Corporations want answers to “How” social media

Yesterday I spoke to a group or senior marketers at a large Japanese company in Silicon Valley. I’ve met some of this team before, and they’ve come a long way.

The last time we met, I was answering “What is it” and “Why does it matter”. Yesterday, they wanted me to give a workshop, which answers “How” do we us social media, Parker even notes why this is so important.

As usual, some of iconoclastic roles were present, the Evangelist and the Corporate Controller, which is the role that is used to “message control”. We discussed that “messages” are now evolving to “dialogues” which often form “trusted communities” online, and that’s what’s important.

One of the first things I said to the group was “Success today will be if your group starts talking to each other by the second hour” They did, they were helping sharing, countering, and progressing, and it was great.

They understood by the end of my session that these trusted communities are forming online, and they’re not present. Groups of individuals in their own market are sharing ideas, giving tips and tricks, and recommending products, and they’ve not figured out how to be relevant.

They also agreed that equal amount of resources and attention needed to be put on “Social” as is “Analyst/Media/Press” influence spheres. There’s a new kid in town, and they directly influence consumers.

What are the tips that I left them with? I know this group, and corporate culture, to make suggestions, so here are the high level points:

1) Understand the changes that are happening, get educated and aware
2) Learn how to Listen to the market, find the influencers
3) Explore the tools internally
4) Consider external deployment
5) Try an event, meeting those influencers
6) Advanced Strategies for 2008

I also gave an hefty list of books, like Naked Conversations, blogs to read, and conferences and local events like Social Media club and Third Thursday.

While they are still in ‘crawling’ mode, it’s good to point to other companies that are moving very quickly forward, companies like Dell (read about their amazing saga), Sun, Microsoft, and a hundred startups who are native to this open culture.

If you’re from this company that I visited yesterday, thank you for the time, I really wish you the best, keep on reading me, and that list of blogs and resources I recommended.

If your company needs a social media workshop to get things moving, you can contact me, my email is on the contact page on the top right. My area of focus? Fortune 1000 companies, that’s because I’ve been working at them for most of my career, I understand the culture and challenges.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 5:14 am and is filed under Events, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.