In any discussion about social media and its role in an organization, there are recurring themes that emerge and it is helpful to start here with a common baseline of the social media landscape, its challenges and opportunities.

The Landscape

Google the words “social media” and as the 577,000,000+ results will attest the social media landscape is enormous with no shortage of perspectives on what social media is all about. To frame this discussion in a more manageable context, here are a few key ideas to keep in mind:

  • Social media represents a fundamental shift in values and principles of communication and business models where consumers and clients become producers and stakeholders, all participating in a 2-way conversation characterized by openness, transparency, and direct personal contact.
  • Social media can take many different forms such as blogs and microblogs, discussion forums, online communities and social networking sites, content communities such as picture or video sharing sites, and mobile applications.
  • Technology has supported much of what social media has become, but social media is not about technology, technology has merely enabled the open access to information and the scalability of publishing techniques and provided the means for participation.
  • Social media is about the message AND the medium – the two go hand in hand. The changes in technology have been driven by the shifting values and principles, while the changing values have in turn been enabled by the technology. Both the core values and the technology need to be looked at in tandem – ignoring one does a disservice to the other.

The Challenges

As with anything that is new and different, there is a learning process involved with becoming familiar with the nuances of social media. But understanding some of the challenges is an invaluable starting point for finding ways to participate.

  • Low barriers to entry can lead to poorly executed projects. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Hype around social media leads to an appetite to participate but not everyone who takes part can participate in the same way.
  • Ambiguity runs throughout much of social media, boundaries are not well-defined. New technologies overlap with the old, and social media can touch any one or all of the different forms of media. Audience segments will tend to overlap and will likely be receiving messages from multiple points of contact. Roles and responsibilities of those involved with a social media project are often ambiguously defined. There is often no logical single “owner” of social media within an organization’s existing structure – at the best of times collaboration and coordination between units occurs through formalized working relationships and processes (or an entirely new entity), at the worst of times social media has no owner or the wrong owner for that organization.
  • The technology, trends, and best practices of digital media change at a rapid pace. Free to use does not equal no cost to implement. There is always a cost associated with any new project in digital media. Investing too heavily into any software, whether through license fees or building staff expertise, runs the risk of being tied to legacy software or inefficient practices. Any investment needs to be provisioned in a way that is prepared to adapt and change course – an agile resourcing structure is key. At the same time, the on-going cost of support and maintenance must be well-accounted for; on-going operational expenses are a reality that has a direct impact on the long term success and sustainability of any digital media project.
  • Social media is an inherently personal form of communication, but expert users of social media do not necessarily equate to expert strategists, producers, coordinators, or brand champions. Lines between personal and organizational uses of social media are often blurred, and when it comes to organizational uses of the medium, there is a fine line between an individual representing themselves in social media as opposed to an individual representing or speaking on behalf of an organization or brand. It is a mistake to assume that an expert user of social media can necessarily run a social media program all on their own, especially on behalf of an entire organization.
  • Social media presents many questions and it’s easy to get distracted by the wrong ones. The first question is often “Can this be done?” or “How do we do this?” But the first question to answer is “Why?” Why are we doing this? What are we hoping to achieve? What outcomes are we looking for? How will we know when we’ve achieved it? What metrics will we use to measure our performance? Answering these questions often leads to more questions: How will we govern and make decisions? Who needs to be involved? How do we decide who needs to be involved? How will we find a shared sense of purpose? How will we personalize the interaction that happens online to make it meaningful? How will we plan to adapt? How will we carry out the organizational transformation? The challenge is to answer these questions without taking so long that we become irrelevant.

The Opportunity

The opportunity within social media has become readily apparent – it is a new medium of communication that leads to new ways of making connections between people as well as organizations, businesses and brands, with a reach that is both broad and deep. But the opportunity is also extremely vast – where do we begin?

One place to start is by looking at Levels of Participation.