A Paradigm For Corporate Social Media Engagement

I obviously hardly post anything up here (although I really ought to). But this subject has been tossing around in my head for some time. So here's something to chew on.

There has clearly been a lot of talk about this 'new' phenomena called 'social media', and the tricky part where a company is concerned is how to get to grips with this social institution. By and large, most of the talk has seemed to be pretty much clueless about the 'rules and guidelines' of engaging with this 'beast'.

Yet, it is also clear that these 'rules and guidelines' have been derived from the traditional PR model, which is one of controlled messages, style and imagery. To a large extent, it seems the trend among corporates is simply to transplant what has been developed for traditional PR into the social media scene, and leave it at that.

Clearly though, social media is a different creature, and certainly not an animal that can be tamed by using the old ways of communicating with the outside world.

To start off: what, after all, is social media? In the common sense understanding of the term, 'social media' simply refers to people who blog and post comments on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (among others). Yet this can include a lot of people who only log-in to such sites say, once a week, post a couple of updates and leave it at that. Do these people qualify as 'social media' ? Obviously not, at least, not to the corporate world.

Certainly, if corporates were to follow the traditional PR model, such an example as above would hardly be worth the time and effort to reach out to (come now, be honest). And yet, such a person might very well be a key influencer within his or her circle of friends.

So clearly, traditional PR doesn't quite work where 'social media' is concerned. What then?

The answer is simple: corporates need to think of the 'social media' scene as one big (REALLY BIG) chat room that is potentially open and active 24/7. In other words, there is no one set of clearly defined messages / image to be communicated within a clearly defined period of time under a clearly defined set of rules. It is, literally, anything goes.

Corporates, obviously, are uncomfortable with losing this level of control, which explains why so many find it difficult to engage the 'social media' scene closely and with a clear vision. After all, a chat room (remember IRC?) can have multiple people talking all at once about multiple subjects that could potentially fly off in an altogether unpredictable tangent at any one time.

So, what's a corporate to do? Here are some quick and dirty guidelines to follow:

Rule #1
Forget traditional PR, social media should be thought of as a BIG CHAT ROOM that's open 24/7

Rule #2
Loosen up a little. If a corporate is going to do nothing except post the usual PR spin, why bother with social media? Stay with traditional PR. A related point: have a little fun. Even if corporates poke fun at themselves, its hardly going to damage their brand and company image. Quite the contrary, it shows maturity, confidence and a generosity and sincerity of spirit that is priceless.

Rule #3
Know your stuff. The more you know what you're doing (in terms of products, services, marketing etc), the easier it is to engage in an ongoing conversation with 'social media'. If corporates don't know this. Then, again, traditional PR is probably the safer route to take.

Rule #4
Be prepared for criticism, and be sincere in doing something about that criticism. The social media scene can be exceedingly harsh. But the more you try to hide the truth, the more you encourage people to flame and criticise.

Rule #5
Be conscientious about monitoring the what's being said online. Its one thing for corporates to say they are going to engage 'social media', its another thing to actually do it. Doing 'social media' isn't simply a matter of posting some tweets or setting up a Facebook fan page.

Rule #6
Drop the ROI mindset. 'Social media' is currently too diffuse to be tracked with any degree of accuracy. Until the monitoring instruments become more fine-tuned, any ROI discussion about social media is largely a waste of time.

Having said that, some matrices can be used. Typical ones include the number of fans, followers etc. These can, and should be, tracked. Just don't waste time translating this into anything more concrete.

Another caveat: brand perception surveys can and should be continued, since these track the corporate's entire communication spectrum to the world at large.

Rule #7
Social media is fast, so be prepared to make any necessary decisions or reactions equally fast

Rule #8
Respect the social media scene. Just because some people in the social media scene don't write for a living doesn't mean they cannot influence others.

Rule #9
Don't be fixated on simply getting a message out. Social media is an excellent networking / relationship-building tool. Make full use of it.

Rule #10
This is actually an extension of Rule #2, but I've included it as a separate rule for added emphasis: don't be a control freak. If corporates aren't comfortable with giving up 'control', then they have no business engaging social media in the first place.


That's pretty much what's been buzzing around in my head for awhile. Comments, flames, requests for interviews (LOL!) ? Feel free to drop me a note.