5 Challenges Implementing a Social Media Strategy

In a cross-industry study that I conducted, companies identified 5 key challenges to developing and implementing a social media strategy.  Interestingly, 4 of the challenges were internally focused, including:

Ø  Culture

Ø  Governance

Ø  Technology investment and emerging technologies

Ø  ROI

Only the fifth consideration, channel selection, involved external considerations.

The ability to manage the shift in organizational culture to greater opennesss to effectively engage employees in social media was a major consideration.  A social media policy was seen as necessary good corporate process, but the cultural shift was perceived to be a major driver.  And the cultural shift begins with clearly articulated, employee-embraced core values.

Zappos built their culture on 10 core values, which drive their interactions in social media.  Much like the marines who tell the corps “In the absence of guidance: do the right thing,” (see the socialmedia-insideout blog post of March 6), Zappos says that “ Our core values are always the framework from which we make all of our decisions.”  (You can see all 10 of Zappos’ core values at http://about.zappos.com/jobs/why-work-zappos/core-values)

Core values need to go beyond the standard basics to define what makes the company culture unique.  When core values change and adherence is required, the culture will shift as those employees who are a good fit flourish, and others leave.  Enabling social media is about trusting the people in the company.

Fear the Ostrich

“Social” and “public” are not synonymous, but a lot of companies shy away from social media because of a fear of losing control of private information.  Among my clients, I find the greatest fear among organizations whose work touches financial or health care considerations or who deal with security issues.  They worry about personal data being released inadvertently; they worry about social harm resulting from social media.

To a point, I agree.  In fact, I am glad that they have these concerns! 

But avoiding social media altogether, and ignoring internal management and usage, is a red flag.  Remember the ostrich?

Social media is a fact in financial services.  Socialware’s June 2010 Advisor Survey found that 60% of financial advisors use social networks for business purposes and an additional 11% plan to do so.  Unfortunately, 43% of advisors who use social media either do not have or do not know if their firm has a policy.  Add those ostriches to the firms that prohibit advisors from using social media (85% of advisors not using social media pointed to their firm’s prohibiting it as the reason), and the ostrich herd starts to grow.

In working with financial services firms, I have found that the fear is internal as well.  Executives fear that opening channels of communication among departments will prompt employees to share information inappropriately.  But implementing social platforms internally has proven to provide tremendous value, helping companies learn how to manage social networking interactions.  The learnings are broad:

Ø  How do you answer questions that seek information you don’t want to share without torpedoing the connection?

Ø  How do you recover from a mistake?

Ø  How much oversight is appropriate for a community?

Ø  How open should a community be?

Ø  Which organizational silos are unnecessarily duplicating work and data?

Ø  How do you train employees to use the social networks effectively and appropriately?  Written policies are necessary, but the poorest of teachers.

Internal networks start a cultural shift; they drive employee engagement and create new governance structures.  They develop confidence and skills.  They even drive greater efficiency and productivity.

In the Socialware study, almost 50% of respondents who used social networks said they had gained new referrals from them, and about 1/3 of these could identify new customers.

But company fear isn’t helping: 40% of the advisors believe that the firm’s social media policy is detrimental to their performing their jobs!

“The Fear is Very High”

Social media is a fear monger for most company directors, according to Nicky Wakefield, who runs the Human Capital Practice of Deloitte Australia.  (Nicky was speaking at The Future of Workplace Communications webcast, August 5, 2010).

In light of the rampant fear, it is surprising that a Manpower study in 2010 found that only 29% of American companies have a written social media policy. 

Fear levels rose last month when the NLRB made its first ruling on a claim involving critical posts by an employee on Facebook.  The NLRB ruled that the company “maintained and enforced an overly broad blogging and internet posting policy.”  The NLRB has also filed another claim against an employer whose policy prohibits “the use of electronic communication and/or social media in a manner that might target, offend, disparage, or harm customers, passengers or employees; or in a manner that might violate any other company policy.”

Many fearful directors are undoubtedly awaiting the outcome of this second claim, and those who work for the 29% of companies that maintain a social media policy will certainly be re-evaluating those policies.

But I don’t think that the message should be to have more tightly written policies.  Isn’t the message that social media is now an established means of communication?  It is no longer a distinct channel; it is just one of the many ways people interact – right there with the telephone, e-mail, texting – and, yes, talking directly to one another.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Do organizations really need social media policies?  I think that they need human resource policies that include social media.

“In the absence of guidance: do the right thing” - Lieutenant Colonel Greg Reeder, U.S. Marines

Wow, the marines really trust the corps.  And Lieutenant Colonel Reeder was talking about the use of social media when he made that comment.                        

In the same presentation, Marine Corps officers went on to list 16 challenges to the use of social media.  But with rules of engagement in place and policies and processes defined, the rest of the presentation focused on how to achieve the mission.

Personal privacy, security, safety…not many organizations have as many reasons NOT to use social media as the Marine Corps.

Yet the marines are everywhere – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, flickR, YouTube… Over 1 million people “like” the marines on Facebook. 

Not many organizations have a culture like that of the marines – renowned as built on respect, hierarchy, pride, and always pushing to be the best.  Transparency, openness, equality, some of the hallmarks of companies with strong social media DNA, are not words we often see in descriptions of the marine corps. 

Respecting their own culture, establishing a blueprint for social media behavior, and recognizing the need to integrate some new behaviors are enabling the marines to evolve.

