Been noticing a variation on a theme as I’ve been working in the social media space. It has to do with the gap between early adopters and the folks who are hearing the buzz and wanting to integrate social media into their communications mix.
One of the challenges I see is that, even though most companies have at least some sort of web presence these days, the range of perceptions about what a web presence means runs across a wide spectrum.
Social media is non-linear to the max, infinite conversational streams across a "shape-shifting" landscape of infinite networks. Navigating, monitoring and participating is an active daily endeavor. Even developing the skill set to do so is a continuous experiment.
In my own "travels" I see a wealth of helpful information on the "how" and the "why" - tools, techniques, productivity tips etc. I also see (perhaps too much) high-level "strategic" punditry on the topic, that sounds pretty nifty but doesn’t help much if you’re simply a business owner trying to get down to brass tacks.
I’m always on the lookout for good anecdotal accounts of how consultants and agencies 1) help business stakeholders understand the whole paradigm to begin with, and 2) how they get beyond high-level concepts to make a difference where "the rubber meets the road".
I’ve seen what I call linear thinking reveal itself in other ways in the past. For instance, you’re laying out an elegant, well-thought-out solution for a web site with a sensible navigation and structure where every page has the potential to attract search referrals, and you’ve factored in the myriad other details that come into play. In the later stages you begin realizing that the client isn’t giving more than a cursory look at all of that stuff. They’re focused on the home page. Not that the home page isn’t important, but it just starts to sink in what you’ve failed to communicate fully - that if you’ve done your job well, most visitors will never even see the home page. Usually, but not always, the light bulb goes on once they actually start seeing the results - but initially they might not have "gotten it".
I use this example partly to try and extend it to communicating to business stakeholders about social media. Let’s assume that they have evolved beyond "home-page-centric" thinking and see their entire site as a potential referral generator. Let’s even assume that they’ve mastered the concept of inbound links and their importance in the scheme of things. But for the most part they still see the process as a linear "site-centric" thing, i.e. "we’re driving traffic TO our site" - a one way street.
I see the paradigm shift required to embrace and "deploy" social media tools in your business as a bigger leap compared to the these examples, mostly because of the non-linear nature of the whole thing.
Social media encompasses a lot of different "pieces": online communities, social networks, photo and video publishing/sharing, blogging, blog reading/commenting, social bookmarking, microblogging (Twitter, etc.), RSS, apps, widgets - and the list goes on….
Obviously a business would be foolish to try and understand and embrace all of these at once. Baby steps are prudent here - but you do have to get in the game. The gap between 1.0 and 2.0 (annoying buzzwords, but useful at times) is rapidly widening. There are many ways to describe the paradigm shift required. In fact, just collecting some of the useful books on the topic would easily fill a shelf. But, for starters I’m just going to characterize my own take in a couple of broad ways:
- External publishing - that means a lot of things that I can’t cover here, but in a nutshell it means no longer limiting your world view to a web site as a single destination and publishing platform. It means that a business may find itself publishing in new forms of media in places that may not have occurred to you as yet.
- Participation and engagement - social media is a verb not a noun. It means that you’re actively monitoring what’s going on in areas of interest to your business. It means that you’re finding and participating in communities that form around those interests. The conversation is human and authentic, not broadcast messaging or pitching. Social media is…well…social.
So to bring this back to the original question… Assuming that a business owner is interested in exploring social media for their business - what have you found that’s effective in helping them grasp this non-linear paradigm and get their toe in the water? Do you stick to broad concepts and theory, and just let the stakeholders figure out the execution? Do you set up the tools and do the training to get them started? Do you work as a "persona" on their behalf so they don’t have to do it themselves?
There are many more related questions, but the underlying thread is " how do you get businesses into the social media game in a way the makes a difference, as opposed to just another idea that sounded good but was scrapped once reality set in?"
In my own experience so far, small successes add up. Setting up some of the basic tools, training people to use them but leaving room for some self-discovery and a feedback loop, and some coaching along the way to point out opportunities and pitfalls as they reveal themselves, etc.
One of the key realities in my opinion is that there’s is no such thing as "one size fits all" in terms of social media engagement. Even though you might see a much larger potential, you also have to come to the realization that, because of it’s inherent social nature, people are going to have different styles of engagement and varying capacities for participation. If you aren’t sensitive to that, people are going feel like they’re drinking from a fire hose and lose their enthusiasm.
Just because you’re engaged at a more active and broader level doesn’t mean it’s right for them. However, if there are some tangible goals attached and you have to try and help meet them, you may have to find the right balance between being too pushy and giving them some space. Hopefully some lights bulbs will come on to motivate a broader engagement. Hopefully they’re committed to more than simply touting that "we’re doing the social media thing" at cocktail parties and power lunches (lot of that going around). ;-)
In almost all cases you’re probably working with people who are already very, very busy. You’re encouraging them to add something new and strange to their work flow. You have to give them room to find the right balance for themselves.
