Enterprise & Social Media…its coming!

Social media for enterprise…kinda doesn’t sound right does it?  The separation of work life from social life is a mainstay of the Australian lifestyle.  We all want work/life balance so do we even want enterprise in the game & how do you do it without making a mess? The answer is ‘yes’ we want enterprise in the game IF they do it right.  Right means achieving a proper balance between the business needs, the technology and creating a community.  

I have a simple starters strategy that looks like this:

1. Listen before you leap: don t jump into the conversation until you understand how it flows and by all means, identify yourself as an enterprise, authenticity IS your image now.

2. Plan your strategy and start small and stay focused.  Pick one area to concentrate on and do it right.  If it’s customer service then do that well, if it’s PR then stay focused on that til its right before you move on.

3.  Set expectations and metrics clearly and properly so you can achieve targets:

• Use measures that test influence not just physical data about visitor numbers
• Deeper traffic analysis & social analytics & engagement metrics like links, comments, RSS subscribers, are the key metrics
• Measure site impact on the online conversation for key topics and overall brand value improvementŸ

4. Move to more and bigger objectives only after mastering the small ones.

5. Read Cluetrain Manifesto so you understand that markets are conversations

In the end enterprise can be as big a player (if not bigger) as consumers. The key is to build a platform slowly and become part of the online social fabric, the big bang will get you killed.

Here’s the full presentation