There is no structure in Social Media

Attempting to put Organizational Structure into Social Media to plan a campaign or an engagement strategy only works to a very limited degree. Trying to implement a defined structure of engagement will result in a poorly executed program. Why? Because Social Media is about chaos theory. This is anathema to corporate hierarchical structure.

Businesses, governments and other organizations thrive based on process and Best Practices. Modern business is based on military structure. After the second world war, many managers were former officers from the armed forces in Western nations. Such hierarchical thinking worked well in a manufacturing based economy, and has worked well. In many cases it will continue to do so for these types of organizations.

But as soon as you step outside corporate processes to engage consumers, such structure has little to no relevance. Especially when developing Social Media strategies. As marketers talk of “viral marketing” their objective is to create a piece of content that “goes viral” meaning it is taken up by the target market and spread widely across multiple channels. Yet, at the same time they want to “control” that message and “measure” it as well…this implies placing structure on that message, limiting its true uptake.

What a structured business can do is “frame” the strategy; select the channels and create the initial content to “seed” the selected channels. This is part of the “bargain” or “contract” that is formed with the consumer of the content produced…but you can only lay out the initial part of the “bargain”, the completion of the bargain is determined by the consumer.

This is Social Anthroplogy at work – humans will organize around what interests them, sometimes for only a day, or sometimes it will become a “meme” and get broader uptake. This depends on the tools used and how the targeted demographic responds to what is put out there…it’s organic growth exemplified.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)