Social Experiments: 3 Thoughts On Dipping Your Toes Into The Deep.
Starting a new project can be daunting. The scale of the project is not always what is most daunting but the scale of management’s expectations, or even your own. Social networks have become the foreign lands every brand feels the need to setup an embassy. But how much investment is needed? How do we measure this new thing? Does it have an ROI? What if it fails? These questions, and more, keep many brand profiles on social networks at the experimentation stage for long periods of time. So the young chap who spends inordinately long hours of Facebook gets the job of setting up and managing the profiles and is then left to his devices.
Social networking/media can be intimidating for many businesses. That may also be why so many big brands outsource management of their social profiles rather than employing the staff they need to manage it. Here are three thoughts that helped me pick up the pace on a couple of projects that had me curled up in a corner. They may also help you get your experiment started and started well.
- Be deliberate. Have a plan. Cut the cow up into chunks of beef and deal with it one plate at a time. Start small but in the most effective and efficient way possible. Don’t start where its easiest, start where it’s most necessary. A small bit could be a Twitter account to keep your customer’s updated on the latest discount offers. It may be deemed necessary because you experience a lot of voice traffic on your phone lines related to inquiries on the ‘special of the day’. Keeping people informed may be beneficial to your bottom line too and Twitter allowed you to do it at a very low cost. It may be an experiment, but you must do it very well otherwise you’ll never know whether it failed because the idea was bad or the service stunk to high heaven.
- Have sticktoitivity. Don’t set out to do it for 3 months and re-evaluate in Q4. Social doesn’t work that way. Be ready to stick to it for a long while and be willing to stick with it longer than you plan. Persistence pays. Educate management on realistic expectations for the project or experiment and win there support for the long haul. If you can’t get management buy in over an acceptable period, things may not quite work out for you.
- Celebrate the victories. No matter how small. Invest energy in keeping morale high. Experimentation with social tools will only be really successful throughout the enterprise when people can mix the difficulty of embracing something new with the joy of winning. As you get started, reward those who become ‘stars’ at adopting the platforms and engaging on them and make everyone excited at the prospect of small victories.
Three thoughts don’t usually get me going when I’m stuck on something new. Sometimes it takes way more. I may need more thoughts tomorrow. Mind sharing your thoughts on how brands can get started on social networks?
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