This is a comprehensive guide for large corporations to engage in social media properly, in order to leverage its power and at the same time avoid some of the possible backlashes of a non-existing or improper planned and/or executed social media strategy.

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SO C I AL MEDI A PRI MER FO R LARGE CO RP O RAT IO NS
Written by Carsten Cumbrowski, March, 27 2008, Originally published at SearchEngineJournal.com
This is a comprehensive guide for large corporations to engage in social media properly, in order to
leverage its power and at the same time avoid some of the possible backlashes of a non-existing or
improper planned and/or executed social media strategy.
This guide was originally published with the title quot;Social Media Guide for Big Brand Corporate
Businessesquot; at the search engine marketing news blog Search Engine Journal, where it was well received
but the many thousands of blog readers.
INTRODUCTION
The amount of activity and participation of
people on sites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr,
YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, Del.icio.us and other
so called social media sites and social networks
that make up what we call the new Web or
Web 2.0, did not go unnoticed by the big
business out there.
The possibilities to do something good with it
for your business are real, but hard to gauge,
measure, adjust and redirect like how must
things in the real world and the good old Web
1.0.
An untamed wild beast is powerful yet dangerous at the same time. Some beast can by nature not be
tamed entirely, regardless of what you do or try to do in order to keep it under control.
There will always some amount of uncertainty and risk involved when being around or doing something
with those animals. The same is true for social networks and quot;peoplequot; in general. However, the risks can
be reduced by knowing more about the beast, learning how to handle it, being aware of the possible
reactions (positive or negative) and having plans ready for as much as possible scenarios in the event
that they are needed fast.
Social media can be leveraged by any company, especially large corporations. The problem is that large
corporations are often scared of this new type of way of how communication is conducted and people
interact with the company and its products and services. Yes, it is different than it was in the past and it
requires some rethinking and learning, but it will be worthwhile doing, if you do it right.
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Rushing the thing to jump onto the bandwagon as quickly as possible is not only dangerous, but also an
open invitation for disaster and the chance that things get even worse after the first quot;incidentquot;, which
will come for sure. That is not a question of IF but WHEN. The traditional quot;ignorequot;, quot;bullyquot;, or quot;use the
PR-Agencyquot; methods can have an unexpected backlash and hit you without you being ready for it.
Why go through all the trouble and even think about implementing a social network and for what?
Social media can be used internally, as an extension of an extra-net, which involves suppliers and
business partners and/or externally to communicate with existing and/or potential future customers.
Wikis and other collaborative editing/content management systems, rating and ranking features,
comments and discussion forums can be used for anything that is some sort of data repository, database
or collection of information. It can also be used for phone and contact lists and events calendars as well.
If you let your customers engage you and your products directly, things like focus groups and similar
vehicles for market research and testing could be replaced entirely and become more efficient than the
best quot;focus groupquot; will ever be. You allow direct input from people who actually know and use your
products or your competitors. People who know what they need and can tell you exactly what that is
etc.
Projects that involve you and multiple of your suppliers could be coordinated in a way that each supplier
can interact with the other and discuss possible issues, specifications and time lines without the need
for you to do anything at all. Issues that arose from three way communication, no communication or
clarification of provided specifications can cause problems that result in delays and problems during the
project implementation. Errors and misunderstanding could be avoided, if open communication
between the involved parties would have been available during the whole course of the project.
Those are only a few examples, but you get the general idea I hope.
You want to make the most of your social media implementation and ensure that it does not become
just another unused tool, which was rejected by the users or simply ends up a mere replication of
existing data repositories without adding additional values.
You should consider the following things for your social media implementation.
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MAKE IT EASY
Make it easy for the user to express
their opinions and ideas in the social
media environment. Implement the
right tools and make sure that those
tools can be used right away
without the user having to go
through extensive training classes in
order to use the system. More is not
always better. As a compromise,
make the common features enabled and active by default and put all the other stuff under optional
quot;advancedquot; setting for the geeks and super users who cry for more fancy features.
The barrier of entry that makes users participate or not, depends significantly on the fact how hard it is
for a user to take the first steps that are necessary in order for him to see a result, gets a feeling of
accomplishment and if and when he sees gratification in return to his efforts.
BE AS OPEN AS POSSIBLE
In many cases are better results accomplished if more people are involved rather than a handful
selected few. The enlightening moment is often triggered by a seemingly outsider who provides new
views and thoughts to a discussion that is trapped in a vicious circle without being able to escape it.
Let as many people participate as you can. Use a black list approach rather than a white list one and
restrict access only where it is absolutely necessary for security reasons or where you have to protect
your intellectual property from competitors.
ENCOURAGE, NOT DISCOURAGE
Let people do what they do, even if they spin off a little and discuss more than a specific problem at
hand. You might want to moderate here and there and move discussions that are in the wrong section
to another place where it is more appropriate and let the discussion continue there. Do the same if
discussions spin off too far and get off track as a result of it.
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POLICE, YES, BUT ...
Sometimes people go over board and add content that is not appropriate. quot;Not likingquot; or quot;different
opinionquot; is not what I mean by inappropriate. I am referring to the use of aggressive or obscene
language, threatening other users, publishing of company secrets in places where unauthorized users
have also access to it etc.
Most of the reasons why you have to police something should already be written down in some sort of
user guide that explains the network rules and code of conduct.
If you take actions against a violator, especially actions that are visible by other users, provide clear
reasons for your actions that the users can understand, follow and agree with you on. Do not act like a
secret police that acts arbitrary under a cloud of unclear rules and without the need to justify its actions.
Doing so will get you many things, but not trust by the users.
