The social business
Social media - is it merely time-consuming online trivia, fraught with business risk, or the communications medium of the future?
06 October 2011
During the last half decade, a change has rolled across the way people communicate and do business. That change started as a trickle and has become something of a tsunami. That change is social media.
The big four
We tend to think of social media as being new: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, often referred to as 'the big four'. But none of these sites are that new. Facebook was launched in 2004, Twitter in 2006. LinkedIn's been around since 2003 and YouTube since 2005.
Indeed, all of these in some way build on the foundations of what was already out there in the Internet - people wanting to use technology to be social or do business, perhaps using forums, blogs or online communities. Although it's now dead, CompuServe was a massive network of online communities - it ran from 1969. No, that's not a typo. 1969 - although it didn't hit its stride until the 1980s, when it became one of the biggest information networking companies in the world. The Internet killed it, pretty much stone dead. (Perhaps there's a lesson here - today, we can't imagine life without Facebook or something superseding it - but that used to be the case with CompuServe, too.)
So, social networks scratch an underlying itch, something that's been around a good while. Humans are social animals. By and large, we like to meet and we like to chat. Social media provides a framework for that.
Social media challenges
The challenge for businesses is that many of the ways in which social networks operate run counter to how businesses have communicated in the past. Organisations have been used to all communications being structured, controlled, managed - messages engineered and crafted, then pushed out through people who are effectively the companies' endorsed and approved communicators.
Messages went out via brochures, on the company's website, on billboards and so on. Communication was essentially one-way - the message going to the consumer. If the consumer wanted to feed something back, then he or she would have to hunt for an e-mail address or contact form.
Social media potentially takes a hammer to that framework - and then throws the pieces out of the window.
Social media is - well, social
For social media to be truly effective, it needs to be truly social (the clue's in the name) and not a substitute broadcast stream. What this means is that real people need to connect to real people. Sure, if you're Stephen Fry, you can tweet to over a million people and respond once in a blue moon to one of your followers' many tweets back. For most of us using social media, the modus operandi should be that of a conversation, not a broadcast.
This is a business issue on many levels. Conversations are real-time. We can't effectively process every tweet through a marketing department, or get approval from HR when we want to post an update on Facebook.
Managing business relationships online
But once relationships are struck and maintained outside the circle of corporate approval, how are they managed? If an employee moves on, who 'owns' the customers with whom a relationship has been struck?
These sorts of challenges are especially difficult for larger companies to get to grips with. But not impossible. Smaller companies are far more agile - by definition people are more empowered, decisions are quicker and take little discussion, responses can be faster. From experience, we've seen businesses with a handful of employees respond within minutes to a comment on Twitter, where larger businesses can take days.
In the social media world, a response that takes days is virtually worthless. Let's say it's a customer complaining publicly about your services - if you don't respond quickly, he or she will carry on complaining - publicly. If it's a business opportunity, someone else will have snapped it up.
Then there's the factor of time versus reward. Social media is 'free' but it takes time, so therefore it costs anyway. Results are not always direct and it takes a while to learn how to make the best use of each social network. It's not unusual for someone to sign up to a Twitter account, follow a few celebrities, tweet three times and then give up because "I don't understand Twitter" or "Twitter doesn't work for me". Which is the equivalent of describing a party as dull, if you left before everyone else arrived, or didn't make the effort to talk to those who are there.
Social Media Training Seminar
We're running a Social Media Training Seminar on 17 November, to help organisations understand more fully the benefits of social media and how it can be incorporated into their activities. The sessions are delivered by two highly experienced marketing/social media companies, both of which have a successful track record helping all sizes of organisation. The seminar lasts a day and costs only £99 ex VAT. If your organisation wants to find out more about exploiting the potential of social media, it's a very worthwhile way to spend a day.
