We Can Do Better Than This… Surely?

We hear that buzzword - transparency - in social media so many times, but I wonder how many of those who practise social media actually abide by it. I have been reading so many parties whom have been redefining the boundaries of social media in words. At the end of the day, I feel we are looking at more rules and less actions.

Take for example the HR company that I worked for many years ago, my manager was also the main decision maker. When my manager and I started another sub-company, I was also taught to do the same. Therefore, all clients and associates got to see was our managerial title and all decisions were left to a non-existent “senior management”. The fact was, we WERE the senior management.

Little wonder why we fell out eventually. Making known to the clients that I was one of the decision makers and was able to service them with a little more, did more good for the company than restricting the amount of work we can do for clients. As the days went, resentments grew when I determined that this was just another tactic to “deceive clients”.

As I came to know more and more Web 2.0 services, this scene seems to be replaying itself again and again. Precisely why, there are some like me whom have grown wary of Web 2.0 companies or anyone known to be operating these services. Just like how recently, I decided to turn my back on someone who often invited me to her employer’s gatherings on a “friend” basis. To my disappointment, someone spilled the beans to me about her shareholdings in the company. Effectively, she is more than just an “employee” which she had presented herself as.

Unfortunately, there are more people talking about transparency than actually practising transparency. This is something I feel must be changed, and fast! This spiralling effect is also potentially the one to slow down the adoption of social media here, apart from stale ideas we copied conveniently from our overseas counterparts.

Take the practice of private engagement for example, it works at times and it doesn’t for some other times. More and more companies are taking their engagement underground, which leave little in the open for a clear tranparent mode of communication. For another matter of fact, private conversations revealed to me by my peers with certain high-profile blog advertising companies painted a very different picture from what was declared in the open. Remember, you don’t want to be begging for sympathies from bloggers in private.

Is private engagement defeating the whole purpose of transparency in social media? Yes, it does when you look at it this way. In that sense, companies are using private communication modes to say things which otherwise, they wouldn’t on the open platform. Experience has tell some of us that, the more a certain business is insisting on private engagement - the more we should be wary of what transpires at the end of it. Treat it as, the inability to be held accountable for public statements.

Here’s some suggestions on how you can change for a more transparent practice;

Consolidation of opinions
When you have several parties voicing the same concern simultaneously, address all the problems in one related publication. It can be a press release, it can be a blog entry or even a circulation email. It beats having to answer to various parties individually with contradicting responses. It can also serve as a good guide to others whom have the same concerns but did not voice out.

Declare your status
Making known your identity isn’t enough. Your face-shot and name tell us nothing about your credibility. You don’t want to be caught lying with your pants down that you have more commercial interests in a certain entity than you have indicated. It just turns you into a gigantic target board in a small 50m firing range. Honesty is still the best policy. And yes, marketers have our ways to find out. A full-blown exposure is hazardous to any company. Do a search for Edelman - Walmart, nothing more I can say.

Avoid unverified contents
You shouldn’t be afraid of being held accountable for the contents or correspondences you put up. You earn more trust when you are willing to be held accountable, and that’s a big commitment to live with. If you’re not ready to answer for your statements and contents, you’re not ready for social media.

Encourage feedbacks without prejudice
Good or bad, embrace it with grace. This is exactly the part that companies find hardest to achieve. Many companies discourage their customers against negative feedbacks when at the same time they are preaching of how social media can be used with a balance. Clearly, you are not adapting to social media if you find it difficult to manage negative feedbacks. Like how I wrote some time back, social media isn’t something that you can apply the old marketing/PR rules to. The game has changed, so have the rules.

So far, there are very little examples who can truly put into practice all of the above, most of which derived from my encounters with various parties. My eventual verdict is anything but convincing. When businesses cannot perform these traits consistently throughout their social media involvement, they can only slowly fade away like most local blog aggregators we see. Hype fades… doesn’t it?

Related Read:
Be Real or Remarkable (Not Both)
Policies, biases and conflicts

August 25, 2008 | Filed Under Marketing, Social Media

Social media is for everyone

Jason has just written a fantastic article behind his philosophy of social media, I read in awe. It was very enlightening how he sees social media as the core responsibility of PR. I don’t feel he’s wrong, but my slight deviation in beliefs is too long for a comment. So sit tight, I’ll try to be as explanatory as possible.

