Signs of a Tipping Point for Corporate Participation in Social Media

According to the new PR wiki there are over 130 corporate and business blogs and more than 8% of the Fortune 500 is blogging. To borrow a line from Abram Sauer’s recent post titled Connected?,

"If you’re not already one of them, you’ve probably thought about it. And it just gets more tempting."

I’m sure it’s tempting but I think most big companies would like to put consumer generated media back in the bottle. Why? Because it’s stripping down their control of the message and putting them in a position to act. In this new world, one consumer’s opinion can outweigh anything the company can say about itself. Companies are now in the tough position of needing to act and risk getting it wrong, or ignore and seed the conversation to the consumer and possibly a more aggressive and agile competitor. The good news for people who want to see more corporate participation in social media is that it’s definitely something that’s on the radar now and I believe will see more investment in this area starting this fall and into 2008.

This is my anecdotal perception of what’s going on; Social media awareness has reached a point where marketers know it’s something they need to budget for. They are searching, gathering information, downloading white papers, going to conferences and talking to vendors about services offerings, options and of course, costs.

With four major clients (Spherion, True Jeans, Appistry and a TBA) I’ve been marketing and selling social media services since March, 06. However, I would say there has been a big up tic in interest since last spring. A lot more companies are calling me to investigate doing something with social media (either monitoring, blogging, commenting, or podcasting mostly). In July I participated in a Frost and Sullivan Marketing East Conference attended by hundreds of senior marketing executives from fortune 1000 companies. Many of them were asking questions that indicate to me that they are beyond the ‘what is a blog?’ stage and into the ‘what should our strategy be?’, ‘how’,’how much’ and ‘when’ phase. Here are some of the questions…

  • What different tactics would an industry leader take vs. a new entrant in the consumer generated sites?
  • Any advice on how marketers at big companies can convince corporate compliance that blogging is a good idea?
  • What is the best way for a company to handle a bad Consumer Generated Media thread and how can you avoid this from happening in the first place?

This suggests to me that 2008 will be a major year for corporate social media strategies and initiatives. I think that the adopters that come on in 2008 will drive force even reluctant companies (possibly kicking and screaming) to budget for it and then finally participate in 2009.

Why are companies reluctant? Large companies want to see statistics, but social media participation is hard to measure and ROI is difficult to predict. In my experience this is also a catch twenty two because even when a company has bought into social media services, there are no guarantees the company will allow a vendor to implement a tracking system that will properly measure ROI. From personal experience I’ve had trouble getting IT to dedicate the minimal required effort to implement the tracking.

Another part of the reluctance on the company’s side is concurrently, online marketing departments are hitting a stride and comfort level with more predictable, measurable and systematic online marketing tools such as search engine marketing and online ad sponsorship.  Now marketers are being prodded to use their marketing brains to crack consumer generated media, which, at its core, is a culture that is the opposite of PR and marketing spin. It’s a new job for marketing and communications managers. This post Google world makes me wonder if marketers will ever have a ‘cushy’ job. I can imagine them thinking thoughts like: 

  • ‘Oh great, now I’ve got to monitor bloggers because what they say can impact my business.
  • ‘My CEO needs to be blogging if we want to maintain our thought leadership position.’
  • ‘My product developers should be encouraged and empowered to blog too.’
  • ‘Let me go home at 5pm and spend some time with family for goodness sake.’

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll be the first person to tell you that some companies should not blog or engage in social media. A lot of companies are simply not ready to take the leap. My advice is to take baby steps. Social media monitoring is something that should be within reach of any company. Here’s what every company should be monitoring.

Unfortunately for the companies with deep pockets, the reality is that participation in social media is more than just doing a little homework and then spending like you’re Vonage on a pre-IPO market grab. Once you understand blogging culture and what social media participation for your company really means, you realize that (in many cases) making it work requires a grasp of blogging best practices, goals, strategic thinking and a cultural shift that stretches beyond the boundaries of a marketing and communications department.

