A Candid Interview with Pauline Ores, Social Media Strategy, Principal Analyst, IBM Market Insights (Part 3)

With challenges, lessons learned, and strong social engagement experience under her cap, Pauline Ores shares with us the future of social media including issues, truths and where to place social media focus when it comes to business objectives.

1. Where are you heading with social media? 

Speed of adoption attests to quantity and breadth of social media value. Most people would agree by comparison, the value social media as a modified push marketing tactic is negligible. That said, as desktop publishing transformed the field of graphic arts, I have no doubt social media will transform the field of marketing― even if firms elect not to participate.  More and more consumers expect, if not demand, companies pay attention and stay in sync―in terms of product development, customer service, business strategies and models and more.

Personally, the is the aspect I find most interesting are the new interactions social tools and services enable―so in some ways, I’m less focused on social media then most. An unusual pursuit perhaps, but well supported here, as IBM has a long history of exploring problems from a variety of perspectives. At the same time I would never want to give up working with colleagues on the execution of near-term social media tactics and research, as that helps ensure longer-term plans add value.

2. There is a lot of wrestling between PR firms, digital agencies, and the new “social media” agencies about which of these firms are more equipped to offer strategy, research and execution services.  In your opinion, who should do what?  From the client side perspective, which pieces belong where?

Like any other engagement, the key is who, not which―it’s about who you will be working with at these firms vs. the types of firms. 

In terms of execution, my personal preference would always be to work with a team that has actual community building experience, a team that can point to a community or social platform they built―demonstrating they truly understand what it takes to people to join and actively participate. Too many people assume if their vendor understands social applications and platforms, and have personal experience using it themselves, i.e. their own blog, they have what it takes to build a community, which is not necessarily the case.

For strategy, I would lean towards the team that can deliver a social media strategy centered on business vs. social media activities. One that would articulate how an investment in social engagement program furthers the overall business strategy, delivers on the brand promise and helps the business evolve. This suggests a consultative-focused engagement, so their ability to closely collaborate with their clients would be another important factor.

3. What are some of the biggest issues in social media today?

What we might define as issues today stems from social media marketing’s need for a variety of supporting elements evolve―marketing, funding, business processes, resources, internal skills, etc.  Social engagement programs have different requirements but are of course, executed in an environment almost exclusively optimized for traditional marketing. For example, it is not uncommon for marketing programs to have a defined beginning and end, and be funded quarter-by-quarter whereas, in some instances you’d have social engagement programs that, ideally, never end.

In terms of execution, investment for new social media programs involves shifting funds from marketing activities that can demonstrate ROI, on the assumption the new social media program will provide more value, however social media rarely provides comparable measurements. We’re all faced with a similar challenge – measure marketing ROI and the unique value only social engagement programs can provide, with few if any social media measurement applications and standards.

In B2B arena prospects, clients and partners see great value in engaging employees, so locating subject matter experts and growing internal involvement can quickly become a bottleneck―not insurmountable, but again, specialized processes and applications would help.

Longer term, to be truly effective, as large scale social media programs are rarely contained in single department, we’ll need scalable systems capable of coordinating activity across different roles, departments, and divisions.  This system will need to manage the massive amount of ‘outside-in’ dialog, route this to the right teams, and help track value of both the internal and external contributions. Challenging, yes, but not impossible.

Taking a ‘helicopter’ view, this is the same lag in development we’ve seen time and time before.  As social media marketing teams discover and clarify their requirements, it is inevitable that marketing teams, agencies, and developers will spring up to address them, just as they did for search and web marketing. New organizations like the Social Media Advertising Consortium, SMAC.org, are working with clients, vendors, and agencies on common vocabulary, practices and metrics.

Thank you Pauline!
Pauline, it was great to be able to spend time with you and get a peek into how IBM is leading B2B companies with their enterprise social media development! No doubt we’ve all learned how it is possible for large companies to successfully implement social media in an effort to connect employees to each other and employees to customers. Thank you.

