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social media: what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
An interesting question was posed last night on Twitter during a conversation between James Duthie, Brett Nicholson and myself.
The discussion evolved after a great blog post by Brett here, titled “Why you shouldn’t hire a social media strategist”.
Ooh, I hear you say. Controversial. And, just to clarify, we’re not talking about gurus, evangelists, experts or any other self-prescribed social media quack. We’re talking about what comes first, the adoption or the strategy?
Or, as Brett said:
when PR and marketing strategy collide
In the blue corner, public relations (the egg) argued by myself.
It’s the age-old question, what comes first the chicken or the egg? Now, one could write an analogy on the theory about evolution but I won’t. Instead, I’ll keep it simple.
The egg must come first.
Or, in other words, social media adoption in an organisation must come before the strategy. In fact, we know from the regular statistics, that social media adoption is already in an organisation, and more and more employees, consumers and stakeholders are already online. And, perhaps more significantly, they’re already talking about you and your brand.
What does this mean?
You need to embrace this culture, and nurture and empower the employees and consumers to start embodying your brand’s currency before you develop your strategy.
Two points why:
- Companies need staff that embody their brand, create the conversations and embrace a culture of openness and engagement within the company (both internally and externally). And, social media can be the catalyst for this.
- At some point, I think this can be a risk for saturation and dissolving of the objective for the company. Thus, where a strategy (and perhaps) external direction could assist. At this point, social media for an organisation does need dedicated resources as well as widespread adoption with the employees, in order to steer the ship.
So, instead of bringing in the social media strategist to come and develop some organisational goals and tactics for your social media presence, embrace your brand’s existing conversations internally and externally. Create the cultural shift of empowering your employees to act as hundreds of brand advocates for you (build your community blocks), then leverage this goodwill by creating the strategy for achieving your business objectives in social media.
There’s no point coming in with a strategy and objectives, and then trying to get your biggest allies on board after the fact. You will most likely find the resistance will be significant. Instead, understand your current reach, and build your influence and ripple around that.
In the red corner, marketing (the chicken) argued by James and Brett.
From Online Marketing Banter‘s James Duthie:
Employees are 100% your most important asset in executing and maintaining an ongoing social media presence. Without empowered and motivated employees on the coal face, a company is going to struggle to effectively implement any social initiative.
But… I don’t believe in letting employees loose without a defined strategy. To me, without a strategy they’re essentially sailing a ship without a destination. And that ship is your brand. Employees tend to focus on tools and tactics rather than clear business objectives.
It’s the role of the strategy to ensure that the work they do has a defined outcome that will benefit the business. The strategy doesn’t have to be comprehensive or cumbersome. “Structured experimentation” is a term a colleague is fond of. But the idea is that some direction exists to guide employee participation.
On the matter of culture, I also see this being driven from the top (by the person who develops the strategy) rather than the groundswell. Ultimately, it is the role of the strategist to convince key business leaders of the need to embrace a socially savvy culture.
While some employees may be able to do this, many will lack the persuasive skills. And ultimately culture is embraced and driven from the top, as evidenced by the likes of Scott Monty (Ford), Frank Eliason (Comcast) and Tony Hsieh (Zappos).
And from Digital Oz‘s Brett Nicholson:
Companies are seeing the amazing impact Social Media can have, and see the potential of it.
Unfortunately what many fail to see is the forethought and culture that fosters a successful Social Media strategy. If you recognize the need to be involved and are looking to avoid the #fail meme agencies and consultants are the place to start. They have access to industry knowledge, tools, case studies that most businesses don’t. They also bring a fresh perspective which can assist the culture change that is probably taking place.
Which comes first strategy or culture…? Succeeding in Social Media is about achieving business objectives – like any communications tactic.
Culture is really important, and there needs to be at least the beginnings of a paradigm shift by understanding that Social Media has its opportunities and the limitations. It’s at this point strategy can dedicate a clear direction to enact the shift in thinking. From here on in both the chicken and egg need to adjust and evolve as required.
I like David Meerman Scott‘s analogy of Social Media as venture capitalism, prepare to fail and learn – a lot.
So, what do you think? We would love your comments and thoughts on what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
This post marks the 6 month anniversary of my blog, just another pr. Thank you for your wonderful participation and discussion over the last 6 months, and I am looking forward to much more discussion and interaction on all things public relations, marketing, advertising and life. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this blog, please email me karalee.evans@gmail.com
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7 Comments
Oct 7, 20093:02 pm
FIrst up: I’m from an agency, so I’m unable to remove myself from the inherent bias that goes along with that.
However, I’d have to agree that a strategy must come first. That’s not to say that the strategy shouldn’t be developed in consultation with staff, just that a ‘free for all’ won’t really help anyone. Your staff’s mechanical knowledge of social media (ie how to create and maintain a Twitter account or Fb page), or even their having thousands of friends/followers does not necessarily translate into an ability to deliver on business objectives for the company.
Let’s all get over the hype and realise that social media is NOT a rewriting of every single rule of business out there. You wouldn’t tell your sales staff ‘ok, now go and sell things’ or your customer service staff ‘just go and make people happy’ and leave it at that – more likely, you’d have a considered plan about how they can achieve those outcomes. This doesn’t imply that it would be rigid or top-down, but there would be a plan nevertheless. Why should social media be any different?
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Oct 8, 20098:13 am
Social media perhaps represents a more efficient way of doing business i.e. especially the word of mouth concept. Suffice to say it adopts the pull technology and in the same breath respecting the integrity of the customer. The beauty of this is that the checks and balances are in place – placing the reputation of the company at risk if they were to treat their customers poorly – hence social proof
This method of doing business can only grow to the benefit of that most important customer – the facts of such growth are already apparent.
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Oct 8, 200910:54 am
I agree the employees are the key here but so is passion, no strategy can help employees show passion for their brand and for a lesser extent social media. If the passion is there it can be guided by strategy but if the employees have no passion for social media or the brand it will show through immediately.
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Oct 8, 200911:47 am
I think the strategy needs to come first; however it needs to be realised through employees who are already social media savvy. It’s a delicate balance, but without a solid sense of the what and the why and the how, an organisation leaping into the fray with, say, Twitter, will be more likely to be randomly firing off in all directions. If the people ar eon the ball it will eventually find its feet. But knowing why we are here and what we are trying to do helps to focus it. Especially if the social media engagement is happening through a number of staff, not just one.
This is based on my own experience of an organisation jumping into Twitter without really knowing why, and including a number of people, some of whom were not overly familiar with the terrain
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Oct 8, 20093:05 pm
The strategy comes first. If the strategy is (as outlined so succintly by the Blue Corner in Point 1: “Companies need staff that embody their brand, create the conversations and embrace a culture of openness and engagement within the company (both internally and externally”) then Social Media may be one of the tools used to achieve the strategy.
And as with any tool the people engaged to wield it need to know how to use it effectively. We all use telephones every day – so are better than others at working in a call centre.
If your strategy dictates that social media tools wielded by the broad cross section of your staff is an effective communication tool between you and your internal and external customers, those staff can do it because they believe in the objectives, the brand and the customer – because you have created a culture that works. Or they can do it because you tell them it is their job (a different sort of culture and one where any use of engagement tools will come off insincere and ineffective).
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2:55 pm
Interesting concepts – and you’ve left me with a foot in both camps, when I thought I knew were I stood to start with. Yes, you do need to harness the energy and enthusiasm of your people and they are a significant part of your branding initiatives – they walk and talk your brand every day – but you can’t let them completely loose to do their own thing. I’m not a fan or dictating to your people, but (just like children) they need boundaries to know what’s expected and acceptable.
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