The objective of social media is a lifestyle, not initiatives

Social media is a new way for us to get back to what matters.  It is an opportunity for companies to become amalgamations of people rather than “corporate entities.”  At its best, social media is simply a way for people to engage with one another across the expanse of a big world. 

That is why I believe that organizations cannot succeed in social media until they have built a social media culture internally.  Employees are both the first target market and the drivers of social media strategy success; they learn to share more openly, listen more carefully, and engage more fully with the entire operation.  Then they can do the same with their customers and vendors and partners.

Most organizations today believe that they “have” to be in social media.  They are partly correct.  Success demands that organizations be more social, that they manifest the underlying reason for the success of social media. 

But most organizations seem to view social media simply as a new business tool for selling, or sometimes for lower cost customer service.  The statistics are overwhelming.  eMarketer forecasts a 55% increase in ad spending on social networking sites, from almost $2B in 2010 to over $3B in 2011.  SaleSpider found that 75% of small and medium business owners they surveyed planned to increase the percentage of marketing dollars allocated to social networking in 2011.  The statistics go on and on.   It’s like the moves from print to radio to television…bigger, broader, but with little change to the underlying operations or objectives.  Those results are short-term and need continuous spiking. 

Umair Haque said it in his article in The Harvard Business Review, http://ocvets4pets.com/archive21/From_Social_Media_to_Social_Strategy_-_Umair_Haque_-_Harvard_Business_Review.pdf   It’s good to go back to the basics.