Take it for what it’s worth but I think that starting in late 2007 and by the end 2008 we will see a surge in the number of companies either dipping their toes in by increasing their blog monitoring efforts, or getting up to their waists by combining some sort of monitoring and participation effort (with either textual blogging, podcasting, video blogging, social network participation, a combination of all). I’m not saying all of them will be successful but I think it will be the critical mass or tipping point that will make corporate social media strategies a standard part of business by the end 2009.

I think that 2007 and 2008 will produce a wide range of brand name companies participating in social media. This will produce a few high profile case study reports that garner widespread business media coverage beyond the blogs into mainstream business media. Mainstream media is already providing a steady drum beat about how the customer is in charge.

If you want some signs of the tipping point, check out this passage from Perry Evans at Evans INC’s blog post titled Against the Gain. It summarizes s The Sunday NY Times article on how AOL is struggling to shift along with online consumer behavior.

"To simplify, searching isn’t so obviously the center of the future universe. The old adage of browsing is rapidly taking on a new life form - call it social, call it exploring, call it stumbling - consumers are rapidly adopting new forms of information navigation that do not follow the paradigm of Search. Media is in a fundamental shift beyond search into personal and community exploration and interaction, and it feels (to me) to be approaching a tipping point.

Perhaps the future no longer belongs solely to the Search Box?"

I also have a theory that for every company that enters the blogosphere there will be three more competitors saying ‘Oh shoot, now we’ve got to get in there too’. What would that create? Ideally it would be a collection of consumers and company personalities maintaining a dialog that is mutually beneficial. The reality will be more of a mix between (to borrow a phrase) clued in socially responsible companies (participating, adding value to the conversation and helping consumers) and clueless (companies that are not aware of social media culture, benefits and best practices) companies trying to inauthentically game the system.

I wish I could use a less pompous term than clueless. However, I’ve spoken to some companies that are paying people to find blog posts that relate to their products, and then drop in a comment that says nice things about their products as if it were a real consumer. This kind of tactic is a threat to social media because it will drown out the real consumer generated dialog. The good news is that this particular company was willing to listen to me when I told them there was a more authentic way to go that would probably result in better results (But I digress). Ignorance is bliss but this tells me that education is very important to the future success of corporate social media strategies.

Here’s Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson reading a chapter from their new book called How to Do Everything with Podcasting. Download the 22-minute conversation here or listen below (MP3, 10Mb). There is a section around minute 4 that i will paraphrase

‘Exactly what can podcasting do for a business? To be frank that’s the wrong question. Podcasting should be applied as should any communications tool as a solution not a goal in and of itself. No business should ever begin the process of creating and launching a podcast with a statement that sounds like this… By God, we aught to be podcasting. Instead it ought to come up in discussions about ways to reach audiences to convey particular messages or to address specific situations and problems’.

Listen to this podcast now:

To me, this 22 minute listen is a great way to start the education process. Burn it on a CD and give it to your CEO to play on her ride home from work. Maybe when she’s done she will subscribe to the For Immediate Release Podcast - which is another great first step. Is it possible to have two first steps? Hmm, let me think about that :)

If I’m right then social media is an opportunity for some companies to take some risks and gain ground with consumers while the other guys are contemplating their navels. The companies that do it right will prescribe to this philosophy that I lifted from a March 2000 interview with David Weinberger about ‘Cluetrain Manifesto’.

"Companies that erect a fortress storefront on the Net and send goods out for sale, but immediately hoist the drawbridge at the first sight of a peasant rebellion, will fail. Only those businesses that "decloak" and engage with consumers online will have a fighting chance of succeeding."

That’s all I’ve got for now. I know there’s a lot here to digest but I really want some feedback. I’m sure there is someone out there who can pick on some of my thoughts. I know at least one person.

Tags: cluetrain+manifesto, corporate+blogging, markeitng predictions, online+PR, social+media, tipping point
Filed under: Blogging ROI, Blogging Strategy, Blogging Tips, New Communications, Social Media

Posted by Stephen Turcotte on August 22, 2007 4:13 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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