Interesting presentation by Jeremiah Owyang on his Web strategy blog discusses the concerns that many large corporations have: can we scale social media as the demand grows? As Jeremiah says, “the amount of discussion generated from customers is only going to increase while your internal social strategists and community managers may only marginally increase.”
Jeremiah suggests that corporations put in place a strategy that pursues, most likely in parallel, three crucial initiatives:
- Using all the voices in your ecosystem (the Rings of Influence) not just being the only ones to talk.
- Develop more customer-to-customer technologies that leverage your customers to do your marketing, sales, and support.
- Invest in Social CRM systems, while immature now, they will eventually help companies respond in real time –and maybe even anticipate customer need.
I recommend reading Jeremiah’s slide deck where you will find many suggestions and examples of what companies are doing now. I was reminded of how many “old school” technologies contribute to the socialsphere, such as forums and knowledgebases. But the future of social CRM is a key variable in how well companies will cope and for a more complete analysis of that, I suggest Jeremiah’s report on 18 Use Cases of Social CRM. The strategy of how social CRM fits with your sales and marketing CRM strategy is going to take some time and discussion, bringing in a moderator such as Jeremiah and his company, Altimeter, is something to consider and budget for.
I can hear some of my network saying, “But I have 20 employees, we have hundreds of customers, we are already fighting a losing battle!” Two responses: 1) it’s not going to get any less important, and 2) Jeremiah’s recommendations still apply. The job description of “Community Manager” is not new for your company, it used to be called customer service. There is a change in scale, however. Where your customer service rep may have only responded to random phone calls and emailed inquiries, the social network landscape opens up many opportunities to be proactive, and to hear when you customer is talking about you, rather than to you. As the leader of a company of any size the truth is that understanding and using social media at virtually all levels in your company is crucial for your success. As Chris Brogan talks about in his post on Scaling Social Media, social media is “… part of the relationship-building, … and can’t be skimped on.”
What is your view of the growth of social media relative to your company’s growth? Are you losing the race? What are you doing to increase the multiplier of social media involvement and effectiveness per employee?