I want to revisit a topic that my colleague Mike Manuel brought up in August of last year: Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Strategy. As Mike pointed out, for many firms the strategy is rather shallow, that is, 'We listen and respond'...but as he asked, how? why? and the ever important question, how are you measuring the effectiveness of that engagement?
As more organizations pay attention to the social web and begin to engage what is the best structure for this?
What is the best model for online engagement? Centralized or De-Centralized?
Right now I see a mix of two models for companies doing a good job of social media monitoring and engagement:
1. De-centralized: A number of folks all have their own feedreaders and custom RSS searches. What they monitor and respond too is limited to what interests them, or the work they do. This may be aligned by business units or product groups. There is little or no oversight, coordination or measurement.
There are pros/cons to this structure. Obviously it's good that those who are passionate are getting engaged, but there are risks with this. Also, without any type of metrics there is no coordinated tracking of issues for trends or determination that the time being spent is justified.
I think this is what is happening in many large organizations. As internal social media teams develop to form strategy and support internal folks this may change.
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2. Centralized: A person or department such as PR monitors conversations and then responds as needed. In some cases an internal team assists with responding, or best-case scenario the issues are flagged and sent to the appropriate person for response, i.e. customer service, product development, etc.
For large organizations the sheer conversational volume can be overwhelming for one person, or even a department. As we all know, not every conversation is important. How do you determine which issue require responses?
Tools have recently emerged that allow for proper tracking of 'issues' online and can assist with the internal assignment and follow-up. Radian6 has added this functionality, and we've developed our own tool for clients.
A centralized source can look at the whole picture and hopefully see trends and issue emerging, but that still doesn't stop employees or other business units from doing their own thing.
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That leads to perhaps a third model, which is mixed. Some business units have a centralized approach, but that's only for their fiefdom.
If you work at an organization what is your strategy? Centralized or De-Centralized? Do you see yourself shifting in the future?
I have a few more thoughts on engagement.....more on that tomorrow though.
Visitor Comments
At HP we run a mixed model, which I think is reflective of how HP's communication is run.
We have our Corporate PR team that monitors the big issues, looks for hot topics, etc.
Each product team, marketing group, regional go-to-market team is then free to monitors there specific space.
The main problem is that not every team monitors their space and many do it to varying degrees of seriousness. Plus, as you said, corp can't get everything related to every HP group.
I think it's a start but we are working on ways to train and encourage each team to monitor their space, while also providing a feedback loop between corp and each team.
It's a big project that will take a long time to iron out but at least people are moving in the right direction.
Posted by: Tac Anderson | January 5, 2009 5:54 PM
In my experience, when something becomes core to a company's operations, the key for its success is management (strategy, organization, reporting...). Social media participation is slowly becoming one more of those 'things' for companies. Someone has to manage it while many/all employees will be involved in it. So yes, the mixed model seems the best: De-centralized participation and centralized management.
Posted by: laurent | January 5, 2009 6:59 PM
Hey there Josh,
First off, happy new year.
You're right though that we've seen all three of the models you've mentioned at work with various clients of ours. I think it sometimes depends on resources available, where the monitoring started in the org (with person or department), what terms are being monitored at the moment (this may expand in time causing the model to shift) and how active the company is at the moment in terms of engagement (which hopefully all companies eventually move to.)
Great topic for discussion. Thanks for bringing it up.
David
PS. Thanks for the mention too. :)
Posted by: David Alston | January 5, 2009 11:03 PM
In my experience there needs to be some organization around this issue so that things aren't missed, or worse, that they aren't bungled.
I think that a mixed model works as long as everyone is clear about where their domain or expertise lies and focuses on that, the micro level. Then you need someone to oversee the whole thing at the macro level to ensure (big) things aren't slipping through the cracks.
Also, as you hinted, you have to have some sort of agreement on what I like to think of as the engagement scale. What gets escalated, what gets handled immediately and what can you let pass through without comment. It is different for every client and company.
Posted by: Kami Huyse | January 6, 2009 3:26 PM
Similar to what the commenter above said about things being missed w/o clear communication and responsibility:
Another risk of the centralized model is that it may unintentionally "absolve" product teams from actively participating - or give some gun-shy managers the out they want to say stay away to their teams. "PR is on top of this, they'll let us know if anything hits the fan" or "Corp Communications owns responding here - don't go there" could both result despite the best of intentions.
When I was at Microsoft (couple years back), we largely had the de-centralized model and I think that still holds true. Though PR/Marketing/Comms teams there are more and more employing centralized monitoring tools and crisis comms processes. So it's a blend, but that issue of inadvertently having the product teams disengage from active involvement in the community was always a concern whenever we talked about layering on owners, metrics, and centralized tools.
To keep the best of both worlds, you do need to clearly lay out where responsibility lies and avoid inaction due to lack of clarity (or fear).
Posted by: Kevin Briody | January 6, 2009 5:55 PM
As I demo Techrigy SM2 for enterprise consideration I hear both sides. In some cases a department will be owning it (generally either marketing or PR).
The other side is that the tool is used by many departments. Our category structure & reporting accommodates this just as easily as the single use case.
Posted by: Connie Bensen | January 7, 2009 12:48 AM