ARTICULATED

Among my smart friends and former colleagues who are marketing types in the B2B sector, many struggle to even entertain the notion that investing in a social media strategy is a good use of time. For those who are intrigued, many worry that their CEO might think they’ve lost their mind.

In February Forrester Research found that buyers in the B2B sector are extraordinarily active in social media. (Read about those findings on Forrester’s Groundswell blog here.)  This week’s post by Matt Heinz on Blogging Innovation (@innovate on Twitter) – “Five Steps to a Successful B2B Social Media Strategy” — may be the best piece I’ve found on how B2B companies might successfully proceed into social media strategy.

Here’s a post I wrote on this topic last month with my B2B-marketing friendsin mind.  I think it speaks the language many former colleagues and I have shared over the years.

This post is for my many current and former colleagues who are smart, accomplished PR, marketing, and public affairs pros that are the first to say that you “still don’t quite get the whole social media thing.” It goes, “I think we need a MySpace strategy! Or do we?” Many of you have yet to even dabble in social media on a personal level. You know who you are.

I don’t pretend to be an expert – I’m still wrapping my head around much of it. But in the year now that I’ve been really focused on it, I’ve figured out a few things. And I’m getting a lot of questions.

So I’ve compiled this little “You probably need a social media strategy IF …” list. It’s only three items. It’s what I’d tell you over a beer, if we had the pleasure.

But I’ve tried to make it different and relevant by framing it in terms of the things I’m pretty sure that, knowing you and your conscientious ways, you are trying every day to achieve for your client or organization. I’m not referring to not newfangled things, but the kinds of P.R. and business aims we’ve always pursued together.

So here goes. You probably need a social media strategy IF …

You want to establish “thought leadership.” This one has been a biggie my whole career, certainly working in the issue-advocacy and B2B marketing spaces. If you really want to position your CEO as a thought leader, and I know you do, get him to start capturing his thoughts in writing and publishing them on a blog.

I know, he’s busy. He hates to write. And he hates giving away the contents of his brain for free. And he might just think you’ve lost your mind for the asinine suggestion.

But lots of CEOs are blogging. (Check out a list here.) And lots of CEOs have found it a powerful tool for achieving a wide array of business goals.

The fact is, these days, if you go out claiming Mr. CEO is a “thought leader,” it’s becoming increasingly hard for folks to believe it unless they can find some real “leading thoughts” from him by running a basic Google search.

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You want your people more engaged. What organizational leader doesn’t want this? And I’m using “people” broadly. That could mean 75 employees each doing their own thing, 750,000 members who you’re not sure are going to pay their dues next year, or 7.5 million customers who are being courted by the competition.

There’s been about a gazillion words written on this topic by people who are smarter than me. But here’s my dumbed-down take. Because people get to participate everywhere nowadays, thanks to the Internet and the social web, we’ve come to expect participation. We want you to talk directly to us, where we currently are. We want the opportunity to respond, and when we respond, we want to be heard. When we don’t get all of that, we increasingly tend to become ambivalent or bored or freelanced or altogether disenfranchised.

Ms. CEO, I respectfully submit that you are not too busy to have a two-way conversation with your employees or members or prospective customers, hear their ideas, share your vision, and inspire them into loyalty. Social media is a great way to do that. Pretty soon, it may just be an obligation. Certainly already, your people are hungering for it.

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You want a stack of clips. That’s what we PR people are here for, of course. But by being engaged in social media, consistent with a well thought-out strategy, your clip-generating work can be more productive because the reporters you want to reach are probably using social media to do their job. A solid social-media strategy gives you a new ongoing way to get and stay in front of them.

But more importantly, the PR people out there who are doing social media strategy all the time argue that the whole notion of generating clips is sort of done. They point out that the readership/viewership of traditional media is shrinking. (The traditional media is shrinking!)  We know that now more than ever, people gather their news and information directly from nontraditional Internet sources.

That means that if what you have to say is good and interesting, and you take the time to say it, you can reach a TON of people without ever generating a single news clip.

Let me be cautious in knocking news clips, because I still get paid good money to do that kind of work. Trust me, I love pitching and securing a Washington Post article (print edition!). But aren’t eyeballs and attention and mindshare and interest what you really want? Aren’t those things, while maybe less concrete when it comes to demonstrating value to the C-suite office, the things that will really support your sales, marketing, advocacy, or retention goals?

