social media and business

Thursday night I had the opportunity to attend and event with the company I’m interning for, hosted by the Social Media Club Boston. It was called “Making the Business Case for Social Media” and was, of course, a great opportunity for me to hear what is being said about social media and its importance to businesses straight from those who are living it. The conversation revolved around measuring the ROI for social media and how to convince traditional businesses that investing in it is in their best interest.

Here is my recap of what was discussed, but brace yourselves, because it’s a long one!

The event was sponsored by TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony and panelists included speakers from Cymfony (market influence analytics), Weber Shandwick (PR and communications), KDPaine & Partners (PR and marketing measurement) and Shared Insights (community education and management for business).

The presentation started out with the panelists discussing the major challenges they have encountered when trying to persuade businesses to participate in social media. The issues they faced most often were:

• Fear of change

Or, what panelists called “corporate inertia”. Companies are so used to doing things the way they always have that they fear that changing their strategy might result in failure. No one wants to be the person who proposes an innovation and ends up losing the company a whole ton of money.

• Thinking that their target market doesn’t blog

Panelists claimed that it’s not really about who blogs but who reads the blogs. And if you run a search on Google about a particular company you can easily see where your company is being talked about, increasing visibility.

• Fears that all their competitors have bad so many comments about their business on the web

It’s very likely that bad comments about your company are already circulating, whether or not you engage in social media or not; this way, you get to be a part of the “conversation”.

• Thinking that they already “know what is going on” in social media

But the problem is that if they are not really participating, they don’t really understand the implications of what is going on and how important it is to be a part of it. And when negative comments come up, will they know how to react to them constructively?

• Thinking that they don’t need social media, that it doesn’t apply to their company or that it’s enough to “monitor” social media from the outside

If businesses maintain their stance of doing nothing in the face of evolving technologies and strategies, the innovators will rise above them and they will fall by the wayside. In the new world of media, doing nothing will render you obsolete. As Pat Fennessey (Cymfony) advised, businesses may think social media is not relevant, but when they are faced with a scandal, they will have no idea how to deal with it.

The way to get involved, panelists said, is very particular and companies need to pay close attention to how and where they decide to join in. The traditional way to handle things, the top down, highly controlled and centrally managed approach is not gonna fly in this environment.

One of the things that is very important to realize is that it doesn’t really matter where the public gets its content relating to the company, as long as they get it, even if that means they don’t visit your website. Social media is all about dialogue, asking your customers what they think, and taking it into account. When entering into a community, companies need to put their sales mentality aside. These communities are not about selling products; they are about building relationships, communication and honest exchange. You are there to share your expertise on a particular subject and listen and learn through what others have to say. Panelist Katie Paine (of KDPaine & Partners) remarked that marketers have long been accustomed to “yelling” at their audience about the benefits of buying products, but now the focus should be on listening. In fact, one of the audience members mentioned that that is what marketing should be about anyway, and that perhaps social media will help people perform marketing thoughtfully and well.

One of the most important arguments for businesses to participate in social media was what Greg PC (of Weber Shandwick) called ROi (small i intentional), which, from what I understood, is the low investment necessary for a high return when it comes to social media. But I will refrain from discussing this in more detail until I understand more about it.

There also were a few discussions on metrics (which I need to learn more about as well!) and how to select the proper social media technology for your specific goal. But few concrete guidelines were achieved here, since, as most panelists remarked, “it all depends”.

In general I had quite an interesting experience and am very grateful to have been able to attend. It is much more efficient to learn about something if you actually engage in conversations and discussions about it, meeting people face to face who are dealing with these issues daily, than it is to just read about it. Actually being around people in the mainstream and interactive media worlds and listening to what they had to say I think was a very beneficial for my learning process! However, I do agree with my supervisor that perhaps some things could have been better defined when talking about social media. For instance, panelists kept talking about “joining the conversation” but didn’t really specify which conversation, where, how or with whom. But I suppose that could be a topic for another event.

What do you think about the role of social media in traditional business? What’s the best way to convince them to participate? And when they have been convinced, how do you decide how to begin?

For more info on the Social Media Club and their events, and for their quick recap of the evening (best quotes), click here!

Hope everyone had a good weekend!