While Jason emphasized that PR should be the fateful social media adopters, it left me to wonder about the marketers and customer service cohort. I gathered that these three are the most in touch with customers, compared to any other departments in corporate companies. Of course, support engineers etc do as well but not as much. Hence, Jason’s classic question… Where exactly should social media fall in the organizational structure?

Jason gave a brief definition of social media, which is precisely what I believe in and had been preaching.

Social media is a method of communications.

Social media tools facilitate these communications.

Evidently, the most appropriate people to adopt social media are not IT developers but rather, corporate departments that deal directly with consumers. The kink that I do not agree with mainly resides in the fact that modern marketers and customer service departments handle customers equally much. It is easy for us to think that only PR maintain relationships, but the fact is, marketers and customer service reps are much in the loop too. They are, afterall, the faces of the companies that customers see.

Yet, it’s not restricted to only the three above. Even R&D and senior management can get rolling with customers. As we have seen, more corporate blogs are being launched as the days go. With the technological shift focusing on interactive web, anyone and everyone can get online for a piece of the action. Can I consider that a good evidence of how social media applies beyond PR?

As some of us have experienced (allow me to restrict it to Singapore where I am), IT developers are sometimes the last people we want to be talking business with. I have pointed out countless times in my blogs and private dinners, a Web 2.0 website is only as good as a piece of online art without the human factor and interaction. Many IT departments can come up with some really fantastic ideas but it just doesn’t sink into the rest of the company. It is difficult to make them see that we do not need just another fanciful solution, but one that complement the environment equally well. Not change it to something it is not.

However though, Jason said that all-important thing about social media efforts.

What is most telling in your social media efforts is the message. And that is most likely already being supplied by your public relations or communications arm.

I wrote once in my now-dysfunc blog that through social media, there are always messages contained within social media’s interaction. I was met with objections, ranging from a social media “guru” (associated with Social Media Breakfast Singapore) to even PR professionals that social media is all about establishing relationships without all the marketing messages. Today, I hold firm my beliefs… there IS a message in every bit of communication we direct at consumers.

I think we are a little naive to think that companies are inviting social networks and bloggers to publicity events without a good reason. The quality of coverage is another issue, so I shall not go into it at this point. Like I said previously, there are no free meals in this world. Companies that deny this, I say it’s an outright lie. Not wanting to sidetrack from the topic, every exchange of opinions and complaints line up the infrastructure of the message. Is this a company that listens to customers? Is this a company that is willing to invest time to share knowledge with customers? Is this company giving enough to empower customers to provide assistance for one another? Is the product designer digesting the feedbacks when rolling out a new gadget for customers?

Everything, is telling the customer something.

It also led me to self-question if there is even “social media marketing”. It is a direct contradiction to the objections I received earlier this year, that social media is all about relationships. My take is, there isn’t really a process or technique called “social media marketing”. I felt more compelled to believe that social media changes the way marketers work with consumers (at best), in comparison to pushy product campaigns that have been done before the Dot Com Bubble Burst.

How did I end up with that? With the empowering of customers opinions, they often become the marketing mouths of various products. These unofficial product endorsements in social media engage the prospects through the sharing of experiences. Looking at it from another angle, you can almost say the workload of marketers are being shared by the average public.

At this point, you would have realized everyone in this viral cycle cannot be dismissed and should not be. While most social media efforts are typically driven by IT services now, it will require them to dabble with marketing knowledge in order to produce a system that will drive marketing and PR efforts. It isn’t just about marketers and PR adapting to the Web 2.0 environment. And the greatest mistake of all, IT developers’ attempts to convert marketers and PR into geeks. The website can’t talk (literally), it takes the participants behind the consoles to whip up an active conversation.

Instead of watching social media heavily centered around PR, I am more aligned to the school of thoughts that it will infiltrate other corporate functions in years to come. The IT department designs and builds it, PR starts the ball rolling, marketers adopt it to engage, customer service use it to support and finally, customers use it to respond or share.

It takes two hands to clap, and a team to click.

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