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.