Social Media As Business Strategy
It’s about time that articles and blogs quit referring to social media as emerging. It has emerged. Social media has completely changed how organizations manage all aspects of the enterprise from recruiting to sales and marketing strategy; the luxury of having tight control over messaging and image has all but been eliminated.
source: 2011 KPMG
Employees, customers and partners are receiving information – some that’s counter to the official message – from peers, competitors, user-generated content and other sources. As technology evolves and society becomes more savvy, an increasing number of sales are being driven by digital interactions. It is critical that organizations develop an effective and holistic digital strategy if they expect to compete successfully and to increase sales.
According to KPMG at the recent J.Boye conference in Philadelphia when discussing digital strategy,
“..a Web strategy should address not just how an organization will address the wants and needs of it’s customer or user base, but also how the organization will make that user experience happen operationally.. .”
However, that change is rarely simple and might require significant organizational transformation. Many organizations find themselves caught in a blur of tools, technology and “buzz” instead of focusing on the core and most important activity that must be performed, strategy.
Organizations should not adopt social media or other interactive practices without asking and answering questions regarding how their digital strategies add value to the organization. What are the true expenses? How is culture impacted? Are business executives on-board and publicly encouraging adoption or do they require additional education? How will the effort be championed?
Under no circumstance, should organizations approach their digital identity in an ad hoc fashion with no concept how they will assess impact and determine areas for improvement or remaining activities. A digital strategy should adhere to a common framework, such as the following general model:
- Current State Analysis: Perform a gap analysis versus competitors or benchmarks using industry data or an internally sponsored study. The current state should include stakeholder, maturity, best practices and an inventory of current digital channels.
- Create a plan: Define objectives, goals, strategies and tactics. What does this mean?
- An objective is a general concept or intention, such as “Better engage partners in social media.” In general, you should have no more than 2-3 high level strategic objectives.
- Goals are the concrete realization of objectives.A goal should be more measurable, such as get 70% of partners to sign-up for accounts on the collaboration platform and login once per week.
- Although it’s not essential that measurement be quantitative, quantitative measures are often compelling for executive stakeholders. Strategies group tactics, which are the actual tasks for plan execution.
- The initial plan should be holistic, but delivered iteratively to ensure lessons learned can be applied to future activities; a single large long running project is rarely the right answer.
- Define People-and-Process Needs: What human change management activities, such as changes to organizational culture, corporate communications, or other process updates, must occur? What training is required for employees? What are the barriers to success? Will your plan be executed top down or bottom up? What stakeholders are required? How will you measure success?
- Create a business case: Define costs and benefits of creating an integrated digital strategy. Define the implementation timeline and budgets.
Now that social media and other forms of digital engagment, organizations must quit being enamored by all of the shiny toys and get back to good old fashioned strategy development.