Something is no longer hype when…

Just a quick thought.

Earlier this week I participated in a round-table brainstorm on how to formulate a social media manager profile. The discussion of course wandered from time to time, and it became pretty clear that the focus within organizations is turning more and more towards how to incorporate Social Media in processes, and how to embed those processes & tools into their Enterprise Architecture & IT landscape.

I guess that’s a sure sign that Social Media has moved forward on the hype cycle.

Will the Cloud eventually affect Ikea?

More and more companies seem to get taken by surprise by drastic changes in consumer behavior, often inspired by on the one hand technological innovation and on the other, the speed of adoption of those new products and services.

Things that spring to mind for instance are the fact that the amount of time we spend on mobile phone calls has drastically diminished, we are more and more using internet applications to achieve the same, and it’s giving telecom companies the scare of their life as they are now scrambling to recover the massive revenue losses this is incurring.

The same is happening with companies providing access to TV broadcasts. More and more content isn’t coming from them, but is either directly streamed, or (illegally) downloaded via the internet. When 10 years ago people said they had quit their subscription to Telenet, or Belgacom or whatever, they were still a fringe minority, quickly given the label of (fake) intellectuals or even that of some kind of anti-technology hippy. Nowadays the amount of people in my direct environment who have quit their subscriptions has seriously risen. Their decision is always based on the simple equation that their money doesn’t buy the media they want to see, so why not just quit paying the TV providers and just buy or download the media they want directly.

Turns out that the internet is still the biggest source of disruptive innovation, able to hamstring traditional businesses almost overnight. Lots of those large corporations with their armies of marketers & brand managers aren’t able to move ahead or at least along with these developments. You have to wonder why, because they all have access to exactly the same knowledge and technologies as the rest of the world. So what is it then that creates this drag on their evolution? Just mindset? Bureaucracy? Fear of decision making? The fact that the same Internet has more than levelled the playing field, making scarce resources cheap and abundant? All of it?

To end on a lighter note, I had a discussion this weekend about the fact that while all physical media we used to consume, be it books, DVDs & CDs are slowly being converted into purely digital formats which exist only on our hard disks and in our cloud storage, what is going to happen to big furniture producers like Ikea, because isn’t demand for shelf space going to drop drastically as well…?

Setting up a Social Media presence in B2B does not take witchcraft, just common sense

Last week Quadrant Communications organized an event about the use of social media in B2B companies, with a focus on IT companies (summary in Dutch here). I was one of the speakers and presented the RealDolmen roadmap that created the social presence we have today. I started this roadmap in 2009 as part of our marketing communications mix, but realized soon that if you don’t want to be perceived as “just another commercial channel” you need to take social media out of the hands of Marketing and give it into the hands of those employees able to convey added value information in an honest, believable and above all personal manner.

That said, it’s not as simple as just asking some people to start tweeting their hearts out neither. You also need to have a very good, and above all realistic idea of what you are going to try and achieve with your social media presence.

My presentation highlighted 8 points I believe are the basics to a successful social media presence. Whether it’s B2B, B2C, P2C, or whatever x2x situation you happen to be a part of.

Social Media Roadmap & RealDolmen Case

1. If nothing else, at least monitor what is being said: If you’re not active in any way, do yourselves the favor of at least setting up the necessary monitoring of what is being said and written about your company and while you’re at it, do the same with regards to your biggest competitors. This can be as simple as just setting up some Google Alerts and search streams in a Twitter account with the right keywords.
2. Get top level management buy in (and preferably participation): When you do decide to get going, first get the support of senior management. Depending on the type and style of organization you work for, you may be able to get away with a guerilla style approach. But without explicit top management support, in larger, and especially public companies this will just result from repeated visits by “concerned” people from the Legal or Communications department. You’ll just waste your time and effort in a state of internal confrontation.
3. Develop a strategy: Strategy without execution is hallucination, but execution without strategy is a recipe for disaster. Really think about social media as you would about any other marketing & communications channel. Who are you trying to reach, what would be the best platform, what content strategy do you need to engage those people? Who should deliver that content…? Please think about this, as social media is not free, it takes investment. For that investment to have a return, it needs to be based on a strategy.
4. Publish guidelines & a social media policy: You’ve taken the step to get involved, so now you need to make sure every employee is on the same page. Set up guidelines on the use of branded channels, confidentiality, and the tone of voice you would like employees to use when speaking for the company. Above all, make sure the policy invites employees to get involved, instead of making this a finger wagging document which completely puts them off.
5. Set up a support structure: You need some kind of internal group of people who will drive the strategy & be a contact point for the entire organization about the social media presence.
6. Define & measure KPI’s: this should go together with setting out a strategy but is important enough to mention as a separate point of attention. Determine what you want to measure and make sure that you can measure it. Make the KPI’s as relevant as possible to what it is you’re trying to achieve. Measuring how many followers you have on Twitter is not a very good KPI to measure or prove increase in sales leads.
7. Prepare for when it will go wrong: I write “when” and not “if”, because the nature of the channels makes it a given that sooner or later someone (inside and/or outside of your organization) will write, say or do something that makes you wish you had never started on this entire social media thing. Relax, be assured this would have happened anyway, but now at least you know about it and you’re in a position to react appropriately. One way of reacting can also be, to ignore it. Either way, depending on what business you’re in, it would be a good idea to include social media channels in your crisis communications plan. Just be aware, content has the potential to be distributed at a frightful speed, so if you’re going to react, speed is really of the essence.
8. Get employees involved: The most important part of Social Media is the social part. Getting employees involved leads to a very rich, diverse, honest and authentic social media presence. Make sure to go through item 4 though.