Carol RozwellOne of the sessions I moderated at the PCC Summit was a roundtable discussion of how to develop a social media strategy that services internal and external needs. The participants represented a variety of industries and circumstances, yet they shared a similar set of challenges:
- Running to catch up with consumer expectations
- Dealing with the belief that the social media cannot be controlled
- Figuring out what they should be doing on social media
- Determining which issues need to be uncovered when developing a strategy
At the end of the discussion, I asked each participant for their best practice for developing a social media strategy. Here are some of their suggestions:
- Create a really strong relationship with a respected senior executive who will carry the social initiative forward. You need someone who can articulate the opportunity of social media and deal with any lack of understanding of the magnitude of social business.
- Decide what you want to do, then break the social media program down into initiatives that can be prioritized and timescaled. You need a quick win and killer app to build credibility.
- Social is people-centric so indentify the audience clearly. Find the point of pain that social will alleviate. Avoid all the fancy words – get to the value statements “this is how social will improve your situation” expressed as a what’s in it for me (WIIFM)
- Provide lots of support for the rollout. Pay attention to good project practices and organizational change principles.
- Put social governance in place ASAP – who will do what, who owns what channel, who determines how social will be used to support improved work practices.
I hope you find some useful nuggets in these suggests as you plow forward with your efforts. We will continue the discussion in Orlando at Symposium/IT Expo.
Category: Change management Collaboration community Social media Social networks Tags: Change management, Collaboration dynamics, Innovation, Social media, Social networking, Social networks, symposium
7 responses so far ↓
1 Gary Turner October 6, 2011 at 7:41 am
First of all, ask why you are doing social media in the first place. Is it to foster collaboration and connections between people within the organisation? Or is it another channel through which to engage with customers or stakeholders? These have entirely different implications.
Then it is important to avoid creating new points of pain by integrating it in a meaningful and seamless way into normal ways of working and interacting.
And even then, not everyone will use it; the success of social media depends on achieving critical mass of both membership and contribution. So look at the degree of cultural change that may be necessary before you plug the technology in.
2 Carol Rozwell October 6, 2011 at 9:12 am
Gary,
Thanks for your comment – great additions to the post. I agree with all your points, especially that a cultural change may be required.
3 Elaine R, IT@IntelSME October 6, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Hi Carol,
Thanks for sharing these social and IT best practices. It seems like social governace is one the hardest aspects to implement. Our Intel IT group recently surveyed employee behavior and the maturity of our controls, and then benchmarked ourselves against peer groups. This helped us identify areas for improvement and ways to improve. For example, use case studies to train employees about security awareness.”
4 Carol Rozwell October 6, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Elaine,
Thanks for your comment. So glad to hear you are continually improving your social media efforts. The point about using case studies resonates. I am preparing a case study on an organization that successfully trained all its employees using this approach. They got very high marks for the training because the employees immediately saw the relevance to their ‘day jobs.’
5 Pearl Zhu October 7, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Hi, Carol, nice posting, when we roll out the social strategy, and platform, we may need well define:
Purpose: 1) innovation or problem solving via internal employee brainstorm, and also include some group of customers and partners.
2) “hear” customers’ voice, the future trend, customer experience optimization., etc.
then, we may need governance process, doing the right things within the budget., etc. thanks
6 Carol Rozwell October 10, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Pearl,
Thanks for your comments. I also hope you are considering employees and partners as you develop your social strategy.
7 Cameron Carter October 24, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Really like your post on the importance of a social media strategy! Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, recently stressed the importance of involving social media in every aspect of a marketing strategy. She calls it “Social by Design” and I’ve written on the concept here http://venpop.com/2011/facebook-exec-says-marketing-plans-should-be-social-by-design/
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