A few nights ago I had the delightful privilege of speaking on a panel called “Tweets, Tags, and Texts: Making Social Media Work for You” sponsored by my alma mater, Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business, Alumni Council. Panelists included:
- Sudha Jamthe: Social Media Strategist, PayPal
- Felix Sterling: SVP and General Counsel, Trend Micro Inc.
- Ben Parr: Co-Editor, Mashable
- Jim Delli Santi: CEO, AlikeList
- And yours truly
Ben Parr provided a most memorable comment, and I could not resist echoing it again. To paraphrase, Ben warned the crowd, “If you think of social media strictly from the tool perspective, you will become a tool…”
The Online Slang Dictionary defines a “tool” as “an uncool person, a loser.”
Focus simply, or too intently, on the technology and your social efforts will fall short of the mark. This advice is what my former Forrester-colleague Josh Bernoff, co-author of Groundswell and (now) Empowered, described in his seminal work on setting social strategy, and which I later adopted in much of my research. We used the acronym POST to remind marketers and business people to focus on your audience and objective first, and to consider which technology will help you reach your objective last.
P = People ”Who do you want to reach socially?
O = Objective ”How do you want to change your relationship with them?”
S = Strategy “How will you do that? And how will you know you were successful?”
T = Tools… Technology, Tactics “Which social tools will you use?”
I found it particularly insightful that this little quip came from Ben. He was, by far, the biggest social media enthusiast on the panel, and the one most steeply entrenched in it as an editor of Mashable. (Imagine, if you will, Ben sitting next to Felix, the General Counsel for TrendMicro.) Ben reminded me a lot of former colleague Jeremiah Owyang, a social media maven extraordinaire who taught me a lot about how to engage socially and successfully. Both Ben and Jeremiah are quick to encourage business folks to cast off into social waters and start sailing. Yet I find it interesting that both believe that, to have a successful journey, you can’t just hire a boat with the best GPS navigation and sonar systems, but that you have to know where you want to go – and who you want to take along – to have a safe and happy voyage.
Professor Terri Griffin, who moderated the panel discussion, felt that Ben’s comment summed up the evening well. Besides narrowing in on a specific audience and articulating a clear, measurable objective, what are some other keys to success you have found in charting these unfamiliar social waters?
(PS. Yes, for those of you who notice, I am backfilling my blog with old posts. Let’s just say Xerox has kept me a bit busy of late!)
