Social Media: Leave Your Leisure Suit Behind

Social media is all about conversations.  And apparently even the big brands are still looking for ways to join in.

At least that’s one of the many things we heard at the MIMA event last Wednesday night at Solera in downtown Minneapolis.  Over 300 social media expert “wannabes” attended this event, appropriately titled, “Duality Reality:  Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise?”.  Many of Minnesota’s biggest brands were represented, including:

• Jason Kleckner, Manager, Information Architecture, Target Corporation
• Jim Cuene, Director, Interactive, General Mills
• Brad Smith, VP of eCommerce & Digital Marketing, Fingerhut Direct Marketing
• Gary Koelling, Creative Director, Social Technology, Best Buy

(We should also give a shout out of thanks to Michael Kraabel, Group Creative Director, Gage, for a fine job moderating what turned out to be a candid, insightful and often funny conversation.)

If you missed it, make sure that you download the podcast; it’s well-worth the time to listen to what these “big guys” have to say.  I won’t recap it verbatim here – that’s what the podcast is for – but here are some of the themes that stood out for me:

• It’s a two-way street:  The mass-market, one-way-communication model that built these iconic brands doesn’t translate successfully to the social media realm.  It’s less about what we (branders) want to say, and more about what our customers want to tell us, and how we respond to them. Which leads to the next theme…
• The need to listen:  Brands need to acknowledge that, in order to participate in the social media conversation, they don’t control the communication any longer.  To succeed here, brands need to learn to listen better.  In fact, the panel advised that one of the most important first steps a company or brand can take in social media would be to create a tool that allows you to listen to your customers.  Then respond in ways that your customers will value
• Develop your social skills:  For a brand to succeed here, it has to learn to act like a sociable person.  That means listen.  Be interesting.  Be relevant. Offer something of value.  Be worth being heard and attended to.  The quote of the night goes to Gary Koelling, who aptly summed it up this way:  “Brands are going to have to figure out how to behave like people.  You can’t show up at the party in a leisure suit anymore and expect to get laid.  It’s not going to happen.  You’re going to have to show up and behave like a decent human being.” 
• The need to try:  Large corporations haven’t figured all this social media stuff out, either.  No one has “cracked the code” on harnessing it, controlling it, measuring it, etc.  – and maybe never will.  It’s more about the opportunity cost of not being there, than what is its ROI.   So the advice from the panel is to “Try.  Fail.  Fail fast.  Then try again.”

So in the end, did we learn who controls social media in the enterprise?  I think so.  It sounds like it’s the consumer.  And if we take these guys’ advice, we (brands) all need to listen more, quit trying to monopolize the conversation, and behave like people we’d like to hang out with. 

Resources:

• Jim Cuene’s blog
• Groundswell by Forrester Research’s Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff 
• TechCrunch
• Techmeme  
• Andy Bio’s blog
• Marketing Vox 
• Tim O’Reilly’s blog
• Who Should I Follow 

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This entry was posted by Erica Butler on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Interactive Marketing.
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