The Social Media Team: Roger, Roger

An aspect of social media execution that I think often gets lost in the shuffle is communicating among your internal team. It’s so very critical to doing this stuff (okay, any business stuff really) well, but it’s like the shoemaker’s kids having crummy shoes. We forget to take care of our own.

So let’s talk about this in two pieces; the things you’re going to want to communicate about and why, and then a few tools you ought to consider to help you do that.

The Information Highway

On a daily basis, there’s so much happening across the company that it’s nearly impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff, and know what your colleagues and compatriots need to know. It’s not the minutia that matters so much as the things that could potentially affect the way someone else does their job, for better or worse. Especially as it relates to social media, the intelligence that needs to be shared is the meaty stuff that influences how your team interacts with your customers and community. Just a few examples:

Sales and Biz Dev:

• New account wins
• Significant account losses
• Sources of new leads
• Upcoming significant pitches/presentations
• Significant decision drivers for prospects/customers
• Goals, both short term and long term

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Support and Product Development

• FAQs and recurring issues among customers, including which are being looked at for implementation
• New product/service updates/schedules
• Testimonials/Use Cases/Feedback

Community and Communications

• Share of Voice vs. Competition
• Overall sentiment for the brand
• Media Coverage (traditional and social)
• Testimonials/Use Cases/Feedback
• Upcoming events/speaking engagements

Executive and Management

• New Hires, Promotions, other HR
• Changes to compliance, regulatory or legal issues/policies
• Strategic Planning & Business Goals
• Partnerships and Alliances (and their purposes)

Everyone:

• What you need from other team members/expectations
• What other team members are doing that’s valuable (not sunshine blowing, truly meaty feedback)
• Ideas for other team members outside your role
• Cultural issues: the positives that keep you coming to work and the challenges that make your job harder

All in all, this is a guidepost. It’s not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to get you thinking about what might be important in your company. And I’m not advocating that you churn out dozens of reports and spreadsheets and graphs and sit around the conference table looking at PowerPoint slides. I’m suggesting that in the format that works for you and your culture, you need to be talking to each other: regularly and openly. Social media is about communication, after all. Don’t ignore each other.

The Power Tools

Communication really isn’t about the technology, it’s about the intent and the effort. But having some of the right tools around you can be super valuable. Let’s talk about a few things that are available so you can consider what might work for you.

Micromedia Platform: With the explosion of Twitter, there’s a strong movement for similar products that are meant to be used internally. At Radian6, we use Yammer for quick bursts of internal communication, and mostly to share news like media coverage, interesting links, or sales wins.  Another application that serves a similar purpose is SocialCast, though I can’t speak to it’s capabilities.  These tools are helpful for many-to-many communication and useful for sharing quick bites of information that would otherwise clog people’s email inboxes.

Instant Messaging: When IM arrived, email volume for me dropped dramatically. It’s great for the one-off ping to someone. The downside is that it’s not captured in an archive (unless you deliberately do so) and it’s only one-to-one communication, but sometimes, that’s all you need. I’m a fan of Adium, an IM client that integrates all the popular platforms into one easy to use interface.

CRM and Engagement Tracking: Let me disclose one more time that I work for Radian6, so my comments come from that perspective. Our platform happens to have a feature that allows each user to respond to and track responses to posts and comments across the social web, as well as post comments to internal team members about specific posts so we can talk to each other about how to respond (or how to disseminate important feedback). This kind of audit trail is invaluable, because you can not only track what you’re doing, but report on it later.  Whether or not you’re using Radian6, you’ll want to devise a system for tracking and capturing the interaction your team members have online.

You’ve also got to have a solid system in place for tracking your customer and client relationships. Don’t skimp here; if you’re small, find a system that you can grow into. We use and like Salesforce, but there are literally dozens on the market, all the way up to enterprise-level (and incredibly complex) software like SAP. It’s pretty straightforward, but you MUST be able to keep track of the path of communication with, among, and between your customers and prospects, and have it available for everyone to see.

Blogs: Internal company blogs can be a compelling way to disseminate content and information around the enterprise, but they also take a dedicated effort by the team (read: time and access to information). But they can be a streamlined way to share information, stories, ideas and challenges, again without cluttering the email system. Since they’re readable on the reader’s schedule and allow for comments, blogs also serve as a great archive of information and resources across the company. Dell and Best Buy have done amazing things with their internal blogs, everything from innovating new product and service ideas to simply sharing news and successes. Platforms like WordPress are easy to install and integrate into secure areas of your company website or intranet.

Social Networks: These are going to be overkill for some companies because they take significant human, capital, and technical resources to make them work well. But companies like IBM, Deloitte, Microsoft and Best Buy have been leveraging the power of social networking internally for sharing everything from employee-generated ideas to communication among disparate offices and collaborating on product and service innovations.

