Customer Experience

By adaptive - May 20th, 2014

Developing an infrastructure to manage the next stage of your corporation’s social media development is vital to its success

Managing your corporation’s social media channels has been rapidly evolving. One of the issues that corporations face when adapting to the needs of social media is how this scales within their organisations. Initially, brands will simply chase followers or likes, with little care for the infrastructure they will need later when they have to manage what could be millions of followers.

Says Eddy Badrin, Co-founder and CSO of Buzzshift: “Before you start to build your social following, you need to evaluate your internal policies and processes. You need to have a clear (yet adaptable) plan that outlines how content goes from creation to publication. You need to know every role of every individual and department. Without a carefully developed infrastructure, it might take you two days to respond to a simple Twitter question. And we all know that two days is a lifetime on social.”

Infrastructure then becomes highly important if the initial work that has been done to gain a social media presence is to be leveraged further. Developing these structures now will ensure your corporation doesn’t loose sight of its goals across these channels.

“No matter how you decide to structure your social media activities, you’re going to need connections into how your business operates and you need to understand the objectives of each business unit,” says Ben Blakesley, senior manager, global social media for Reebok writing in the new eBook from Sprinklr. “The social media team is the face of the company, and need to know what’s happening throughout the business so they can be prepared for anything. Your infrastructure provides the basis for that.”

Getting organised to make the most of the second wave of social media engagement should now be the focus of your business. Infrastructure is a commercial imperative that will enable your business to take the next steps in engagement that social media is delivering.

Social scale

Until now social media was seen as somewhat of a by-product that marketing or PR created. With the moves to greater use of social media within customer services in particular, these siloes have been fast eroding. Organisations now understand that social media is a corporation wide exercise that requires the input of everyone. Achieving that level of integration means the development of clearly defined structures that everyone understands, and that can deliver the content that is required to ensure social media touch points are fully realised.

Andrew Jones, an analyst with the Altimeter Group said: “In our research, we’ve found that social business routinely involves up to 13 business units. Marketing, corporate communications, sales, customer service, loyalty, human resources, and others all have an interest in engaging with customers and prospects. In order for these diverse and distributed groups to work together effectively, they need to have access to the right information and the ability to coordinate activities in real time. They need a combination of policies, processes, education, and technology. Without a social infrastructure, social business is simply impossible.”

To successfully scale social within a corporation means leadership from the top. However, many research papers conclude that some C-level employees don’t even have a Twitter account. It is vital if the infrastructure that is now needs to push social media to its next level has buy-in from senior management is tangible. There is however, a shift in attitude as Steve Lunceford, specialist leader, Deloitte Digital explained:

“C-level executives are warming to the benefits and value of social business, and their commitment makes the difference in the progress of their organization’s social initiatives, according to the 2013 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project. C-suite executives’ embrace of social business bodes well for the individuals spearheading these initiatives within their organizations, as progress often hinges on executive support.”

Mark Schaefer, executive director at Schaefer Marketing Solutions also said: “The number one predictor of social media success is not budget or vision or strategy. It’s the corporate culture. If you’re going to move beyond just checking a box, this is a major change: transforming from a company accustomed to broadcasting and advertising to listening, responding, publishing, and even occasionally taking some heat in public. This is a significant shift for leadership, marketing, IT, legal, HR... almost every aspect of the company, really.”

Being prepared

Erich Marx, director, website and social media marketing for Nissan North America states: “Certainly investment in infrastructure such as management tools, listening tools, and analytics packages – as well as agency partners who can help with day-to-day operation and execution – is critical. But it’s also about investing in infrastructure such as cultivating a social mindset throughout an organization. It’s about investing in social marketing, PR, and CRM processes across divisions. It’s about installing a social governance policy as a core piece of infrastructure. It’s about being ‘built for social.’”

The insight that Sprinklr have gained conclude that a social relationship infrastructure:

• Creates and displays a singular, unified view of the customer that enables internal teams to take immediate, relevant action
• Handles all of your social media profiles, ensuring that every relevant conversation is captured
• Integrates with your existing infrastructure, such as brand, content, customer, knowledge, and employee management systems
• Provides a common seamless, integrated infrastructure for framework for managing content, campaigns, conversations, community, and collaboration across every business group, division, team, or location
• Surfaces the right social data to the right individuals and teams, at the right time, and in the right formats
• Provides social governance at both the federated level with high degrees of local control

There is no doubt that social media has become a disruptive force across the corporate landscape. Businesses are now through the discovery phase and are now entering the stage when enterprise management principles must be applied if social channels are to remain vibrant and relevant. “A solid infrastructure helps make social a truly organic experience when the data is leveraged to enhance the user experience,” concludes Brandon Prebynski, digital and social media, Cisco.