A Social Media Call to Arms
In his post “While Others Paint the Trim,” social media evangelist Chris Brogan sounds a call to arms, challenging all social media enthusiasts and practitioners to supply specifics on how to implement and inter-connect social media tools, especially in larger organizations. He also says that social media is much bigger than any one discipline in the enterprise:
[Social media] isn’t a PR tool; it’s not a marketing tool; it’s a communications tool and a media making/distribution tool set. And further, it’s not the only way to the finish line out there. It’s about working on the larger need and then using the tools judiciously.
He goes on to say that larger organizations are already sold on social media and are now looking for “actual strategies with definition and detail.” He adds:
They want a better understanding of how the tools go together and which ones will make the best impact for their business goals. They want a whole lot more than “you’ve gotta get on Twitter,” and they want it to demonstrate impact, but have a path for sustainability. They want it not to be an island, but to be tied logically back to the right parts of the business.
As a technical communicator, I summarize Brogan’s persuasive call-to-arms in my more matter-of-fact style: Large organizations want a process. They want to know how social media works, for each component discipline in the enterprise, from start to finish. Relating to the software development world that I am most familiar with, that means Sales, Public Relations, Marketing, Product Management, Development, Quality Assurance, IT, Technical Support, Technical Publications, Manufacturing, Operations, and gosh—I’m sure I’m forgetting someone—but that’s the idea.
A framework for deploying social media in the large organization is exactly what Chris Brogan provides in his next post, “Pirate Moves – From Awareness to Extended Action.” In his “continuum” of relationship-building stages, Brogan lists each part of the social media deployment process: awareness, attention, engagement, execution, and extension. He provides general examples of how to use social media tools at each stage, with the end goal of getting a “buyer” (a term he uses loosely to describe “the person you want to have take an action”) and your “would be product” (be that “an opinion, a service, or what have you.”)
Tonight, Brogan praised Keith Burtis’ post “Sharing a Social Media Story from the Arts,” which describes how Burtis used social media tools at each stage of the deployment continuum in his online woodworking business. In drawing our attention to Burtis’ post, I think Chris Brogan is challenging each of us, from our respective disciplines, to come up with a strategy (including activities for each stage of the continuum) for deploying social media in our organizations.
—That’s just what I’ll be doing, at least starting to do, in my next post (see A Model for Collaborative Writing on the Social Web). I’ll be writing specific steps for deploying social media tools in the technical communication discipline. How about you?
Photo credit, dbking