Social Media Strategists: Can we learn from the past?

Re-post from my old blog; original here: http://selvascano.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D7439E6DC600CAE9!1505.entry

For a while know I have been worried that Social Media, Social Networking, Online Communities seem to be heading down a path that is familiar to me, and that I’d rather have all of us avoid if we can….

I did an experiment: I searched for the key reasons CRM projects failed; I took snippets of one of the the articles I found (here the original, credit and eyeballs due to Adrian Mello) and I replaced CRM by Social Media…. Please read the results below; sounds to me we are at risk of repeating the mistakes, and we need to make an effort to learn from the past:

· …It's much more common for SOCIAL MEDIA projects to fail because of a lack of alignment with the business goals, inadequate organizational preparation, and other problems arising from ineffective business planning and management….

· ..One of the biggest sources of failure arises when enterprises put SOCIAL MEDIA tools in place before forging a clear customer strategy…..SOCIAL MEDIA tools can be used for a variety of purposes so companies need to identify their goals…Do you want to reduce the costs of handling customer inquiries? Do you want to acquire new customers? … Without answering these questions companies usually pick the wrong SOCIAL MEDIA tools. <or program strategies>

· Some enterprises have a customer strategy, but it's far too broad. Overreaching SOCIAL MEDIA projects usually fail…..Companies can avoid failures by establishing carefully defined short-term business objectives.

· Although project objectives should be highly specific, they must still fit into an overall strategy…. When they are administered as isolated "stove pipes," SOCIAL MEDIA programs usually fail…..Individual SOCIAL MEDIA projects need to be coordinated and project leaders need to communicate with each other.

· ….Even enterprises that develop a sensible customer strategy will still fail in their SOCIAL MEDIA efforts if they don't modify their organizations to reflect that strategy. A SOCIAL MEDIA rollout must shape appropriate employee attitudes and behavior before the technology is deployed…

· ….A common misconception about SOCIAL MEDIA is that it deals only with superficial processes due to its customer-facing nature. To be successful, SOCIAL MEDIA requires deep change within an organization…..

That should be enough to make my point; what do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Executives surveyed call out the lack of Social Strategy

In this article emarketer brings forward the results of a survey showing executives call out a lack of strategy in their social media efforts.

I think these Executives are showing good common sense and intuition; there are clearly lots of tactical efforts, but (in most cases) they are not building to something bigger/better; they are dispersed, inconsistent and random (how would you like to be in a relationship described with those words?)

What do you think? Filiberto Selvas

Plenty has been written about this, and yet.. Social Media / Social Networking news and buzz are so dominated by the platforms that support it that it is quite easy to forget that thinking about those is by no means the 1st steps you should take..

Here the order in which I would tackle them:

1. Why are you thinking about Social Media?
   Do you want to establish a relationship with a specific audience niche that will allow you to better understand and satisfy their needs? Do you have a product/service and it is your intention to drive awareness and enthusiasm for it? Do you want to have your user community help each other how to better take advantage of your product/service?
   
2. Who is your audience?
   Understanding who you want to engage with is important to determine where and how; not everybody likes to “hang” in the same places as others, interact the same way, or respond to the same incentives.
   Note: check the Groundswell profile tool however I advise to do it with a grain of salt; I think it only reflects how successful we have been to activate specific profiles, versus any natural tendencies that any given profile has.
   
3. How?
   Are you in a space where there are influencers (i.e. bloggers, subject matter experts, etc.) that are already recognized and followed by your audience? Maybe then the best you can do is to embrace them and collaborate (did I mention that a prerequisite is that your product/service should be worth their attention?)
   Or maybe this is audiences that lacks yet a location/opportunity (that has reached a decent critical mass) to self express and interact? Maybe then you have an opportunity to create such space and facilitate this to happen.
   
4. Where?
   Technology and platforms are the last step; this does not mean is not important (quite the contrary, it is very important); but the focus here has to be on supporting the prior steps plus two key criteria elements: a) Is your audience already “hanging together” in an specific social media location/platform? and, most importantly, b) what is the experience you must create to achieve your objectives, and what platforms allow you to do that?
   
   What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Social CRM

What do I mean by Social CRM?

What fascinated me, and brought me into, what I originally called Online Communities and then Social Networking was the realization that it was a natural extension and expansion of my old (and perennial) love: Customer Relationship Management. However, as I know it is clear for you, actual application sometimes (many times) falls short of the possibilities; very few have used Social Networking to create the opportunities for relationships to be established with and among their customers and partners, and leverage those relationships to create more, and better, opportunities for all.

As I move forward into new (and exciting) opportunities I thought it was a proper time for me to open a new Blog; I will devote this Blog to capture the thoughts and reports on the efforts I will pursue to help companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes to understand and act on the opportunity they have to use social networking as a relationship channel, and use those relationships to improve the value obtained by all participants.

Here is to the future!

Filiberto Selvas

Old Blog Location