Getting Social Media embedded in Business
Posted on | November 17, 2009 | No Comments
Every significant new technology to reach the workplace has the same reactions. Some love it and propose it as the answer to everything (but you have to truly believe) and others see it as the thin end of the wedge and nothing but moral and financial ruin can come from it.
Right now the technology in the spotlight is Social Media (and Twitter in particular).
The BBC reported (on October 26th) a survey commissioned by an IT vendor that claimed “Staff who use Twitter and other social networking sites while at work are costing UK businesses £1.38bn every year.”
“The popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook has grown considerably over the last couple of years, however with it has come the temptation to visit such sites during office hours,” said Philip Wicks from Morse. “When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole.” It added that companies should think about protecting the reputation of their brand.
The £1.4bn was extrapolated from a survey of 1,460 office workers of whom 50% spent an average 40 minutes per week on ‘social’ sites during working hours. Is that a reasonable extrapolation, or is there another factor to consider? Is Social Media in business all cost and no return? And is that the only consideration for businesses?
Social Media covers so many areas of business and personal communications that it is difficult to put it into one box. In today’s increasingly devolved work environment with more people working in isolation it is the new office watercooler or coffee machine – a place where people meet and share thoughts and ideas in a relaxed way. The value of having far-flung ‘colleagues’ who are there with you in real time is difficult to quantify not to mention the expertise at your fingertips on so many topics and the discoveries that can be made daily from links and retweets.
In a Business context, however, I believe Social Media can fit into the category of early stage Marketing – awareness, market research, audience building and R&D – rather than as a selling tool. So what we might look at is the opportunity cost of Social Media versus other similar activities and against activities further down the pipeline.
Interest in what it might bring to a business in that context is clear. Recently I went to Like Minds a conference about ROI (Return on Investment) and Social Media, an event that had a real buzz about it. The speakers had come from the USA, from London and from much nearer to the venue in the centre of Exeter. There were equally well-travelled people in the audience.
There was a consensus on the importance of having good content and on developing conversations and also in the development of communication that engages people around their own interests rather than forcing them to move to the agenda of the communicator.
There was (and still is) much debate and not a little confusion about ROI. I thought Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder on Twitter) explained ROI very well. It is about cost reduction or profit increase set against the costs of achieving that result. To me, ROI is a much more global concept and is best viewed across departmental or Company performance rather than against one activity – such as Social Media. However, businesses only have a finite budget and Social Media, as Olivier suggested, needs to be funded out of one of the existing budgets in this area of Marketing.
Generally speaking, a business has goals for turnover and the sales that make that up come from a pipeline that converts contacts into prospects and prospects into sales, usually with considerable wastage as people qualify out. So, there should be, across all methods of acquiring them, a number of new potential clients that will deliver that turnover. How many new contacts are needed in each method of acquisition and over what timescale will be dependent on the ratio of potential clients to actual conversions and the average time taken to close the business with them.
How effective is Social Media in delivering good prospects into this process? Trey Pennington (@treypennington) at Likeminds talked about engaging people in conversation and then moving those people along a process that might lead to business. Time will tell how effective Social Media is at doing this, but it is something that businesses are, quite rightly, exploring. As they get more data, they will either move further into Social Media use or withdraw and try something else.
The approach of Social Media to Marketing is also developing in an interesting direction. Scott Gould (@scottgould), who marketed Like Minds exclusively using Social Media, in a blog post, talked about his approach to Like Minds. He described how he builds a platform around the people and gives them a place where they can talk. Whilst this is dangerously close to a ‘build it and they will come’ theory, it does seem to work and it is equally true about any communication. You need to know your audience and engage with them on their home ground both in terms of the content and context of the communication.
At the Cornwall Social Media Café (@csmc) the following week, Lloyd Davis (@lloyddavis), founder of the London Social Media Café (or Tuttle Club (#tuttle) as it is known) also talked about creating a platform, in this case a regular time and place where you can drop in and have coffee with likeminded people. The Tuttle club is a self-organising group with little or no agenda and no obligations placed on members. The concept is, however, developing into consulting where Lloyd takes the equivalent of a Tuttle meeting into a client and uses conversations to explore possibilities around a brief. The process of building such a group and developing outcroppings from it takes time but it is important in his view not to impose any expectations on the group.
Social Media gives businesses the opportunity to extend their Marketing reach in a way that may cause some concerns for the old school. Marketing has always been about having the right content and delivering it to audiences through multiple channels. Now, with Social Media, it is easier to strike up a conversation with your potential customers. Not only can those prospects talk back, they can also talk to each other. It is a conversation that you can’t easily control, but it is one that will take place regardless of whether you, as a business, choose to take part in it.
Social Media technology will continue to develop. It is by no means certain that the current tools will be the long term winners. Just look at how Google rose to dominate search (and many other areas) for an example of how a new player can sideline earlier technologies. What is certain is that businesses will need to understand how those tools will translate into business practice. Treating Social Media as a passing fad will not work. Finding ways to handle and outweigh the costs and achieve competitive advantage will be.
I won’t win friends in either camp with this position, I’m sure. Social Media is just another new approach that businesses must embrace and embed in their business practices. When we stop putting it in capitals, we will have understood it and begun to harness it effectively.
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