THE ONLINE STRATEGIST

“It’s the buzz; We have to jump onto the bandwagon; All my friends are in it; Our competitors have this brilliant Facebook page; It’s free advertising …”

These are some of the most recurrent reasons why we professionals are called to the rescue of many a decent-sized company eager not to be left behind and ready to implement some kind of half-concocted social media strategy in record time – which usually entails having a modicum of a presence in the social networks to begin with.

Happy as we are to be of assistance, the reasons above denote a lack of understanding of the new realities the company or organization will be facing as it joins the social side of the Web 2.0 that should set our alarm bells ringing. ‘I want to join the social networks to have a better communication channel with my workers, customers and the community’ or ‘I want to be able to offer information of true value to my customers’ are reasons I have never come across in pre-sales meetings. Little surprise if events take a disheartening but expected course after a while.

Time and again I have seen the same story unfold. The pros are called in; the strategy is implemented; all the IT applications and the web design & development phase is completed; the company builds up a budding presence in the social networks … and then, after a few months, interest dwindles, enthusiasm wanes and no one is able to name any tangible benefits in return for the time and the effort invested in the first place!

I want to argue here that we professionals are often to blame. The single, most damaging mistake that internet consultants of every guise make when implementing any social media plan is this: lack of previous adequate training beyond the technical side of the initiative.

As Jennifer Korell noted in a recent article worth reading in full, the social media means that “dialogue has replaced monologue and narrowcasting is replacing broadcasting online.” And yet companies are still operating under the old marketing and PR tenet of “remaining on message” and using the novel social platforms as just another means of monologuing and broadcasting. Unsurprisingly customers (and even staff) fail to be persuaded and tune out once the novelty wears off.

This sad state of affairs is to be expected unless we expose our clients to ‘the new rules of marketing and PR’ (to use David Meerman Scott’s felicitous phrase). Any project undertaken without previous training in the new philosophies of transparency, optimized content generation, soft and viral marketing, online democracy, etc. is doomed to failure – no matter how slick or glossy the application or network in question. The shift in perception needs to predate the actual implementation phase and must engage all the parties directly and indirectly involved.

I am a strong advocate that, whenever possible, training should reach the whole company in one way or another. Engaging outside stakeholders is a risky enterprise unless enough critical mass has been reached at home. We want employees of every department to understand what increased transparency is going to mean to their everyday working lives, we want them to become evangelists for their company in the social networks, we want them to generate enthusiasm and exchange ideas and even constructive criticism via blog comments and other means beyond the official line. And we want everyone to be of one mind when it comes to editorial and content generation policies.

My advice to my fellows and my clients is straightforward: never implement a company-wide social media policy without securing as much as this is practicable company-wide training in the philosophies that are being embraced. Training should come at the start of the project, and be particularly thorough for anyone remotely involved in the key areas of communication, marketing and PR.

It has been stated hundreds of times and it bears repeating: a Social Media Plan is not an IT issue. It is a company-wide issue where the involvement and the sharing of values by all according to established guidelines will be of true and lasting benefit. 

I look forward to hearing your experiences with social media plans, social media implementation and training in the comments section.