Alisa Hansen collected in her Blog “10 Things Before Going Social” important subjects to check if your company is ready for the social era:
“1. Forget the “campaign”. It’s about having a holistic digital program that includes leveraging social technologies over the long haul. Get ready to begin socializing your brand.
2. Social media is not a silo. Social initiatives are about brand building, awareness, community building, gathering feedback and leveraging the world’s largest focus group…it should be inextricable from your brand’s strategic plan and certainly integral to digital strategy.
3. A note on social media monitoring: A) Approach it with the expectation that it is about providing strategic intelligence based on the consumer conversation. B) Use it to benchmark and track initiatives and programs. C) Actually act on consumer feedback (hey! crowdsource product development!).
4. Social amplifies you who are as a brand: the good, the bad and the ugly. Cover-ups, fakery and sneakiness are not advised. Be prepared to act transparently, admit when you’re wrong and actually listen to customer feedback.
5. If you think you can control, “herd,” push
6. Can I say it again? Think strategically.
7. Ask yourself two questions: How can I be useful? Why will people care?
8. Respect the attention economy.
9. If “viral” is somewhere in your aspirations, stop reading this and read this
10. Lighten up, socializing is supposed to be fun ! (If you’re going to stress over who’s using your pictures from Flickr, then don’t post them to Flickr).”
Some of these “Things” might sound a little harsh, but what we learn is that “going social” is not using another marketing tool. Its not another media channel to shout the users or consumers. This is a lot more. It affects the people, from employees to users and all other stakeholders. It is not shouting but listening. For a company this might be a lot of change. But Change we need!
You will read about social media more often in the future. So if you like, join me going into detail. And if you have any questions, give me a comment, please :) I would be happy to answer either in a comment or in my next post to the topic.