Take a look at this presentation that the Marine Corps posted on-line: http://www.prsa.org/Conferences/DigitalImpact/DIConf_Marines.pdf

And remember: “Provide guidance – don’t give up terrain to adversaries”

Connecting Touchpoints Internally - A Cisco Case Study

Jeremy Epstein in his blog NeverStopMarketing talks a lot about being remarkable at every customer touchpoint (http://jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/touchpointsmatter/#).  As usual, he makes a lot of sense.

For many organizations, though, each customer touchpoint sits in an organizationally siloed unit.  Presale and post-sale activities, innovation and product development, billing, and customer service often don’t work together.  So not just being remarkable, but being consistently remarkable is a challenge.

One company that is tackling the internal aspect (as well as the external) is Cisco.  As one Cisco executive told me, providing a better customer experience is a key focus, and doing that requires connecting the right points internally.  In addition to its process oriented organization, Cisco is addressing the internal connections from at least 3 perspectives:

·        Connecting people

·        Integrating governance

·        Building the culture

People connections happen over a multitude of networks.  An internal directory similar to Facebook lets employees find the right expert quickly, whether they have a question about their own work or are dealing with a customer.  The directory also promotes a lot of socializing among employees, and people like to work among friends.  C-Vision, an internal YouTube type site, creates a lot of vibrant collaboration.  Blogs abound, allowing people to identify others’ expertise and passions.  Cisco also actively helps employees identify and use tools, providing everything from an internal website that discusses the many ways of interacting to instructions on how to blog.

Just the word Governance often brings to mind bureaucracy and barriers.  Good governance, however, enables and brings groups together.  The changes that Cisco has been making to its governance helps managers get past silo empire building.  The Board and Tech Council are truly cross-functional, and as one manager told me, “we make decisions now at the right point in the hierarchy chain.”  That point is generally at the director or senior director level, a step above the line manager, but people who still have the day-to-day pulse of the business.

Governance and tools to connect people work only when the culture actively supports a social organization.  The technical foundation of Cisco’s business helps, but Cisco was not born into today’s socially networked world.  So continuing to keep the culture fresh and evolving is a conscious and critical endeavor.  From brown bag lunches to mining and sharing best practices, managers work to build a high functioning, engaged, open organization.  The use of social networks starts at the top.  Video conferencing, wikis and podcasts are common management tools.   And executives encourage people to blog and contribute to forums.  As one manager pointed out, “just lurking on a forum can be equally productive and important to being on the phone.” 

As a company, Cisco benefits from social media since many collaboration technologies drive sales of their products.  So the fact that Cisco uses social networks internally makes sense.

But when I talk with Cisco managers, I come away feeling that they truly embrace social networking – it’s not just a driver of revenue, it’s the way the company operates.  Their enthusiasm and openness and constant internal innovation is exciting.   

Check out some of these other studies and sites about Cisco:

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac55/DeLong-CiscoCollaborativeCultureCase3-09.pdf

http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/digital-marketing-strategy/b2b-social-media-cisco-case-study/

http://vimeo.com/5387719

Welcoming Distributors onto Networks

One of my clients sells multiple lines of technologically complex products through a network of non-exclusive distributors.  Distributors “own” the customers and handle all repairs, upgrades, and a wide variety of questions.  Keeping up with the technology is a challenge for the distributors, so the company has a service line for the distributors.  A typical call center environment.

There are problems with this common arrangement, a major problem being that the distributor might not get the best advice.  The in-house expert on YOUR problem might not answer your call.  S/he is busy with another call.

An in-house discussion platform is a good first step to ameliorating this situation in a safe environment.  Agents can quickly look up information that includes comments from other agents – here’s what works, here’s a tip a distributor shared with me – the kind of insight that goes beyond fact sharing to problem solving and becoming a valued advisor.

Starting with the internal platform develops familiarity and comfort in managing and using a social platform, and it opens the door to a second step.  Why not let the distributors, who are geographically far-flung, talk to the experts and to each other?  We expanded the platform to allow distributors to post questions and comments, and the corporate engineering experts participated on the site at specific times.  The engineers loved the direct feedback from the field, and the distributors liked being able to contact THE expert.  Results?

·        The number of calls to the call center began to decline. 

·        Calls that do occur are handled more effectively as agents feel more empowered and capable of providing better answers to distributors.

·        Engineers are gathering and acting on field and usage information more quickly.

·        And distributors are feeling more a part of the company, and that engagement drives sales.

As internal social media platforms begin to embrace additional points along the supply and distribution chains, relationships begin to change.  Engagement means welcoming extended family into the fold.

Yammer On

In just 2.5 years, Yammer has become one of the major enterprise platforms for social media.  The IABC study (http://www.iabc.com/researchfoundation/pdf/IABCEmployeeEngagementReport2010Final.pdf)

reports that close to 20% of companies indicate that they use or plan to use Yammer.  I have used Yammer and find it is generally user friendly and intuitive.  So I was interested that Yammer just brought on board Greg Lowe from Alcatel Lucent as Enterprise Social Networking Strategist.  What really caught my attention, though, was a post that Greg shared from the ALU Yammer site:

Without your Yammer and Engage initiatives sheer frustration would have seen me leave the company many months ago. You have given the hope that we can collectively make this a better place to be. (http://greg2dot0.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/and-a-new-chapter-begins/ )

That is why organizations use social media internally – to make it a better place to work, to bring employees together and to create engagement.  And that is also why organizations should use social media with customers.  Do it well inside, and you have a better chance of doing it well outside.