A Candid Interview with Pauline Ores, Social Media Strategy, Principal Analyst, IBM Market Insights (Part 2)

Pauline shared with us yesterday how IBM is strategically and tactically addressing social media. Today we’ll learn from Pauline why:

• Larger companies might just have an easier time implementing social media;
• Being a talented traffic controller is important;
• Basic training isn’t enough to ensure success; and
• A market researcher can help you take the garbage out.

1. How difficult is it for a company the size of IBM to implement enterprise social media development?

We are a very large firm with nearly 400,000 employees worldwide, but the advantage of a social approach is that size becomes an asset rather than an obstacle―as more members join and help develop the program, we get a more and more valuable contributions. The more teams join the easier it is for our enablement teams to understand how to best support, mentor, and guide their programs.  Having played such a large role in defining the program participants don’t need to be sold and furthermore, help spread the word.  So contrary to what you might expect, getting many different teams to collaborate speeds up the process.

2. What are some of the key challenges?

For us, beyond delivering actionable insights we have to ensure research results flow to all the right teams.  Obviously we share the resulting insights with teams that commission the research but there is potentially even more value to be gained by sharing these same insights with other departments. So our next challenge is to develop communication channels and connections to ensure we inform a variety of roles and teams, which as you can imagine could easily become a major air traffic control issue.  Ideally we can also track the impact these insights help deliver, demonstrating the value of our social media research and execution investments.

Social media has much more to do with who you are, as individual or a company, than what you do― it makes the boundaries around firms translucent if not transparent. IBM has a strong values-based culture and is committed to its clients―so for us, social media tools enable our teams to respond more quickly.  If your firm doesn’t have clarity in terms of brand values and/or doesn’t encourage staff to put customers first, I would suggest social media should be the last, not the first, step of a much longer process.

3. What advice can you give on internal skills development for social media?

Invest in and adopt social media and collaboration tools internally―they enable employees to quickly provide the much larger and more detailed responses external social media interactions often demand, as well as provide an internal sandbox where, assuming they’re new to these tools, they can learn and practice.

Realize that a few quick ‘101’ application tutorials, how to use Twitter, isn’t enough, as it’s not the tools that make it happen, it is what some refer to as ‘social engineering’ or community building practices. Having even a few resources with community building and engagement skills will ensure you have a program that delivers value for both internal and external participants―which again is key to success.

If you don’t have that expertise in-house seek outside help, but make sure any agencies or consultants can walk the walk and provide references of pointing to communities they built vs. pages, sites or applications. I can’t stress strongly enough how critical community building and engagement skills are to success. Locate the resources you have or hire in, then have those people mentor others to grow your corporate skill set.

4. How mature is the market when it comes to research tools (often called “buzz monitoring” or “listening” tools)?  What is the sophistication level of what is out there?

Not sure if you are referring to sophistication of the tools, processes or clients, but all three are evolving.  For clients, I think it’s important to realize social media research tools today are market research tools, and having market research professionals involved in the process provides value. Secondly, clients should realize the tools themselves are not a panacea, it’s very much GIGO― ‘garbage in, garbage out’―process, great results require a lot of upfront work and planning, which again is something a trained market research professional can provide.  IBM’s best-of-breed Market Insights team played a large role in increasing the value we get from these research tools.

Social Media are just tools, right? Wrong. Pauline shares why tomorrow.

In tomorrow’s final post Pauline will share with us why companies need to stay in sync, why social media is more than tools, and why the ‘who’ is more important than the what. HINT: Not all agencies are created equal.

Who doesn’t love “free”?

Social media is free, isn’t it? Well in the very basic sense, yes social media is free.  Participating in social media if you are a community member, 9 times out of 10, is at no cost to you from the perspective of joining and engaging.  The only time these social media communities charge a fee is if you are upgrading to some sort of premium or pro account.  Think about Flickr in this case, if you don’t want to be limited on your daily uploads or want the analytics, you have to upgrade to the professional account.

