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Social Media in a Business Setting: Part Two

July 18, 2008 By 1 Comment

I had intended to talk about social media in a business setting from the point of view of technology, tools and applications. After mulling this over in my head for a few days I realised that I was falling into the trap that so many people fall into. Social media cannot be defined by its technologies. Social Media is a phenomenon. It is about connecting people to each other, be they individuals, organizations or the whole spectrum in-between. It is about learning through collaboration and creating a new social structure to enable this to happen. This is not static: it is changing constantly. These connections are enabled through technology, and so, if we follow this train of thought, the technology and the way we use technology cannot be static either.

At tcg we have two areas of focus, Professional Services and Technology. Both feed each other but stand apart. Our Professional Services really drive our understanding of the phenomenon of social media. It allows us to truly understand each situation from the perspective of our client and the audience, stakeholders or users. We don’t only look at the now, but we look at where they have come from and where they are going.

Our second area of focus is Technology. It became clear to us that technology cannot be produced in isolation. It needs to be relevant, and yet it is not financially or time viable to start from scratch in every engagement. That would be silly. This is why we have created our technology in a modular fashion that can constantly change and adapt. We recognize that technology needs to talk to legacy applications and it needs to be expandable to incorporate new technologies, ones that we have not even thought of yet. Not only do we expect new applications, tools and widgets to become more relevant to a business over time, we also recognize that the business rules and uses of existing tools and applications are going to change. Our clients should be able to effect change quickly, efficiently and without great cost.

A good example of this constant change is to look at the altering landscape of portals we use to connect to each other. We are already seeing a migration of social media away from the exclusivity of computers to mobile and portable devices as well as 10-foot interfaces and other media portals. Can anyone really say that have a technology platform that extends to all these portals? No, because they have not all been defined yet, nor will we ever be at a place where progress will sit still for an hour so we can get the definitions down. What we can say is that we are prepared for this; we know it is happening and we are building our technology to adapt, to integrate and to expand.

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Social Media in a Business Setting: Part One

July 11, 2008 By 4 Comments

I recently listened to a handful of business leaders talk about social media and its place in the corporate world. It was interesting to see. Some metaphorically pointed out into the distance. “Social media belongs out there.” The feeling is that social media is something that exists outside of their business.

There is a growing consensus within organizations that social media needs to be taken seriously, that companies should devise some kind of social media plan, but very few have a true understanding of the various components that can make up social media.

Part of the discussion centred on why social media is important to their organization. The general consensus was that it can be a good PR tool. Some were more articulate than others, talking about issues ranging from identifying influencers to reaching the young dollar. “You do this through going to where your customers are.” As to where they think their customers are the most common answers were. “On MySpace, Facebook, YouTube.” “They are online, uploading photos, sharing videos, and attacking each other with flesh-eating zombies.”

But this view of social media is very limiting. To some degree, they are right. Social Media Optimization campaigns, if done right, can and do work well for companies. However, social media consists of more than a collection of pre-existing websites and devising strategies to gain visibility on those sites. When done well, social media can be integrated into the very fabric of an organization.

Social media, for me, consists of a set of tools, applications, widgets and software programmes that are used to connect people to organizations in a way that allows for the multidirectional flow of information through the participation of all stakeholders. What that means really depends on who you are, your objectives and your point of view.

Let’s look at it from a different angle. If I asked you what you could do with a piece of paper, your answer would differ depending on who you are. If you were an author you would possibly write a story. If you were an artist you would, say, paint a picture, or draw a still life. A mathematician might work out some complicated equation, or methodically write out a ‘to do’ list. I gave a piece of paper to my son and he made a paper aeroplane. An origami artist might create a three dimensional dragon that breathes fire and flaps its wings. A pyromaniac may set it alight to watch it burn. A computer programmer would probably put the paper back in the printer paper tray.

Here a piece of paper becomes more than just a way to distribute the written word. Social media tools can be adapted to fit your objectives, to communicate and seek participation that makes sense to you and your organization. We may not all have the need for our audiences to upload videos onto our corporate site, however using a similar system of tagging and organizing content will resonate well with people who are used to searching in that manner.

Organizations really need to embrace social media from within. This does not mean simply adding social media tools onto their website and randomly trying to create a dialogue with their customers or stakeholders. Before creating a social media strategy for an organization, here are some questions I ask:

  1. What are the business objectives of the organization? What are you trying to achieve?
  2. Who are your stakeholders? Who are the audiences? I mean who are they really? What are their learning styles? Their expectations? How do they interact with the world?
  3. How can you marry your unique business requirements with who your audiences and stakeholders are?

Once we have a clearer understanding of the above, then a social media strategy can be formulated.

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Social Media

July 2, 2008 By 2 Comments

Social Media has everybody talking, but are they all talking about the same thing? Social Media is such a vast subject, with many different nuances, disciplines, approaches and reference points.

What do we use social media for? I asked a sample of people, male and female between the ages of 16 and 40. Here are some of the answers.

  • To share pictures, videos, links and posts with friends.
  • To connect to friends and family.
  • To find out stuff.
  • To keep in touch.
  • For entertainment. Etc.

Perhaps the most interesting answer came from a 16-year-old female. (I will call her Emma)

“I don’t use social media for anything specific. It is not like I set out to use social media, it just exists. It is a part of my life. This is a dumb question. You don’t ask people what they use a telephone for. I could list a thousand instances where I would use a telephone, but really everyone knows that a telephone allows you to talk to people over distances. Well social networking allows you to do this better. It is a fuller experience.”

Emma’s answer makes sense to me. Social media allows us to communicate with people in ways we never thought imaginable. It provides us with easy to use, intuitive tools that cross over multiple learning styles, allowing us to be a part of that communication. We don’t think about how this happens, we just accept it. Providers of these tools think for us. We want to run with these tools from the offset. We accept that it can exist in real time, that we can mix sound with visuals, with text and participate in multiple dialogues. We do not only accept it, we now expect it.

Right? Well, these are our expectation. These expectations are what a handful of social media sites have engrained in us. But this is not always the case. So many social media providers don’t think for their users, they don’t even talk to them. They get fixated in the technology. This is pretty dismal for a discipline that is all about people and communicating. The how is important I agree. There is a need to have world-class technology in order to supply a world-class service, but that technology needs to be applied correctly, with understanding and after dialogue.

When we think social media, we need to think people and connections. If we understand our audience, I mean really understand the audience and then marry that understanding with our objectives, the right technology, applications and tools will follow.

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