The 3rd generation of social media is about building connected systems and tools that help facilitate enterprise-wide social media strategy and execution.
Thanks. Welcome to Webvsisions. This presentation is geared toward anyone working on content, developing, designing, engaging etc.
The main premise is that social media is for everyone.
Before we begin, I’m talking to you today, cause I work with mainly big companies on digital strategy and campaigns. More and more social media is becoming an integrated part of the strategy. It’s the engagement, its the amplification, sometimes its the content and sometimes it’s the platform.
When we talk about first generation of social media for the enterprise, it was basically real-estate. Grab your page or your handle or your blog and start putting some content out there. We saw organizations with more than 100 different different Twitter handles and 40 different Facebook pages, all with different strategies if any. We saw worried legal departments and we saw interns and random bloggers becoming the company’s best spokespeople by accident, not by design.
The second generation we all became storytellers . . . And this was the golden age of PR, or the end of PR, depending on who you ask.When talking about the 3rd generation, we’re assuming that the organization strategy has shifted to be inclusive of the entire organization and that companies are embracing social media, not just as a communications strategy but as a business strategy. It’s the era of recognizing that social media has value for sales, for product development, for testing. That Social media is a great source of cheap content.It’s the generation where social media isn’t just a comms strategy, and that everyone can use it. And to facilitate that you need systems that make it efficient.
One of the great things about the Wild West, anyone can become sheriff.
There’s two ways to lead here, be proactive or wait until there is a colossal fuck up and someone forces change upon the org.
If you’re a designer or developer, you have a distinct interest in making sure the project you’re working on has longer legs. You are also creating content that needs an audience and that content can often be repurposed.
So before we talk about systems to harness the content, maximize the engagement, lets go with a little social media 101.
So taking a step back to Social media 101 . . .
You need a story
You need something to build that story around.
You need a spark to ignite the conversation
You need a delivery mechanism
And you need your rockstars to manage the conversation.
And then missing from this equation is the system that lets you scale it. A system that stores the building blocks, that provides the platforms and pipes, that listens to the feedback and the amplification that helps you mold the story. And a system that makes it easy for the rockstars to engage.
Listening, what are the trends, what are the conversations, what are people saying en masse or in aggregate.
The ticketing. Responding to specific questions, engaging on issues, or just making sure you’re not overloading your audience.
Other cool examples:
The Palms Las Vegas is tracking it’s customer’s Klout scores in its CRM. Hit certain levels and get extra benefits and comps.
Microsoft is employing ticketing and response systems that include routing to product development and product feedback tools and also into other community tools to build discussion.
BMC has build a content library where all mutimedia content is housed with instructions for marketers on how to best use it and inline stats on performance. Similarly Microsoft showcase contains all video assets MS produces there’s both an internal view and a public view.
Webtrends has integrated a social CRM program in-house that synchs with their campaign dashboard and enables sales team to see what their specific accounts are saying.
Content Curation – anyone can use it internal or external. Make it a resource for customers, partners, other departments, etc. Microsoft employs three main libraries for this kind of thing Channel 9, Microsoft News Center, and Microsoft Showcase.
Listening is not measuring
When these systems are all in place you can start thinking about the real value to the business.
No one has figured out the direct way to measure sales, but based on what is important to your organization there are lots of other metrics that can measure real value and contribution.