Be Revolutionary

Creating change to support sustainable, strategic social media integration

by Shannon Paulhttp://VeryOfficialBlog.com  @ShannonPaul

Photo by artsy_T

Creating Organizational Change for Social Media Integration1. Comfortable coexistence kills the ability of social media

engagement to deliver business value2. Identifying roadblocks to integration without judgment3. What are your organizational myths?4. Using old processes to create new, iterative processes 5. Aligning and realigning with business/corporate strategy6. Get C-level support, but don't forget the rest of us 

Company

Coexisting, not Connecting

Polka dot image by spin spin

Problems with a Disconnected Social Media Presence

• Does not accrue to business strategies or ROI• Does not provide deep enough metrics beyond

buzz, mentions, site engagement and participation• Creates yet another silo with its own set of

problems, metrics and solutions • May lead to mismatched correlation of data

What's Wrong with this Picture?

Participation is the most common measure of success for online communities despite citing word of mouth, customer loyalty and brand awareness as overarching goals. According to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study

by Beeline Labs and Deloitte http://www.deloitte.com/us/2009tribalizationstudy

Photo Credit: Frank Chimero

If Not Participation, Then What?

• Changes in direct traffic• Changes in branded search traffic• Increases brand/campaign mentions• More inbound links to your site/blog/community

Just Make Sure to Measure What Actually Leads to Your Goals (KPIs)

Photo by Glintle

You can still measure other things like engagement and number of followers.

Stay Open to Finding New Connections

Photo by JoX1989

Relationships between different data sets can become apparent with time.

Roadblocks to Integration

• Everyone seems to say no• It's faster/easier/quicker/cheaper to do a workaround  • We have too many rules in our industry • Lack of communication or technical skills to bridge

language/process gap between web and marketing/communication teams

• If others inside my company know what we are doing with social media, they will try to control what we are doing (and we know better than they do)

Photo by RoseFireRising

Don't Judge

Photo by Matt Dickman

In the early days, many social profiles and blogs are launched on the fly due to demand, necessity, or to take advantage of a first-time opportunity to engage.

Going cowboy and developing workarounds is only ever a short-term strategy.

Embrace Your Inner Detective

• Understand the organizational structure

• Develop an internal roadshow• Share what you hope to

accomplish and how you believe social media could help his/her department meet their goals

• Ask others for advice, background, input• Learn the existing processes• Document everything• Do your outside homework• Bring conversations back to data and research, not feelings

or opinion

Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

Photo by Pfau

You Still Need Workflow Processes

Myth: The social web is 100% improvisation. Old style approval processes have no place. 

Reality: To create new, dynamic processes you need to use the old processes to make them happen. 

Good musicians improvise AFTER they learn a song's basic tune and chord structure.

Photo by wakalani

When Designing Workflow Processes, Stay Strategic

Education to Inspire Change:The Sandwich Approach

C-Level strategic support from the top down

Grass-roots education from the bottom up

C-Level Conversations

What About Productivity?

"People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don't" Study by the University of Australia 

Risk to Reputation?"Just 4% of employers worldwide say their reputation has been damaged at some point by employees using social networking" 2009 Whitepaper published by Manpower, Inc. [PDF]

Gain Grass Roots Support

• Focus on the culture change made apparent in social networking

• Teach the value of social relevance and relationships as context

• Communicate the importance of ethics, access and signal-to-noise ratio. 

Education that Fosters and Prepares for Participatory CultureParticipatory Culture Defined: 1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic

engagement– With strong support for creating and sharing one's creations

with others– With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is

know by the most experienced is passed along to novices– Where members believe that their contributions matter– Where members feel some degree of social connection with

one another (at the least they care about what other people think about what they have created). 

Note: Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when they are ready

According to Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies Program at M.I.T. 

Additional Resources

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century [PDF]

Social Networks vs. Management? Harness the Power of Social Media [PDF]