goals helps ensure its longevity and fit with corporate culture. Step two is aligning strategy with the target audience’s preferences and content consumption habits. Different groups prefer different media. For example:
• 55 percent of Facebook users are age 25 and younger (Prophetic Media, February 2009).
• Twitter’s largest demographic is 35-to-44 year olds (Time magazine).
• Adults are interested in online discussion forums where they can discuss a company’s products, while youth prefer profiles of their favorite brands on sites like MySpace and Facebook (Forrester Research Inc.).
• Only 16 percent of those who read company blogs say they trust them, while 60 percent trust consumer products and reviews (Forrester).
If a company wants to encourage 40-something prospective customers to learn about its product, online discussion forums and customer feedback sites might be the best bet. To get the buzz out among 18-to-25 year-olds about a new product, Facebook might be the right tool.
Making New Media Work
Once the company sets goals and identifies the target audience, how does it gain value from new technologies?
1. Set realistic expectations.
Some enter into the world of social media with overly ambitious goals that can lead to disappointment. Sorry to say, most companies probably won’t gain as many followers on Twitter as Ashton Kutcher or increase sales 100 percent in six months through their online community. But there are measurable, concrete benefits to be gained from social media. Setting modest goals, particularly in the first year of experimentation and discovery, helps ensure that early disappointment won’t lead to abandoning the social media strategy prematurely.
2. Find the early adopters.
Some in every company are already using social media in their personal and work lives. Find those enthusiastic users and get them on board as the organization’s social media pioneers. Give them direction, then let them loose to innovate. Their instincts and creativity will help blaze the path and generate innovative ideas about how social media can benefit the company.
3. Loosen control.
There really isn’t a way to gain value from social media without sharing information. By sharing information, early adopters may inadvertently challenge company norms about information exchange, product development or customer service. They’ll need flexibility and support as they figure out how to tune the social media strategy to not only fit the company, but make it better.
To avoid putting the company in an untenable situation or shutting down early adopters, set up guidelines about what absolutely cannot be shared. Make sure early adopters can adhere to those guidelines. That way, the company encourages creativity while protecting intellectual property.
4. Listen.
Soon, early adopters will discover what works and what doesn’t. They’ll have ideas, excitement and energy to take the next steps. When this happens, it’s time to listen and support.
Maya Townsend of Partnering Resources helps build aligned, adaptable, collaborative organizations. She can be reached at maya@partneringresources.com. Amin Marts of Artifact3 designs collaboratively-inclined applications focused on maintaining, disseminating, and sharing information between individuals and organizations. He can be reached at amarts@artifact3.com.
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