I’m pretty sure the answer is now yes. I just don’t think the “stack of clips” is quite as relevant a measure as maybe it once was.
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What do you think about these three biggies? I welcome your comments.

Along with most PR folks, I’m regularly asked by organizations what, if anything, they should be doing with social media, and why. They hope for a tidy answer, a quick something that can be implemented to check a box with minimal time investment and get back to what’s important.

But more often than not, I find myself in the awkward position of answering the rhetorical question with a recommendation that’s almost polar opposite of the narrow and tidy – a request that they rethink core aspects of their corporate philosophy, particularly their root beliefs about their employer-employee relationship.

That is big stuff. If an organization is 10, 25, or 100 years old, it obviously has established culture. And if the CEO and other leaders are opinionated about the way their employees are best led, and they most certainly are, those opinions are not easily swayed.

In the face of that, what I offer tends to go something like this:

“I can build you a sound social media strategy that will achieve goals that we identify together. It will be good.

“But just like any other corporate strategy, it’ll require investment from you, the CEO. Devising the strategy will take time out of your day.

“But there’s much more. If the strategy is to be credible … and certainly if it is to yield the sort of business results we set our sights on … you will need to commit to a whole new way of interacting with people. That’s all manner of people – customers, trade partners, members, and the like. But most of all, it’s your employees.

“Trust me.  If you allow it, and if you really want it, the social media strategy can be a sharp knife that carves openness, accessibility and transparency in your workforce culture. Done right, your people will love it, and your enterprise will cause and emanate positive brand experiences as a result.

“But know that culture shift will mean your operating silos will be strained, and your leaders will be flung out of their comfort zones. They will simultaneously be open to new feedback, be forced to loosen the reins on information, and will lose control of their message. At times, you will feel the organization is utterly exposed. This will be hard.

“And you can’t skirt that reality; it’s pretty much a requirement.  If you try to incorporate a social media strategy without accepting and embracing ALL of its complex opportunities and implications, it is likely to fall flat or fail.

“Worst of all, these heady matters can’t really be delegated. If the social media strategy is to be ideally situated to achieve whatever goals we lay out for it, people will look to you first to lead by example. It is quite possible there is no individual whose workday it will change more than the yours, the busy CEO.”

This hails straight from the text of “How to Strike Instant Fear into the Heart of Busy Executives.” I am learning it’s a great way to make a room full of smart people squirm.

Yet, despite all of that, I’m an adamant believer. Whether an organization is a five-person nonprofit or a Fortune 500 company, it is highly like that the times have changed so much that your marketing, branding, or other communications goals can be boosted – if not outright achieved – by an appropriate, smart social-media strategy. But not without all of the requirements and implications that go along with it.

And it is almost certain that your number-one asset, your people, are going to be far happier as a result. In and of itself, should likely make it worthwhile.

I just read a very interesting blog post by social media expert John Dvorak, arguing that social media is not a particularly effective marketing tool. Full post is here.

He offers supporting data, but what I find most compelling is his common sense, funny explanation:

“Joe! Hi! How’s the wife? I have a discount coupon for you for the next time you rent from Dollar. Ten percent off, buddy!” … Obviously this is not the way friends interact. So why are they going to suddenly interact online like that?”

Like so many communications folks, I’ve argued to both nonprofits and B2B clients lately that we should be thinking up strategy for social media. But despite all my readings, I continue to be challenged by that nagging ole’ question, “Why?” Dvorak’s eye-opening and entirely common-sense post confirms my trepidation. But also maybe clarifies?

The case I find myself making to nonprofits is that a good social media strategy can present a sound (if not terribly measurable) way to dramatically improve “stakeholder relations.” A social media strategy could be a cheap and fairly free-flow way to keep the nonprofit’s most enthusiastic volunteers and donors in-the-know, engaged and listened to. If and only if those things are done well, those people can ultimately be called upon to do more, and that’s good.

The case I find myself making to B2B companies, at least the kind I’m talking to, is that a good social media strategy can grow awareness and credibility by nature of the company’s honest and active “participation” in its marketplace. That means finding and engaging online, candidly and visibly, with employees, trading partners, and key customers – actually listening to what those folks have to say! – then finding ways to feed that input back into corporate strategy-setting. None of that directly results in sales. But done well, it supports it.

Am I right? I hope so. I think so, even if Dvorak is correct in his assertion that using social media to disseminate rental-car coupons doesn’t really work. If only I were 100% sure.