There are enterprise providers like Awareness Inc. and Jive’s ClearSpace that offer compelling and robust white-label social network platforms, but even something like a private network on the Ning platform can be a great starting point for companies looking to take the next step toward internal and multi-channel social communication.

The Old Fashioned Way: Please, please don’t underestimate the importance of our “old school” tools like the phone and email, or even the (gasp) in-person meeting. I’m not a big fan of meetings for the sake of them, but with a purpose and a clear agenda, there’s no substitute for taking time out of your day to get together and communicate with voice. You can only digest so much in text before you tune out. But don’t just use your meeting to report in to each other, use it to tackle a particular question or challenge and aim to come away from the meeting another step closer to the solution. Distance in the way? No worries. That’s why they invented GoToMeeting and Skype.

So. What are you communicating about amongst your team? What do you WISH you were communicating about more? What’s signal and what’s noise, and what makes your job easier? I want to hear your input in the comments so we can all learn and think alongside you.

Photo credit: Thunderchild tm

Assembling the Social Media Team

When you’re assembling a team of people to head social media efforts, it can be a daunting task.  What characteristics and skills do you look for? What departments/disciplines should be represented? And how do you prepare for the inevitable turnover? Let’s take these in turn.

Nunchuck Skills, Bow Hunting Skills…

Communication skills might sound obvious, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really. Here are a few standout qualities I’d look for in members of your social media team:

Work Ethic
Social media doesn’t fit neatly into job descriptions, and lots of it you’re going to be sorting out as you go. Seek out people eager to extend a bit beyond their job description, roll their sleeves up, and dig in amongst and with a team. This sort of role requires someone who is agile with their projects and can shift gears relatively quickly without losing their place or getting completely overwhelmed. And it’s helpful if they have an interest in roles and areas of the company outside of their own.

Diplomacy
You know the people that are great at building bridges: in meetings, among colleagues, with customers. We might have called these just “customer service” skills back in the day, but it’s more than just responding when called. It’s anticipating needs, and being willing to be truly helpful at a personal level (sometimes before you’re asked).

Team members should also be strong educators, carrying the social media torch back to their teams and departments and communicating well and often about what the team is up to, and how it affects them. It’s important that they also know how to build relationships *inside* the company. With their managers, with other departments, with HR, IT, and with legal. They’ll need them.

Balanced Corporate Perspective

You certainly want to be working with the people that are knowledgeable about their varying disciplines within the company. But you also want those that aren’t just drinking the company kool-aid, since the packaged corporate speak won’t play well in social media. (Note: you don’t want the people who are the perpetual naysayers, either).

Look for people who have a positive attitude about your company and your potential but are forward- and independent-thinking enough to see what could be made better, both within their own roles and globally.

Product/Service Knowledge
No matter their function internally, you need to be assembling people who really understand the inner workings of your company, or have the relationship skills needed to build alliances and learn quickly. This kind of practical, functional knowledge is critical so that social media strategies can be approached and employed with company-wide implications in mind at all times.

And if the people on your team are going to be actively participating and contributing to social media endeavors, your customers aren’t going to care what department they’re from, they just know they’re part of your company. Everyone needs to be armed with enough information (or access to the information they don’t have) in order to help get customers the connections and solutions they need.

Problem Solving and Listening
This might go in the “duh” category. But team members need to be listening to what’s happening inside your company so they can be effective stewards of that information to your team and to the customers.

Team members also need to listen carefully what your customers are saying – even when they’re not saying it directly to you – in order to shepherd that information back and determine what to do with those insights to move things forward. This implies that all the members of the team need to have listening tools at their disposal, a point I’ll get into in a later post.

Not everyone will have all of these skills. But if you focus on finding people that have a few of them and spread the love around, you’ll have a well-equipped group of people that will help you launch a sound strategy.

Build Across Borders

You want to assemble a team of people that have certain skill sets, representing as wide a swath of departments as you can manage. This piece is really important because it ensures that your social media strategy will be built and executed with as wide a perspective as possible internally. That means understanding the potential benefits, the potential pitfalls, and opportunities to leverage both across all the different aspects of your business.

In an ideal scenario, you’d have people representing:

• Corporate Comms and Public Relations (this can include agency partners if you have them)
• Marketing
• Brand/Product Management
• Customer/Client Service
• Business Development and Sales
• Human resources
• IT
• Legal and/or Investor Relations

The right mix probably includes people with the right mindset first and foremost (or at least the open mindedness to consider social media as a promising strategy), and a mix of levels of responsibility. You don’t want all managers or all executives or all junior staff members. You probably need a couple of upper-level folks to champion the initiatives up the ladder, and the rest should be people doing and managing the day to day work.

And you need the people at the table to ask the hard questions. This shouldn’t be a fishbowl brigade of all the social media evangelists, but a mix of people that will allow and encourage healthy discussion with open minds about what the pros and cons of social media can be for your particular company.

Planning for “That Day”

A prevalent issue in social media today is “what happens when we train these people, put them out there on behalf of the company, and then they leave?”

