What to make of social media? It's a question on the minds of many marketers. Where do you begin, and once you do, what do you do to keep momentum and have a real impact on business and customer relationships? We recently spoke to three social media experts -- from Intel, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard -- about their experiences in the trenches for a 1to1 on the Run podcast series, " Behind the Curtain of Social Media." Here is an excerpt.
How would you define social media, and what are some of the tools you are using?
Michael Brito, Social Media Strategist, Intel: This is something that I've had a hard time defining because there are a lot of definitions of social media externally. Most of the people who have defined it...are consultants, analysts, and external-facing agency people. There has been very little representation from people like LaSandra [Brill of Cisco], Tac [Anderson of HP], and I, who have really had a chance to define what we think social media is. The way we look at it I think is a little bit different from the way others look at it.
We at Intel look at social media as a communication channel -- not necessarily for increasing sales or conversions, or any direct marketing activities –- but more around the lines of driving brand stewardship, engaging in conversations with our consumers, and really listening to what they have to say. And driving that feedback back to our product management teams to help them innovate in future products.
Social media is definitely here to stay, and most corporate marketers really need to understand that. We do our best to explain that with tools like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, FriendFeed, and other tools that are popular and growing exponentially.
Lasandra Brill, Manager, Web & Social Media Marketing, Cisco: I would add that the common thread among the tools that are available is that it's about conversation. It's about being able to talk to our customers in new ways.
Tac Anderson, Worldwide Enterprise Business Interactive/Web Marketing Manager, Hewlett-Packard: It's up to each organization and each company to define what the goals of those tools are going to be, just as you would with any other communication vehicle.
What do you find are the biggest challenges when it comes to implementing social media?
Tac Anderson: I think a lot of times there is a lot of excitement and people want to make sure they're not left behind. But because social media touches so many different business groups within a company, everyone wants to add their piece to it. So the biggest challenge I've seen is making sure that the goals are properly aligned with what the medium is for.
Lasandra Brill: Here at Cisco, we're starting to adopt the Forrester POST strategy (People, Objectives, Strategy, and Tools) for doing that, and making sure that we're looking at what we're trying to achieve first before we jump into just what are the tools we want to implement.
Michael Brito: Our biggest challenge is understanding if the people we're looking to talk to even participate in social media. If they're not reading blogs, it's probably not a wise decision to launch a blog. We've also adopted the Forrester POST method. They've mapped our customer segments -– the people who talk Intel and buy Intel -- to various behaviors. That allows us to make sure that we have concrete data and research as we go to market with different projects.
We understand who our customers are, and how they behave online. Then we have to figure out internally what our objectives and strategies are, and then we decide what the tool is. The tool might be a corporate blog, it might be Facebook engagement, or Twitter, or other tools that are available.
Tac Anderson: Sometimes the hardest thing for me to do personally, because I'm such an evangelist for the tools, is to tell people that social media isn't the right thing to do in an instance. We're all very eager to prove out what it is that we do, but sometimes it's not the right tool. You want to make sure that's clear, because you don't want to set yourself up for failure.
Listen to the podcast, Behind the Curtain of Social Media to learn how Cisco devised one of its top 5 most successful product launches ever, using only social media tools, and more. And stay tuned next week for part II of the series, where the experts discuss how they monetize social media.