A colleague of mine, who works for a global media company, recently asked me about social media best practices. Her company had begun making an aggressive push into the area, and she was looking for something that could help them benchmark their efforts. I just started to laugh.
It's not a silly question. It's just that there aren't any best practices, really, because there aren't any social media experts. No one has been doing this long enough to call themselves an expert (except for me, of course).
And in my not-so-humble opinion, the real challenge for my colleague isn't finding best practices for executing social media, it's working out best practices for organizing and setting up a social media strategy from a resource and ownership perspective, then making sure that strategy is tied into all aspects of the brand and its marketing goals.
As it turns out, we do have a benchmark in this area to learn from -- the 1990s webmaster fiasco, which I'll go into in a moment. In the meantime, let's keep in mind that there are at least four categories of social media that today's companies need to manage:
- Public relations (crisis management, corporate responsibility)
- Customer service (coupons, rewards, issues)
- Product development (launches, knowledge base, reviews)
- Brand awareness (events, ideas, marketing)
Organizing the ownership of that content against broader corporate structure and brand objectives is the key to social media success.
Managing content = Managing brand
Today, companies can immediately create intellectual property (a product or idea) then publish it, turning it into relevant and searchable online content. That content becomes the public "face" of the company - it's what I like to call the "content equals brand" equation. But with all that content, how can you manage your brand and make sure it's seen properly? Consumers are supposed to be able to quickly access and easily process corporate content online - that's the whole point.
So, how can companies mash their content up into a single Facebook page or, even worse, create five Twitter accounts and expect their customers (who are already following 200 people and friends with 400 more) to truly get that information? And how can consumers understand the brand if the assets (visuals, tagline, messages) and especially the tone change whenever they interact with a brand's social media component?
Social media has an enormous impact on brand equity. That's why it's crucial to incorporate it into every aspect of brand strategy. The first thing to do is make sure that the social media platforms you choose are coherent and tied back to departmental resources. The second thing is to maintain a coherent brand position that unites your website, your Twitter feeds, your Facebook presence, and each campaign you run. This means the owners of the brand -- the brand managers -- must unite with the other stakeholders to make sure that the social media component maintains and is an ambassador of the corporate position.
I went to ad:tech New York several weeks ago and participated on a social media panel. It was called "Social analysis - real-time insights on your brand," and it included, among others, luminaries like Bonin Bough, global social media director for Pepsi; Jeff Fleischman, chief digital officer for TIAA-CREF; and Kay Madati, VP of audience experience and engagement at CNN Worldwide. I asked each panelist what their social media department looks like, and who was responsible for tweeting and Facebooking when it comes to product launches, news, or customer service issues. Most of the panelists had a general structure with stakeholders in each area, but they agreed it was a work in progress.
And that isn't a bad thing. We all have to be pioneers and willing to make mistakes now, which brings me back to the webmaster fiasco. Remember the 1990s, when someone called the webmaster owned the corporate website? And then how that responsibility then shifted to the CTO, then the CIO, and finally landed where it is now with the CMO? This is an important issue to watch, because if the website had belonged to the marketers in the first place, we might have gotten here a lot faster. (Remember "Welcome to my Homepage"?) With new positions being formed called "Social Media Director," "Director of Community," and "Digital Influence Strategist," it's time to rethink how we are building the house, and who will be in charge.
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