Two Hurdles and One Gap in Enterprise Social Media Engagement

Posted on October 12, 2012 by marc meyer

Recently, my work required that I evaluate some of the top global brands in a certain industry in regards to internal b2b social media usage. I’ve used upwards of 7-10 free and paid social media monitoring and measurement tools to do it. I’ve looked at social data for a month and I have discovered two hurdles and one gap. I’m going to boil it down for you and spare you the pain of elaboration and if you happen to see me on the street I will give you the lodown on my findings.

So here it is:

It doesn’t matter if you’re a c-level executive, a director, a manager or the owner of a small business. One of your primary and most valuable comodities is your time. Alotting time or taking time for engagement is not really high on the to-do list right now. Though recent data says that the more social your executives are the better performing your company might be.

That’s hurdle #1. Executives need to take the time to be better at being social.

Having resources to do all the things that these companies and individuals have read, heard and want to do in social and should be doing in social needs to be a priority but is easier said than done.

Hurdle #2. Organizations are resourced challenged.

And the biggest gap? The money is not there yet but social media budgets are continuing to loosen up quickly. They used to be non-existant. In some very large organizations that I have seen, social is not a priority at any level be it in internal or external, yet. The good news for all of these? You will see them all evolve in a positive manor over the next 3-5 years.

It’s Not About Social Anymore

Posted on June 19, 2012 by marc meyer

I was watching highlights of a Miami Heat game the other night and after every major replay of the game you could hear the shrill cackle of a woman cheering in the background. You know how some things can gnaw at you pretty quickly for no apparent reason? Well, her cackle got to me pretty quick. Other things that gnaw at me but at a more “come to a boil type” nature, are the current and future states of social media. It gnaws at me. I’m constantly wondering where we are with it and where are we going with it. I also have some notions about where it will sit in our digital universe going forward too.

Like it or not, the conversations are NOT solely about social media any longer and I’m cool with that. You should be too. There was a time not too long ago where it seemed like every conversation and every blogpost was about social media, both the good and the bad. Hell, I even got tired of my own stuff that I used to write about social media. In fact back in the day, there came a time where there wasn’t a social media consultant or thought leader out there who wasn’t talking about Zappos, or Comcastcares, or Ford or Starbucks or Dell. It was part of the spiel. It got old. At least to me it did. What about you?

On the flip side, those same consultants, myself included, were also out there touting that if you were not listening to your customer via social then it was a big FAIL. Those also were the same people, myself not included, who took to their pitchforks and torches to light up any company who slipped up with any type of ambitious forays into the great unknown called social media marketing. Even if it was an honest mistake.

But something has happened. No, social isn’t dead, not by a long shot. In fact there might be more “social media consultants” now than ever before. Beyond that, what social is doing is it’s maturing. Social media is growing up. Yes there are still lots of nuances to be learnt and still lots of totally unqualified people screwing things up, but that’s in every industry right? The difference between five years ago when I first started and now is that there are more and more qualified people out there who are able to make educated and qualified and experienced decisions on what to do with social media initiatives. And the results speak for themselves.

That’s not to say that we’ve reached social media nirvana or the promised land, hell we’re not even close to that- It’s just that there are a few less unknowns these days then there was before say…last week. 🙂

So if social media is not the lead in the school play any longer, then what is, you ask? What has everyone all fired up and in a tizzy?

It might be easy to say and look to Facebook, but beyond the fact that they are still recovering from getting it handed to them during their IPO and though they are closing in on almost a billion registered users, there is no doubt that a wave of Facebook fatigue could be coming soon with an undertow of blowback from incessant sharing. So if it isn’t Facebook, what is it then?

Mobile and Tablet computing. The data proves it out and so do retailers, consumers and manufacturers. They are experiencing it first hand. If you haven’t noticed, the desktop is dead. Dell in so many words has admitted it and Microsoft with its rollout of its own tablet to compete directly with Apple has validated it. We love portability. We still love social but what you’ll be seeing sooner than later is a longing for the days of the niche and not the melting pot of our high school, our college and our work friends all rolled into one.

As we hurdle into 2013 and beyond, watch for the mashup of mobile and social to escalate even more, with mobile leading the way. It’s no longer about the platform, it’s now about the device and the (computing) and conversational power it will possess and it’s about getting that device into your hands.

When Does Social Media Really Work?

Posted on May 22, 2012 by marc meyer

The beauty of social media isn’t in the online connections. It’s not about the numbers, never has been. OK, maybe it is to marketers, but that’s because they operate from a different perspective. No the beauty of social media is in it’s potential. It’s potential to connect people from divergent backgrounds or in the same city or that have the same common interests. It can really connect people in infinite ways. That may seem somewhat preachy or full of green meadows, unicorns and rainbows but it’s true.

Recently in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article titled , Why Successful Branding Still Happens Offline. The article was good but it was really similar to a thousand other articles that I have read over the years about how brands need to do this or that in social in order to be successful. As I neared the end of the piece, I read the following:

The great social wave is an opportunity that no business can afford to ignore or look at myopically. It’s happening all around us – and to the continuing surprise of many, it’s mostly happening face-to-face

I’ve said the first part of that sentence, again, a thousand times about ignoring social at your own peril, blah, blah,blah. But the back half of the sentence struck a nerve. It’s mostly happening face to face. Basically where social takes off and takes on magical tones is when we get to associate a name with a physical face and voice and not an avatar. Going to a conference and meeting that person that you have had tens of twenty or hundreds of conversations with on Twitter or Facebook or blog comments. That’s the money shot.

Whether you do business with someone online or whatever it is you or your company might do with social, it’s always going to be or should be based on some type of interaction and then some type of result. Taking social offline should be the goal of every online social media encounter worth its weight.

On Being Relevant in Digital

Posted on March 30, 2012 by marc meyer

“Social” claims or has been claimed to do everything and it really has become quite the game changer. In fact, did you know that it can actually boil the ocean? OK, so I’m kidding, but the point is this-One thing that social media does and has done, is that it has spurred or enhanced or magnified relevance in everything that online and offline touch now.

Even if you were not relevant before, now you have a chance to be, thanks to digital and social.

But step back from every situation and I mean every situation, and it’s really less about social and more about an age of relevance. Social is just the lipstick. Chew on that a bit. Yes, we definitely live in a digital age now and yes, we definitely live in the age of social media and yes it’s definitely all about the conversation. But, what digital, social and the conversation have definitely done is that they have snapped a piece of relevance onto everything that we now come in to contact with. It’s actually a two way street. Relevance shapes our social and digital engagements and our digital and social engagements become more relevant the more hyper focused they are to what we are all about and what we want and demand.

It surprises me that others have not really focused on this. Until Now.

Accenture Interactive has just come out with a couple of pieces of thought leadership on the “Era of Relevance.” (Full disclosure-Accenture is a client of mine) Though Accenture Interactive is talking about relevance at scale for the enterprise, the underlying theme remains unchanged-when you or I are marketing, conversing, buying, shopping, or selling-relevance is the tipping point in the transaction or transformation.

I would highly recommend reading the pieces from AI because they really do focus on one of the larger straws that stirs the drink.