Six steps to your organization’s social networking success.
The Internet, more specifically social networking has changed the way people and organizations connect, create, stay in touch or seek help from others.
Citizen journalists are using social media tools like blogs, microblogs, and video sharing to inform the world of the events surrounding the 2009 Iranian election protests when traditional journalists were banned from the country. Musicians utilize services like Myspace and YouTube to launch careers and connect with fans. Companies employ wikis to collaborate on product develop, manage projects and customer relations, and provide technical support. E-tailers and restaurants apply reviews and opinions to increase traffic and drive sales.
However, many organizations are jumping head long into social networking before they know what it is, how to use it, what platforms their stakeholders may or may not use, and what social technographics define their stakeholders for fear they are going to be left out.
Others leap in because it is going to be a ‘cheap’ way of marketing themselves without having goals, strategies and tactics established, knowing the human resource and time allocations needed to get results, defining a method for measuring results, and determining what message(s) they’re going broadcast.
The following 6-step process will help any business successfully take advantage of the numerous opportunities social networking offers to engage — and connect — with stakeholders: physically, rationally or emotionally.
1. Discover
Before you, or your employees, think about using social networking for engineering, marketing communications, customer service, or anything else you must have an understanding of each of the different services and platforms available, and how their ecosystems operate. Acquiring this knowledge can done by first visiting Wikipedia’s list of social networking services or conducting a Google search. Then visit the service’s homepage and browse their ‘About Us’ section, which is full of useful information. Also, investigate the proprietary platforms to understand their ecosystems, and how they might be implemented.
Once you are comfortable, sign up, browse and watch for a bit before jumping into the conversation. Note: But, before you do it, find out if your company has any social networking policies in place, see comments in the definition phase.
You must gain insight on your stakeholders as well. This is crucial to the success of any social networking venture because each personality or technographic type plays a different role in the system. All your departments — engineering, marketing communications, sales, customer service, human resources, information systems, etc. — need to collaborate to determine who’s who.
Some questions to ask include. What reason(s) do they use social networking: to connect, to create, to stay in touch or seek help from others? How tech savvy are their stakeholders? Where are they going to find information and how do they find it? How active are they? What’s their age, sex and title?
Answers to these questions and others will go a long way in determining what type of personality or technographic they are: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives? These categories are Forrester Research’s methodology for surveying consumers. Also, compare the answers against the demographics of the service, if available.
To help companies with technographic segmentation, Forrester Research has developed a profile tool. It can be found at http://www.forrester.com/empowered/tool_consumer.html for consumer profiles, and http://www.forrester.com/empowered/tool_b2b.html for business-to-business profiles.
The research isn’t just for external stakeholders, but internal as well. Conduct an internal company review. Ask your entire staff how familiar they are with the various platforms? Does your company have the creative and human resources available to create, manage and promote a social networking campaign with relevant and useful content and communication on a regular basis, or will you need outside assistance like copywriters, or marketing communications specialists? Are your employees adaptable and prepared to accept the change that social networking will bring to the company or do you need change consultants to guide them through the process? What is the employee morale level? Are they capable or willing to stay on message?
Don’t forget to learn about your competition’s use of social networking tools. Check out your competitors’ websites to see if they have any blog posts, wikis, specialized forums, etc. Do they use or supply tools like ratings or specialized widgets (applications)? Are they on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc.? If they are what types of information do they have? What subject matter are they discussing? Who’s following them? How active are they in their posts?
2. Define
While individual employees maybe championing the social networking need, it’s truly a corporate function, which needs goals, strategies, tactics and rules. Executive management along with every department head will need to be involved during this phase as well.
Just like your organization has corporate, product development, marketing communications, workforce developing and other departmental goals, you must also have goals for social networking — e.g., gain customer insight, reduce product development time, provide better customer support, gain competitive insight, enhance brand awareness & image, etc. Each goal for each stakeholder group will require a different set of strategies, tactics, resource needs and metrics. Additionally, the use of social networking, and its goals, must relate back to the your company’s objectives.
Hence, the need for a comprehensive social networking plan.
Social networking giveth, and it taketh away. It can be a great resource, but if misapplied or misused, or your staff goes off message or misidentifies themselves, and your organization’s reputation maybe harmed or intellectual property divulged, lost or stolen. Therefore, you need to establish a set of rules for how your business intends to use social networking and how your employees should use it to make their job more efficient and practical. If your company doesn’t have a social networking policy in place, you need one quickly before you take the leap.
You must recognize that, while social networking can provide cost savings, it can be time consuming as well. Therefore, as part of the definition process, you must determine what technology and human resources will be required to engage your stakeholders and achieve your goals along with the frequency and duration your employees can participate.
It could be a discussion group on LinkedIn, a Facebook page, developing your own forum, wikis, etc., or a combination of all them maybe required. Do you need several social networking channels to cover each of the major stakeholder groups? Is it going to be a private platform requiring user name and password to get at information, or open to the general public to read like a wiki or knowledge base or maybe a combination of both? If you develop your own platform, where will it be hosted: on company or off-sight servers? What method(s) that you will use is(are) going to be dependent on the skill levels of those involved and your company’s objectives.
And, just like any ecosystem if there is no activity it will die. So if your organization decides to develop your own social networking platform or even if you’re going to use LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, you must also determine who are going to be the internal and external supporters to stir the pot and keep the conversation going.
3. Create
You’ve figured out what you need and how you are going to do it. Now you have to purchase and implement the required technology and information systems. Build, write and develop the blogs, wikis, knowledge bases, discussion groups, forums, and employee accounts for the various tactics that will be employed.
Generate the educational information (videos, documents, etc.) needed, if they aren’t already. More than likely, you will also need to develop a company-wide training program for your employees. So don’t forget that when generating your educational information.
Produce the marketing communications messages needed to notify your customers, employees, channel partners and vendors of the company’s social networking efforts.
You must keep your core brand values in mind in creating your social network because if the experiences and messages at each touchpoint aren’t consistent and cohesive — and in harmony with the values — that will create a disconnect, the conversation will end and the desired action will be terminated.
4. Test
Like any good product development process includes beta testing, developing a social network to meet the needs of your stakeholders also requires testing before it is launched. You’ll need to let key stakeholders test the systems, information and messages that are being employed to see if they are going to meet the needs of that particular stakeholder group.
5. Broadcast
Once all the content has been created, and the platforms have tested and tweaked, then they can be disseminated to the entire stakeholder population, and participation can begin.
6. Track
Just like any good business or product development plan has metrics which are monitored, it’s necessary to establish metrics in the definition phase and track those metrics to determine if results are meeting expectations, and to establish the ROI and ROE (return on engagement) of your efforts.
Monitoring your company’s dedicated networks just isn’t enough. You must watch all forms of social networking to follow what stakeholders are saying. Tracking stakeholder communications will require technology, and there are numerous packages that enable organizations to do this easily and efficiently.
The insight gained from monitoring and analyzing metric data along with conversations should flow back to the beginning and be part of a continuous improvement process. Making the network better, the stakeholder connections stronger, and the company more successful.
If your company is seeking to gain more insight into social networking and effective strategies I recommend you read the book Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. If your company needs help in processing these 6 steps, hire a firm like ours to guide you and your employees through the stages.
© 2009 — 2010, Jeff Klingberg. All rights reserved.
These are great steps. One thing I’ve noticed in our social networking efforts: what wins the day is the personal touch.
~Drew