KEEP CONTROL
I mean by keeping control more that you know what is going on in order to be able to act where
necessary or appropriate. Don't do more than you can handle. If you go too broad and have more users
contribute to a vast number of things without you being able to keep an eye on what is happening, you
open yourself up for problems.
Create only as much as you can handle, even if that means that you have to make your social media
implementation a phased approach in order to be able to grow the necessary tools and staff to
moderate with it.
TRUST!
Now I will talk about the most important key element that businesses, especially the large brands that
are in most cases overly protective about their brand image, should keep in mind, if they want to go the
route of social media. Not every company is ready for it, actually most are not.
In order to have a successful social media site that has value for you and for its users, you have to make
sure that people trust you and feel safe from expected and unexpected repercussions and consequences
if they are expressing their thoughts and opinions freely. I mentioned this already, but I will repeat it
again, a bit differently to make sure that it is understood correctly.
I am not referring to obscene, vulgar or plain and simple unethical, immoral or even illegal stuff, but to
straight forward and sometimes blunt truth and honesty, which is either in opposition to your own
views or at first glance negative for your precious brand image.
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COMPLAINTS, NEGATIVE AND OPPOSED OPINIONS
With a few exceptions are those negative or
opposed views and opinions not malicious
with the intention to just damage your
reputation and brand. They often show a
different perspective you have not been
aware about before or a spelled out problem
without any attempt to talk it nice and less
of an issue than it actually is. In those
instances is the intention of the person who
expresses himself that way almost in every
case very honorable.
The person intents to change something that
is not right, at least in the way how he
experienced it, and get it fixed or seek alternative options and suggestions. It is sometimes to remedy a
current issue that is still open and unresolved and in other cases something from the past, where the
person wants to help to prevent that other people have to make the same (negative) experience he
made.
Those expressions will occur and the one thing you don't want to do with them is to suppress them,
delete them or prohibit or use any other means to discourage those kinds of expressions. You would
lose trust and respect from people who notice it, from clients, staff members and outsiders alike.
If the negative opinion has some real basis and is real and no joke, censorship will not make it go away
or solve it. People are most likely to take their grudge and take it elsewhere to a place where you have
most of the time no control at all over the events that might follow as a consequence. The person who
took the time to express his issues and concerns at your site and finds out that you try solve the issue by
avoiding it and suppressing any conversation will only get elevated in his negative thinking about you
and get madder than he already is because of the issue itself. That does in almost any case because the
next rant by the same guy at another place to be much more negative and damaging than the original
expression on your site.
EVERYBODY CAN FORGIVE HONEST MISTAKES
Everybody can forgive honest mistakes, because we all make them. Nobody is perfect, including the
seemingly perfect brands that less people actually perceive that way, considering it to be fake, unreal
and detached from real life.
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PEOPLE DO NOT FORGIVE CENSORSHIP
People however are less forgiving when it comes to how somebody responses to sound and real
criticisms. It demonstrates to any other customer and potential future customers how you handle
problems, conflicts and concerns of your customers. They will see what they might have to expect in the
case that they run into similar or completely different issues themselves.
Even the happiest customers of your might get worried if they see you handling such conflicts and
problems badly, without making reasonable attempts to clarify the issues, seek the cause and provide
either possible solutions to the problem or an explanation why that problem occurred and why you
might not be able to provide a solution that will be satisfactory to the grunted customer.
TURN NEGATIVE INTO POSITIVE
This feedback is the most honest that you can get and no focus group will ever discover. It also lets you
turn negative publicity into something positive for you and valuable for your clients or potential clients.
The quality of your product or service will benefit from it, if you implement changes to improve it based
on customer response and feedback, if the product or service will not get better, then the specification
of what your product is good for and what it is NOT so good for will be better defined and most
importantly will customers of yours feel much better about doing business with you, as they can see
that you will not abandon them in the event of a problem that might come up down the road in the
future. … and since you allow all this to happen on your grounds, it will be less likely to spread around as
much, giving you the ability to quot;suck it all inquot; to just have to manage one larger fire that to combat many
small fires all over the place and you can make sure that the problem does not escalate or sidetracks to
make any solution finding impossible.
You can ensure that the discussion remains fair and civilized and not turns into pointless flame wars.
COME OUT STRONGER
In short, your brand and business will get out of this much stronger, more confident with a much better
perception of you by the community, which will then result into a very good reputation, trust and more
business for your company. And that is at the end of the day what it is all about, isn't it?!
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NOT LIMITED TO CUSTOMERS ONLY
What I just said is not only limited to social media platforms that deal with outsiders, such as your
customers, but also for purely internal Wikis. If employees who express concerns or problems get
discouraged, belittled, branded as quot;trouble makersquot; or worse, fear for their job, they and everybody else
will simply stop raising those concerns and problems and only talk about all that is good and peachy.
This will cause problems to get worse and worse over time until they burst into the open and hard to
impossible to deal with. By the time everybody can see the problem, the possible solutions are most of
the time very radical and sometimes negative as well.
Many of those problems became a big problem over time and started out as a small and very
manageable problem that could have been easily fixed a long time ago, if only somebody who saw it
back at that early stage already would have voiced his concerns and pointed to the problem. That would
at least have given the company the opportunity to fix it right then or at least keep an eye on it to act a
bit later, but before it escalates into an unmanageable monster.
CONCLUSION
I hope that you find the provided tips and recommendations useful. If you were not thinking about
possible ways for how to leverage social media for your business, this article might provide you with
some ideas to reconsider this option. If you are working for a large brand, I hope that you got out of this
that there is nothing to fear except for the fear of doing it itself and that doing it is worth the risks, if you
are aware of them and prepared for the things that are awaiting you.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Social Media Optimization and Word of Mouth Marketing 2.0
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