Social Strategizing: If You Want to Network, Have a Plan

If everyone was going to jump off a bridge, would you? No? Really? Then why do you have a blog? Many marketers are leaping on the social marketing bandwagon, simply because everyone else seems to be there. That's a mistake if you don't have a strategy, says Denise Shiffman, founder and principal of Venture Essentials. E-Centric recently talked to Shiffman—author of the new book "The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today's Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture" (Hunt Street Press)—about trends in social media.

E-CENTRIC: What mistakes are you seeing marketers making in social media?

SHIFFMAN: The most common mistake I see is marketers jumping in without a strategy. You won't get what you want out of it. If a marketer is going to start a blog or enter the social networking world, they need to set goals about what they want to achieve. Is it branding? Is it outreach? Is it more interactions and engagement with their audiences? Is it simply to get more product purchases? You have to know what you want to accomplish before you get going.

E-CENTRIC: Are you seeing a lot of companies lagging behind their consumers in how they use social media?

SHIFFMAN: With the exception of some key players like Amazon and IBM, in general Fortune 500 firms are dragging their feet. Smaller companies have been more aggressive about getting into blogging and using Wikis, because a lot of the technology is free and it doesn't hurt to get started. Larger companies are being a lot more careful, rather than jumping in and becoming more interactive and more open and authentic, which is what customers demand. We have a very powerful consumer audience that we didn't have just five years ago. People can vocalize their opinions. What large companies need to do is open up their Web sites and allow social commentary, ratings, even social spaces like Facebook where customers can put up their information about themselves and interact with other customers.

E-CENTRIC: Once a client knows what they want, how do you advise them to begin? Do you say start small?

SHIFFMAN: It depends on the personality of the company. I do like to see companies start with a blog. It sets the stage for how to interact and show your personality as CEO or a group of employees. [It helps companies] find their comfort zone with being more open about where they source their materials, what's happening with their products, issues that come up with product or with a customer, or with their reseller channel. It's a great way to get the ball rolling and be more interactive and open and listen to customers as they comment. Another area I really like to see companies start with is Wikis, because you can do it internally. It also changes the behavior of the people within the corporation.

E-CENTRIC: How so?

SHIFFMAN: You're more open with a Wiki, because you invite people in. It doesn't have to be public. You can do an internal Wiki to, say, set up a marketing program or even to define a new product strategy and get input from across a company in real time. And that's unusual. Usually products are defined by a very narrow set of individuals who work up the same hierarchical ladder and everybody else in sales, customer service, what have you, gets the information long after it has been defined. So Wikis really change the environment of how people think. And in the end, being more open to outsider input, working in real time and listening better to other people's input sets you up to do more engaging marketing, because you're more comfortable working with your customers to define an ad or a contest, making them more a part of the decision process and allowing a fairly wild conversation to happen.

E-CENTRIC: How are you seeing companies judging the return on investment of things like blogs or social networking?

SHIFFMAN: It depends on the company. Most people do analyze their blogs to see what sites customers are coming from and what sites they're leaving to—simple blog or Google analytics can give you this type of information. Once again, it goes back to strategy. Is the strategy branding or being better known? Then you're looking at those pure numbers, how many pages are being read, how many visitors you have, how many comments you have. If your blog is supposed to change the opinion in the marketplace, or maybe affect your reseller channel, and get them to think differently about how they're selling the product and working with the company, then you have to do a greater deal of analysis at the comments and feedback and ratings and that takes a bit more work.

E-CENTRIC: What's the next big thing?

SHIFFMAN: One thing is mobile, which has been the next big thing for three years. But I think in 2008 we're finally going to see some amazing things happen, [thanks to] open access conditions. Competitive platforms will be open and marketers will be able to set up mobile programs quickly and easily. This will be important, especially to database marketers, who are going after people who already buy the product and will opt in [to receive] in real time coupons, discounts, announcements and alerts that are location specific. The other technology that got a lot of visibility last year is widgets. Widgets are such a simple idea—a little chunk of code that allows you to distribute things customers want to receive right on their own desktop in a real time ongoing basis like coupons, discounts and branding information. They might post it on a blog or their Facebook page if they're excited to show other people the same information they're receiving. I think this is a marketer's dream.