Managing Social Media Engagement
Summary
An article published on The Customer Collective by Francois Gossieaux, entitled Social media needs to come with new management thinking begins to address a growing concern that clients and businesses are starting to encounter; how to manage social media engagement.
Managing social media engagement is the process of responding to community generated content around your brand or company. For example, people posting on Twitter, blogs, or Facebook groups. A large percentage of people address their problems and concerns with a company online, and therefore it's imperative that if you want to protect your brand, you need to address comments made towards it.
Social Media Enagement is becoming a hurdle and concern for businesses due to the work flow that surrounds it. Businesses now have a variety of tools available to them to implement social media networks and applications around their brand or niche market, however that is only the first step in social media adoption. The second, and arguably more important step is to actively engage with your community around your new solution.
Gossieaux offers up examples from companies he's worked with, and how they manage their new found social media adoption across the web. We'll detail areas we agree, and some areas we believe need to be strongly highlighted to properly engage your audience.
Analysis
The three examples Gossieaux outline seem to address three levels of bureaucracy involved in managing social media engagement. This is most often a result of the size of a business, however not always. For example, he addresses a company that has developed a sophisticated work flow for management engagement, a company who also has a strong solution, but also a team dedicated to management engagement, and a third company who has a somewhat 'informal' plan to address social media engagement.
From the article, Gossieaux informally postulates that the more informal process and work flow is the most effective. His reasoning seems to be that consumers and the social audience want to be addressed and heard. They aren't interested in corporate jargon that was pre-approved by the executive level or by the HR department. That the risk of hearing from more than 1 representative of the company, in a somewhat disorganized way, is in fact a positive aspect. It makes the person feel more important in their comments or criticisms.
We strongly agree with what Gossieaux puts forward. We believe that the social media audience wants and in fact craves a response. The response doesn't need to be vetted by a team or group of people. If a post is made that a person had a negative experience with a company or product, three individuals responding with 'we heard you, and want to speak with you to learn how we can improve' is much more effective than a single, pre-forumlated, response that redirects a person to the companies support department.
We'd like to go beyond what Gossieaux mentions as effective to in fact encourage an entire company to participate in the process. We don't believe it should be limited to people from HR or Sales. Rather, engineering, accounting and management should be strongly involved in every aspect of social media engagement. While this may seem risky at first, it can be properly controlled, and it's affect would become very strong.
For example, if a blog post is written that criticizes your companies pricing model or distribution model, hearing from an HR representative won't be the most effective. If you, as a consumer, have written the post, and you hear back from the accounting department, you will feel as though you're voice was heard. That not only did the company find your post and work to address it; but also that they took the time to realize that the person most relevant and experienced to respond was the person who responded.
Result
Gossieaux's evaluation of how to manage the new social media world is relevant to any and all businesses who operate in either the business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) markets. Your company and brand will be talked about, and the most effective tool you have to address concerns or problems with what you are offering is to go directly to the people who are expressing their issues. These people are important, not only as individual's and voices, but also because of their power. For every post written, there are dozens if not hundreds who feel the same way, but haven't expressed it online.
A business needs be very quick to react to criticism, however equally important is to react to positive remarks and posts. If a post is made about your great customer support or pricing, responding personally to the person reinforces your image as professional and consistent.
There are many tools available online that allow you to engage your community and their experience, however opinions will invariably leave your reach, and venture to places like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or blog posts. A business's role shouldn't be to try to control the means or medium through which conversations go on. It should be rather to participate in the conversation. That simple idea can make an unbelievable difference in your brands lifetime.
