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March 13, 2009
Social media and the big company, part 1
In larger companies, there's a lot of hand-wringing and worry about monetizing social media. How do we generate ROI from getting involved with blogging, online communities or Twittering?
That's one approach, and it can be fraught with internal battles over legal matters, positioning, PR and brand identity.
An easier path is to think less about social media as a sales and marketing function, and consider it more of a function of operations. Customer service and support is a natural pathway to introducing social media to a large organization. At most, that means transitioning already trained support people into using a different set of tools.
Just the idea that your company is represented in social media forums is a word-of-mouth-worthy. The work they'll do in solving the problems of those influential one-percenters who are heavy social media users will go a long way to helping you understand what to do next.
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You are making it too easy, Ben.
I work with large companies all the time. Customer service is not the only way to start, and often not the best way to start.
The best way to start is to pick a project, choose a clear objective (which can be marketing or support or something else), get the naysayers in on it from the beginning, and launch it. Then build.
If the senior management is against it, don't start with support, find a better company.
Great Points Ben,
The value of marketing within, toward your exiting customers has significant impact, and creates customers that "sell" for you. It is just marketing wrapped differently.
