At this year’s WOMMA Summit, I hosted a session with Christine Cea, Head of Marketing Communications at Unilever US and Ekaterina Walters, Social Media Strategist at Intel, to dive into their experiences scaling social media within their organizations. I asked each to share 2-3 insights or learnings from their experience that went beyond the pale. What surprised them? What took more time and attention than expected? What would they pass along to a colleague to help them tread this same path?
But we called the session “10" Learnings… So, I turned the same question to the crowd to come up with the balance and between us all developed a helpful list. The slides from the session are available at WOMMA. (time for you to become a member?)
Here is our list from the session:
Governance is not a ‘one and done’ – the process of expanding the use of social media and getting all the right parties involved in all the right regions of the world reveals a steady stream of governance issues that need ot be decided upon and communicated. Brace yourself to solve many governance issues and to never quite be done. You haven’t lived until you draft the social media-specific version of employee CAN SPAM rules (look it up).
Remember, the Internet and our businesses are global – Christine began by creating the Unilever Social Engagement Playbook for the US market. It was soon discovered by global executives and supported as a worldwide resource. I have seen this again and again at our multi-national clients. Regions or even local markets develop their own tools for educating their teams or enabling them to leverage Facebook well or the broader social media palette. Soon, overlapping initiatives spring up just like the first uses of social networks within big brands. It takes executive leadership to spot these and globalize the best work.
Expect your effort to grow via the “Glom-on factor” – once you start something like an enterprise-level playbook or similar guidance, the need for new “chapters” will appear. Did you cover usage of LinkedIn? How about Google+ experiments? If you are describing the value of an “owned, paid, earned’ model, shouldn’t you include the most recent guidance from global marcom leadership on the company’s marketing mix? It’s more than social but hugely impactful.
Go back to basics: know your strategy and your story – This is one of those things that Pete Blackshaw at Nestle would call “back to boring.” Social media doesn’t change the laws of physics. Nor does it call for a separate strategy or story. Your ambition in social may change your marcom strategy but still stick with a holistic strategy and story. And know what it is before you go too far in terms of implementing programs across social.
Build it and they will come – Ekaterina shared her experience creating infrastructure and tools for local markets across the globe. I have sweated a bit recently on global programs where we needed to incent local markets to put resources around managing Facebook pages.We really had to go out of our way to make it an easy decision and even then we needed to showcase some success stories to motivate some folks. Her experience was different. If you provide the right infrastructure and training, the markets will jump on board. She gave a great anecdote about a team in India who were dragging their feet. Given infrastructure, they energized their use of Facebook to become a top page in the Intel family.
Be prepared because you have two to three days to maximize opportunities – if you don’t have a process for acting quickly, you’ll miss the opportunity. When a local market launched Museum of Me at Intel, it quickly became a hit and relevant to more markets. For Intel’s social media teams, part of the job means remaining nimble. Without the ability to help other markets cash in on the Museum of Me social experience (and expand server infrastructure) they could not have take full advantage of such a great program.
Interns are not community managers - Do not hire an intern to be the voice of your company. It is too easy to belittle the job of publishing content and interacting with customers. After all, don’t the interns “get” social media? Whether you have 60,000 or 6 million fans, the job of engaging them is an important one. Train your community managers. Define the social voice of your brand. Outline responsible response scenarios.
Create a centralized measurement model - This is a keystone issue. Having a common measurement model makes so many other things fall into place. Crafting that measurement model is also hard and should not be left to local markets figure out on their own. Once you establish how to understand performance and value, efforts around the world can benchmark programs and understand what is successful and what out to be discontinued.
Scaling is all about continuous internal training, pilot programs and agency help – The book on effective social media and word of mouth marketing is just being written. No room for smug “gurus” here. Everyone seemed to agree that we all need to be ina constant state of learning. This is a program none of us will likely graduate from. Our own global training program at Ogilvy is a great example. We have been delivering training globally on all things ‘social’ for the past 7 years and will be expanding our program this year. No questions asked. We are committed.
Create a gateway to unlock social media access and resources – When markets and team do want to jump on board and launch their own Facebook pages or Twitter handles, it is key to evaluate if they are really ready to take on the commitment. You can make training mandatory. You can also establish a minimum staff commitment to make sure they are ready for the moderation responsibilities. Also, who does translations? If you create a global conversation calendar, does the global center translate or the local market? Who has the budget? Establish criteria by which you can confirm that a market is ready to succeed.
Look at where the tech teams within your organization for direction - See where they are going as they are at the forefront of what needs to be done – One story emerged early in social media at big companies. Entrepreneurial spirits who wanted to do cool things in social circumvented their IT departments. You had to in order to get anything done. The restrictive governance and procedure governing Web site development and network resources just didn’t apply well to social media. Now, it’s time to re-engage with the tech teams you have internally as they are more in touch with where platforms are heading today than perhaps 5 years ago.
Make legal your friend – there are so many bright legal minds thinking about enabling use of social media within brands. Getting your legal department permanently to the table can really strengthen your work and avoid problems. Your lawyers are your friends.
That was our list. There was some talk about an “11th” and some reference to SpinalTap.
John -
Had to miss your session last week due to the many WOMMA Presidential duties and commitments... I know you can relate to that as you were in the same position a few years ago.
That said, I feel like I was there just by reading your post. Super job summarizing and for engaging your audience to help round out the list.
Even though our company, PEMCO Insurance, isn't a global or even national player, the suggestions and thoughts you recounted largely apply to us as well.
I'll be sharing this internally and with my friends on the various social platforms.
Thanks,
Rod
Posted by: NW_Mktg_Guy | November 23, 2011 at 11:49 AM