Social Media Tips from Jeremiah Owyang
I just got back from the SVAMA event on how to approach social media across your entire enterprise. It was held at the Cisco Telepresence suites in Santa Clara which made for an interesting panel discussion - everyone was in a different room.
The panel was led by Jeremiah Owyang, former Forrester analyst on social media. He discussed 3 major trends / pain points for comapanies utilizing social media.
1. Fragmentation - Customers are distributed across numerous channels and it’s up to companies to meet their customers where they are spending time online.
* Tip: develop listening programs at your company so yu can monitor conversations and begin to engage.
2. Rebellion - Managers and employees are reluctant to participate and be part of the marketing team.
* Tip: create a risk mitigation plan that enables employees, not polices them. Try running social media brown bag lunches where you bring in internal and external presenters to teach about various social sites.
3. Not thinking long term - While the social mediasphere is the current wave, there are new trends emerging that should be part of your planning. Mobile technology for B2B is an example with the proliferation of the iPhone.
* Tip: schedule a planning meeting with your management team to review emerging trends and don’t be afraid to experiment while the technology is still new.
And, the million dollar question that everyone always asks - how do you measure the ROI of social media? Jeremiah’s advice is to make sure you’re measuring the success by the original goal. Every company wants more business, but there are plenty of other goals for using social media, like using it to engage with customers so you can build a better product or improve your support function.
