Just about every company these days knows social media is essential to their future. But you’d never know it by looking at the way they treat it. If a company approached their presence on social media the same way they did, say, order fulfillment, they wouldn’t last more than a couple weeks. Business 2 Community has a great write-up on a report done by the Altimeter Group. Keep reading for a summary that shows how many companies are lacking the necessary strategy to make the most out of social media and far more.
The Problem of Strategy
The main finding of the Altimeter Group’s study was that while companies were implementing social media in their business, they simply weren’t taking it far enough. When asked where they would say their company was in terms of social media integration, 26% said engagement, another 26% took it a step further and said formalized, and 25% were still at merely “Presence.” Only 14% of companies claimed that they were in a strategic phase when it came to their social media implementation. Just 3% said they had actually reached convergence.
Business 2 Community, however, points out that this is hardly a problem unique to social media. Just about every form of marketing, they say, lacks clear strategy. Whether it’s content, customer-centric, integrated marketing, or just about any other kind, they all seem to suffer evenly from a lack of cross-department strategy.
A study done by MIT and Deloitte University asked companies what their biggest barrier was to implementing social business. Their answer? Lacking an overall strategy.
The Problem with Social Media
Although the last study confirms the problem of strategy that was pointed out in the first, it also brought up another interesting aspect of social media. Instead of viewing social media as a revolutionary way of communicating with customers and the public at large, most companies saw it as a method for fundamentally altering the very way they worked. When seen through that lens, it becomes immediately understandable why companies aren’t chomping at the bit to begin strategizing. They associate it with a great upheaval of almost everything they know.
The Strategy Solution
Once companies can change their relationships to the idea of social media, they can begin seeing results. Of course, this begins with forming a strategy
To paraphrase the article, strategies need to involve collaboration and openness to feedback, whether it comes from within the company or stakeholders on the outside. All strategies should be people-centric. This might mean shaking things up sometimes and not necessarily putting the highest paid person at the forefront of the campaign.
When you start from a foundation that focuses on your actual people, you have a strategy that you can aim at just about any area in your company. So, while your social media campaigns will stand a better chance, so will your marketing, your customer service, and everything else.
While the Altimeter Group set out to publish a report on where companies stood with their social media presence, taken in another light, it showed a lot more. Most companies understand the importance of social media, but they lack a strategy for approaching it. As it turns out, this is indicative of many areas in most company’s cultures. So, while social media should be a focal point for any business these days, they should use their approach to it as a method for refining their strategizing abilities.
Source:
http://www.business2community.com/social-business/real-social-business-strategy-challenge-0745322#!sszca
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