Facing the Social Media Monster

Rightfully,many businesses are looking at Social Media with a wary eye, as if it were some giant monster that might drag them out into the bright daylight and leave them helpless and stricken. It has happened. The CEO of JetBlue lost his job after bloggers and consumers watched their every move following a crisis with customer wait times and they failed to live up to the promises made in the Social Mediasphere. There are a growing number of such stories. There are some successes as well. Dell computers built an effective strategy and have adopted Social Media tools, including using Microblogs like Twitter. They have improved customer service and brought their share price back.

In most of the cases we have seen companies fail with Social Media and the monster has become all to real, it is due to the approach that was taken. Our work with clients (some quite large) has shown one of two primary approaches in Social Media engagement; 1) aggressively pushing a marketing message in a one-way approach for a quick sales hit and 2) simply trying to gain a competitive edge. In some cases we’ve seen the Board of Directors making this push and senior management feeling forced into Social Media. These will inevitably end in failure.

Fortunately, Social Media can be tamed, and become a veritable ally in hard times. The core elements of succeeding with Social Media is understanding it first, preferrably through outside organizations (for perspective) and by listening carefully before building the plan. A smaller company can move faster and adapt quicker to changes in Social Media, but like a larger organization, should have a carefully planned strategy. Ideally, engaging with Social Media programs should not be a full on charge. Greater success will come from starting slow and small and progressing as corporate knowledge of the mediums, channels and feedback is integrated into existing Best Practices. Engaging in Social Media for marketing, customer and investor relations or recruiting can be highly rewarding, but will inevitably lead to corporate change as we’ve discussed before.

The Social Media monster is not so bad when approached the right way. Does a company have to engage in Social Media? Certainly not, and for some sectors and industries, Social Media is not necessarily a good move, or should be engaged in a very small way. Social Media is not right for every business or government department, but it is worth “listening” and understanding it. Down the road, it may be time to engage.

There Is No Technology In Social Media

Technology has absolutely nothing to do with Social Media. While you might use certain technology to access Social Media, it actually much the same as a car. You don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car. All you need to do is learn to turn the keys, shift the gears and steer. Cars were adopted by the mainstream public when they became very easy to use and required very little mechanical knowledge to operate.

Social Media has been so successful simply because the underlying technology has reached the same point as mass adoption of vehicles. Over the past twenty years, three whole generations have learned to use software applications and computers in general. The 35 and below demographic grew up with computers throughout their schooling and many use them in their daily jobs. The 35-45 bracket is a smaller component of Western demographics, falling into the post-Baby Boom and Pre-Echo generations, and even this group has a strong familiarity with computing applications. Now the Echo Generation is hitting the workforce and they’re using the Social Web with gusto.

If you look and Internet use and adoption, as the technical skills required to access and use the Web became less, adoption grew. Very rapidly. In conjunction with ease of use of software, more reliable software and better speeds of access, so did computer prices fall – including Apple computers. The advent of the BlackBerry and iPhone have driven this adoption of devices even more. Now WiFi and wireless Web access are driving the use of those devices and the applications are easier and easier to use.

As consumers, when we purchase a computer now, we don’t ask about the Linux kernel and lines of code. The marketers have taught us to look at size of hard drive (for all our videos and photo’s) processor speed (for games and apps) and wireless capability. Even these key points are not really “understood” from a technical perspective. We just know that an Intel Core Duo is faster than an old Pentium, but have no idea why. We’re just willing to pay for it. The failure of Vista as an OS was a good indicator of people understanding the technology they’re using. As Geoffrey Moore pointed out in Crossing the Chasm, adoption increases as the technology becomes buried. We are in the Mass Adoption phase with Social Media now because the underlying technology is not relevant.

Social Media and Web 2.0 applications are not about the technology, they are about sharing, conversing and ideas. In business Social Media applications, it is about improved processes and Best Practices. The learning curve on the applications is minimal. What we are learning with Social Media is a new set of conversation skills, for both consumers and companies. As business takes its first tentative steps into Social Media, they should not be turning to the IT department, they should be looking to the PR/Communications teams, HR, IR and marketing departments.