How Your Social-Media Strategy Is Stifling You
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Dianna Huff has long been telling B2B marketers that they need to have a strategy in place before they enter the social-media waters. "But here's the deal," she admits in a recent post at the B2B MarCom Writer Blog. "I've been wrong. Dead wrong."
Why the change of heart? Because the word "strategy" makes it sound like social-media waters run deep, when they're actually "pretty shallow," she argues. In shallow waters, "you can easily walk to the shore using what you already know—how to put one foot in front of the other."
Engaging prospects and clients through social media is not a radical undertaking, Huff has concluded: "It's simply this: talking to other people."
Therefore, she warns, formulating a strict social-media strategy could actually work against you, because it "keeps you from being authentic." And sticking to a strategy in a social space is just plain stifling.
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Lol. Maybe in a perfect world, this approach would work. Unfortunately we live in a world where marketers don't "already know what to do" as the author states. In fact, many people in "marketing" positions have very little understanding of the full strategic marketing process. Further still, the new digital space has suddenly given all employees in an organization a platform where they can be heard. Most have absolutely no clue about how their personal social media engagement can affect their organization's brand. Hence why it's crucial to at the very least have a digital engagement strategy in place for the organization as a whole, explaining thinks like goals, objectives, policies, governance, new job descriptions, empowered vs. not empowered accounts, target audiences, etc...
I found your premise intriguing, but like Mike, feel that some basic structure needs to be in place when representing a brand other than your personal brand. At a minimum, marketers need to define the role they want Social Media to play in the overall marketing mix and put some "rules of the road" in place. However, as you state, that may not need to be "Strategy" with a capital "S."
--pam
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We certainly ought to know how to speak to people, but everyday experience shows me that this is not the case. Our world would be a much better place if we could communicate well. We don't listen and we don't acknowledge that we have heard the other person. Companies and marketers have a 100 year history of one-way communication so they are not schooled in the 'listen, learn and respond' mode. Several studies have shown that companies regard this lack of skill in their employees as a major barrier to social media success.