Excellent interview of Chris Brogan by David Thomas of SAS Institute on biggest change Social Media will bring to the way we do business.
Social Media according to Chris Brogan:
As more marketers use Social Media channels for engaging their customers and prospects, it is becoming obvious that they will have to take on additional responsibility for not only creation of content, but also facilitate sharing or distribution of content through Social Media channels such as YouTube. Some notable examples of this approach are:
This raises an important question: Should Marketers behave like Media companies when it comes to Social Media? If yes, what additional skills will be required by those in the marketing department for this new task. And what is the role of an “agency” in this new “set-up”?
In my opinion, marketers should take on additional responsibility of content creation with the help of agencies and professionals/SMEs in the area. Marketers should also provide necessary tools and platform for their customers to discuss about their brands, share content and exchange ideas. Agencies should use their expertise to help marketers connect with customers.
Listen to what Jonah Bloom, former Editor at Advertising Age, has to say on this subject:
What to you think? Should Marketers behave like Media companies when it comes to Social Media? Please share your views and opinion:
Results of CMO Club Weekly Poll published on BW blog made some interesting reading. Question that was asked was “Which of your groups is best equipped to help you with your social media efforts today?” 114 CMOs responded:
Why majority of respondents preferred In House Agency rather than entrusting the work to outside firms?
Answer lies in the fact that Social Media is still a very new subject and unexplored medium – constantly evolving. More importantly, Social Media/Interactive/PR/Creative/Ad agencies have not done a good job of defining their offerings and articulating them well to clients. And in absence of any well defined service offerings from agencies, clients prefer to do Social Media in-house.
What Can agencies do to remedy the situation?
Agencies will have to take a lead on this and guide their clients. Early birds will get the best returns! What do you think?
Watch this video for what three visionary CEOs have to say about Social Networking:
This very clearly highlights the fact that Social Media and Social Networking are not a fad, but for real, are here to stay and will become mainstream in near future. Social Business is not just another way of doing business, it is THE way business will be conducted.
I strongly recommend that all senior executives (and especially the CMOs) start taking Social Media initiatives seriously, and lead from the front when it comes to use of Social Media, as survival and growth of their business rests on how effectively they leverage emerging tech tools.
Social Networking has far reaching implications for the marketing department and I recommend that CMOs setup a Social Media Task force that will advise them on how to quickly adapt and integrate their marketing operations into emerging Social Networking tools and applications. Sooner marketing department(s) adopt and start using Social Networking for engaging their customers better for their brand(s), else performance of their business will suffer.
It is not uncommon to see companies restricting (or even worse, banning) use of Social Networking sites by their employees. I don’t think that this is a step in the right direction. If companies can trust their employees to run business, can’t they be trusted when it comes to using Social Media in an acceptable way?
IBM is a great example of how companies should handle employees’ use of Social Media. IBM has approximately 400,000 employees spread through out the world, still it allows them to use Social Media without much restrictions. Casey Hibbard has written an excellent blog post on how IBM uses Social Media to spur employee innovation (see this link).
As per Casey’s post, IBM lets employees communicate with each other and the public over Social Media channels without intervention. This in spite of the fact that IBM has:
Watch this CNBC interview with Adam Christensen, IBM’s Social Media Communications Manager and John Abell, New York Bureau chief, Wired.com. According to Adam, IBM’s job is to help employees go out and have conversations that they want to, so that they can lead the business they are involved in. Not allowing employees to use Social Media is “short sighted” and companies will be “missing an opportunity”. (watch this video for more)
To succeed in this new age, it is important to embrace and adopt changes brought about by Social Media. And for that to happen, it is critical that organizations have proper guidelines for Social Media use by their employees. Employees should be allowed to use Social Media freely within those guidelines. (for IBM’s guidelines, see this link and for an excellent database of Social Media usage policies of 116 organizations, see this link).
I want to end this post by sharing a thought provoking video on how the workforce is changing in Social Media Age. Please watch this video and let me know if companies should restrict employees’ Social Media use.