My flip answer is: and this is different than any other person you recruit and train and they leave because….?

But I understand that the bigger concern is that you set expectations for “faces” of the company that may or may not be there someday, and that losing them means that you’ll lose customer loyalty because they were attached to the person and not the brand.

This is why it’s so important that you create a *culture* of social media in your organization, and empower many different people to be involved in your company efforts. Then the conversation becomes about “that company really wants to talk to its customers” as opposed to “that guy is really their social media guru”.

This really is about starting small, with a cadre of people that can champion the cause, because ultimately you want everyone in your organization to function with this mindset. Yes, you’re going to have a few people that stand out and carry the flag a bit higher than others. Yes, likely at some point they’re going to leave. But if you’re infusing a social communication mindset a little bit into all of your business functions gradually over time, there’s always going to be someone eager, willing, and more than capable of taking their place.

In other words, having a company spokesperson is great. But they need to be an indication and representative of an entire approach, not the approach in and of itself.

So, that’s a start to get you thinking about what your team might look like. What else would you add? What have I missed, and what considerations are important to you that we haven’t talked about? Tomorrow, we talk roles and responsibilities.

photo credit: bobster1985 via Flickr

New Series: Equipping a Social Media Team

I started to write a post about Equipping your Team for Social Media. And it grew and grew and grew until it became clear to me that this was much more digestible as a series.

So today’s the start of what’ll probably end up being 4 or 5 posts about building, equipping, and empowering a social media team. I’m coming at this from the corporate perspective, assuming that you’re building mostly an internal team (though I’ll touch a bit on the roles of consultants and vendors later in the series).

What Do you Mean A Social Media Team?

Let’s assume for a minute that you’re already convinced that social media is something you need to be integrating into your work. (If you still need convincing on this front, sift through my archives or any of the myriad blogs on social media out there right now).

When I refer to a team, I mean exactly that. A group of people inside your organization that are tasked with strategizing, executing, and stewarding social media initiatives inside your company.

Those initiatives can be anything from just listening and mining social media conversations for insights about your brand presence to participating actively through blogs, Twitter, forums, or other social networks to engage with your customers.

So, Who Should Be Involved?

I’m going to get into specifics about recruiting, skills/attributes and succession planning later on, but for now, suffice it to say that if you’re only considering adding people to your social media team from your communications department, please stop there, and let’s chat about this for a minute.

I know we communication types think that since the word “media ” is involved, it should live exclusively with the communication department. And I think that’s selling it all very short.

Your customer service, product development, and business development teams really have stakes in this game, and you ought to consider a cross-disciplinary group that includes people from all of these departments. Why?

The information you glean from social media is going to affect more than the way you talk to your customers. If you’re really integrating it, it should be affecting the decisions you  make about how you help those customers, and ultimately inform the products and services you provide to them. So my team would have folks from:

* PR and Corporate Communications
* Marketing
* Customer and/or Client Service
* Business Development or Sales
* Brand Management
* Product Development
* Executive Team

If you’ve got multiple people in each department, select a point person or two for each to help streamline internal communication, but everyone needs to be engaged and involved.

Team members are responsible for strategizing and executing the social media initiatives that are relative to their department function (which sometimes means active social media participation and sometimes implementing internally), communicating back to the team and management about results and challenges, educating and training internally about social media initiatives, and finding ways to integrate the learnings from social media into their work. We’ll dive more into specifics on that later, too.

Why The Hell Do I Need One?

I’m going to be brief here because I’ve already written at length about the fact that social media isn’t going anywhere. Call it what you will, but socially charged communication is changing expectations in business, both for customers and potential customers alike. There’s no backwards now.

So given that, you need a social media team because having one champion in your office forever doesn’t scale. You cannot conceivably manage a comprehensive and properly integrated social media presence with one guy (or girl). And done right, social media bleeds into almost every aspect of the business. That doesn’t mean that everyone gets on Twitter, but it does mean that what you learn through social customer engagement can and will inform decisions and ideas about much of what you do. And the right people need to be empowered to do something with that information.

To me, building this team is a first step to getting departments to work across borders, but all with the goal of improving the customer experience, and building a more solid foundation upon which your business can grow and thrive.  It means managing the monolith of social media by integrating it into what you’re already doing, not completely reinventing the wheel. Dividing and conquering, and building a system of people and tools that make the ultimate value – consistent and dedicated customer outreach – much easier to manage.

What You Can Expect

So for the next several posts, we’re going to talk about things like:

• Recruiting and developing your team members, the characteristics of solid social media team members, and planning for turnover
• Roles and Responsibilities, some ideas for deliverables, and some tips for engagement and outreach
• The Team Toolkit: some of the tech and stuff you need to manage all this
• Measuring Success: When you know you’re doing something right

Anything else I’ve missed? Comment, email, whatever you like. And then, off we go….

photo credit: khrawlings