From the community participant’s end, this is wonderful!  I get to share and connect with people who have the same interests as me without having to pay a fee, who doesn’t like that concept?  That’s why social media communities have been around long before the term “social media” had ever been coined.

Companies stepping into the idea of marketing in these social media communities with the mistaken idea that marketing within social media communities is “free” are a lot of times sadly mistaken at the end of their campaign’s run.  They find it’s failed, or rather they are under the impression that their marketing attempt failed and they also find there’s a lot more involved than they ever realized.  At the end of the day it isn’t free.  There’s a whole lot of investment that needs to go on in both resources and technology.

It really makes me curious why companies think they can just put up a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page and think “this is going to work” immediately.  A “Field of Dreams” Social Media is not, unfortunately if you build it, most likely they won’t come.  Companies spend millions developing new logos, planning public relations (PR) Events, doing keyword research for SEO and PPC, why should the concepts around social media marketing be any different?  The “free” barrier to entry is a huge misnomer and misleads a lot of marketing departments down the wrong path.

So what should a company plan to invest in when looking at a social media strategy?  Well that really depends a lot on what the company hopes to establish in the medium.  Is it increased buzz or brand lift?  How about increased sales or traffic to the site?  Could you want people to sign up for your email list, blog RSS or coupon distribution?  Become part of your own community?  Different goals require different strategies in social media, and they all require different levels and types of resource investment.

Here’s a quick list to keep in mind of what you’ll be investing in when you decide that social media is the next medium your company should become actively involved in.

• Investing in Understanding:   “Where Are We Now” in the Whole Social Media Sphere
  Do people even know who you are?  Is there any buzz about you?  Do they know the products you sell or the services you offer?
• Invest in Finding Your Audience
  Where are the conversations happening?  Who’s doing the talking about you?
• Invest in the Approach
  How do I interact with the social media communities that are talking about me, my industry, products or services?  How do I add value to their lives and not just be another “noise channel”
• Goals & Measurement Need Investment
  Free tools verses Paid Tools?  Free buzz monitoring tools give you limited data, can your strategy work with that limited data, or do you need more robust information?  What about your analytics, are the free tools going to give you enough information to connect the dots of traffic to buzz & engagement to conversions?  Have you even taken the time to plan what goals will make you successful?
• Employees are as Social Media Investment in their own right
  You pay your employees a salary or an hourly wage to preform tasks for you.  If one of their tasks has to do with social media, that’s definitely an investment that isn’t free by any means.  However, it isn’t just their time engaging you should be planning for, it’s their time researching, setting goals, training, developing and ultimately fortifying relationships with your audience that you really need to plan for investing in.

With investment in research, strategy and measurement companies can see return, or at least if there isn’t a return they can figure out why.  The investment of time and resources from the onset is likely the biggest factor of whether a company is going to succeed or fail.  Don’t you want the money and time you’ve invested to grow your social media strategy into a success rather than just having spaghetti being thrown at the wall?

Scrabble Letters Photo Credit:  Flickr User WonderWebby

Tree & Coins Photo Credit:  Flickr User Pfala

Not sure where to begin with how to build a strategy in social media?  Wondering what the difference is between just marketing and engaging?  How about measuring the affects of  implementing your social media media strategy?  Well then if you have the time, come to New York City on November 5th, 2009!

Nathan Linnell, our Director of Analytics and myself (Liana Li Evans) are conducting a training on social media strategy and measurement for Search Engine Strategies on that day for the early morning session of the training day.

In this social media training we’re going to teach antendees all about what goes into building a social media strategy and what do you need to know and do to measurement everything involved from successes to failures and when do you just stop, re-tweak and start again.  You’ll get a lot of take aways and you should be able walk away and apply your knowledge you’ve acquired to your own online media strategies.

If you are interested in attending the Social Media Training in New York city check out the SES Training page about the entire training day.    If you can’t make the social media strategy and measurement training in New York and are interested in getting training for your organization, feel free to contact us!