(yes, that is the enterprise from star trek…get it?)
Update: edited to remove company names to avoid any misunderstanding
I’m sitting at the Vegas airport after having donated by money to the Vegas charity foundation (aka the casinos) and was just thinking about some of the interesting conversations I had with folks during the course of the Blog World Expo event. One of the things that struck me as being odd was that there are many global enterprise organizations that are relying on one social media person to handle all of their efforts. I had the opportunity to speak with folks from various enterprise companies to get their feedback on social media and I believe that the guys out there running social media need more support in order to get the job done.
This is a bit bizarre to me. Do multi-billion dollar international companies really think that they can push all of their social media efforts onto one person or even two people? What expectations can a company possibly have by assigning one person to manage and build relationships for the entire world on behalf of a brand, it’s ridiculous. This is a problem because having one person handle social media for a enterprise company is a virtually impossible task. At the end of the day you get out what you put in, so if you have one person doing all the work; you’re going to get the value of one person.
To me this signifies that a company really doesn’t understand the value of social media yet (why, is another discussion). We’re talking about changing how a company builds relationships and communicates with their customers around the world; this business shift cannot be placed onto one person and it’s not going to happen with a few months. Again, this comes back to what the objectives of the company are but we need to get real here. If you’re a large organization looking to develop a full social media strategy with a measurement component then you are going to need a full team working on this and not just one person.
I’m going to have more to say on this later, but I just wanted to point this out and get your feedback and ideas on how you think a large organization should manage it’s social media efforts. Who would you put on your social media team and why?
Jacob, I thought you understood from our conversation that my role at SAS is to drive the creation of our social media strategy, communicate it internally and put the tools in place for people to use it. To accomplish that I have the active support of our Marketing 2.0 Council, made up of senior people from all across the company, and task forces put in place to achieve specific goals. I may not have a social media team, but I do have dozens of people who share the vision and are helping to implement it.
In addition, we have hundreds of people actively engaged in social media – blogging, tweeting, creating videos, connecting with customers and prospects in social networks and more. I may be the only person with “social media” in my title, but that's because our ultimate goal is to incorporate social tools and techniques into everyone's job, not have it be a separate function controlled by a separate department. Ideally in the not-too-distant future, there won't be a need for a position like mine.
Hey Dave,
I think my post may have had a negative tone which was completely not intentional. I removed the company names to avoid any misunderstanding. Phrased properly what I should have said is that folks like you need more support in terms of human and financial capital, this goes beyond how many people you have tweeting. There need to be technology and business issues that are addressed. It's great that you guys are looking to incorporate social tools into everyone's job. I think there will be a need for someone or someones to handle the overall strategy of social media. The ROI component is going to be huge but you will need someone such as yourself to help maximize that ROI via social media.
Really looking forward to chatting with you Dave and again, sorry if the post had a negative tone. I really just want to call out that folks such as yourself need more help and more support.
Jacob, I thought you understood from our conversation that my role at SAS is to drive the creation of our social media strategy, communicate it internally and put the tools in place for people to use it. To accomplish that I have the active support of our Marketing 2.0 Council, made up of senior people from all across the company, and task forces put in place to achieve specific goals. I may not have a social media team, but I do have dozens of people who share the vision and are helping to implement it.
In addition, we have hundreds of people actively engaged in social media – blogging, tweeting, creating videos, connecting with customers and prospects in social networks and more. I may be the only person with “social media” in my title, but that's because our ultimate goal is to incorporate social tools and techniques into everyone's job, not have it be a separate function controlled by a separate department. Ideally in the not-too-distant future, there won't be a need for a position like mine.
Hey Dave,
I think my post may have had a negative tone which was completely not intentional. I removed the company names to avoid any misunderstanding. Phrased properly what I should have said is that folks like you need more support in terms of human and financial capital, this goes beyond how many people you have tweeting. There need to be technology and business issues that are addressed. It's great that you guys are looking to incorporate social tools into everyone's job. I think there will be a need for someone or someones to handle the overall strategy of social media. The ROI component is going to be huge but you will need someone such as yourself to help maximize that ROI via social media.
Really looking forward to chatting with you Dave and again, sorry if the post had a negative tone. I really just want to call out that folks such as yourself need more help and more support.
I very much enjoyed this article. This is an issue we face in my organization, so I shared it with my co-workers. It was one of a couple of articles that inspired me to write my own post for the company blog, in which I credited this article in both name and link. Thanks for the great info.
Social media apps can be utilized to further inovation and productivity. Companies choose to block or not block social media apps. Unfortunately they are missing out on that grey area where social media apps can be utilized to further inovation and productivity. Palo Alto Networks came out with this whitepaper talking about how to block social media apps and when it is appropriate to let employees utilize these apps productivly. To block or not? Check it out: http://bit.ly/d2NZRp