Social media strategy should be a long bet

This post is being pub­lished in Mar­ket­ing Mag­a­zine’s 2009 Media Guide. I’m not sure when or if MM are pub­lish­ing it online.

Over the years, I’ve prob­a­bly ded­i­cated some­where in the low-​​mid six fig­ures in words to the sub­jects that inter­est me:

• user expe­ri­ence
• social media
• web strat­egy
• knowl­edge work and the peo­ple that do it

Most of that writ­ing has pointed to or dis­cussed aspects of these things and how I believe they can work together to increase the poten­tial for any busi­ness to be more suc­cess­ful. As I’ve done so, it seems a num­ber of peo­ple have cho­sen to take notice, even when I’ve railed against the appar­ent obses­sion in the mar­ket­ing indus­try with using social media, in par­tic­u­lar, to try to sell stuff. I stand by my words, even in the face of some well-​​argued counter opin­ion.

So, what am I talk­ing about then?

What I’m talk­ing about, is really car­ing about an invest­ment in your strate­gic approach to all of those fac­tors — user expe­ri­ence, social media, web strat­egy and knowl­edge work — over at least 12 months, and prefer­ably longer, any­thing up to five years (and occa­sion­ally more). I’m talk­ing about embed­ding these things into your busi­ness cul­ture and tak­ing a long bet on their value as a suc­cess fac­tor over time.

Too often, and increas­ingly, I’m see­ing those new (where new is less than sev­eral years) to the game get all hot and both­ered over the “faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed over­comes the fear of death” approach many, includ­ing much of the mar­ket­ing indus­try, are tak­ing to social media. It’s all about sell­ing, and Twit­ter Boot Camps, and short term, non-​​strategic approaches.

Breathe in… And out… Pause for a moment and look out to the hori­zon. Try to (metaphor­i­cally speak­ing) peer over it. There. Doesn’t that feel better?

If this, do it now, do it fast approach is your model for get­ting clients involved in social media it is doomed to fail­ure. Sure, it might work for this cam­paign, or that one. But over time? Not a hope.

Sure, the world moves fast these days. We all know that. But busi­nesses still require strat­egy over time, and mea­sure­ment of the inputs and out­comes of that strat­egy. You can’t mea­sure that suc­cess based on three month campaigns.

So, what do I pro­pose? Here’s a short list to start chew­ing on. Some of it con­sists of things to do, oth­ers are about my view of the world.

1. Social media isn’t new, but you’re prob­a­bly new to social media — Make an effort to under­stand some his­tory. Learn about how the things you’re doing now on social net­works have existed in soci­ety, and inside the walls of organ­i­sa­tions long before you ever knew about them — knowl­edge work, col­lab­o­ra­tion, com­mu­ni­ties, shar­ing, men­tor­ing, nurturing.
2. Strat­egy is a multi-​​part thing com­bin­ing busi­ness, tech­nol­ogy and com­mu­nity — All of these things must be in bal­ance before they will work together prop­erly. An imbal­ance will hurt your busi­ness, your client, your tech­nol­ogy or your community.
3. Don’t try to sell as the first thing you do — That com­mu­nity part of your strat­egy, the peo­ple you used to be able to call users, or cus­tomers? They don’t like it. And they will let oth­ers know. As much as we slam the door on sales­men on the street, we will slam the door in your online face too if what you bring to the table is pres­sure to sell to us.
4. What hap­pens to your cam­paign and its com­mu­nity in a year? — If the cam­paign you’re about to launch is suc­cess­ful, some­one (per­haps many some­ones) are going to get emo­tion­ally invested in it. What plans do you have for them? How are you going to sup­port that emo­tional invest­ment over time?
5. Users aren’t — Nor are they cus­tomers, or eye­balls, or click throughs, or view­ers, or what­ever other term you choose to try to tack onto them. They are human beings. They are excitable, fal­li­ble, inge­nious, dumb, clever, and every­thing else all at once. Treat them like humans and they’ll respect you for it. Treat them like a demo­graphic or a met­ric and they won’t.
6. Who else might ben­e­fit from your strat­egy? — Have a think about this. What if another busi­ness unit, or another busi­ness alto­gether, or a friend, or some­one on the other side of the world could ben­e­fit from what you’re build­ing? What addi­tional ben­e­fit in terms of social cap­i­tal, in whuffie, might you get if you shared your ideas rather than stick­ing them like Rapun­zel in some impen­e­tra­ble tower?
7. It’s not about you — As much as you, your employer and your mates might con­sider you a genius, you’re prob­a­bly not. Some­body has in all like­li­hood pitched your idea to their boss or client already. If you’re putting together a strat­egy, take a look around to see who’s suc­ceeded and failed before you. Pick over the bones, gather the best ideas and mash them up to build some­thing of real value for your client or busi­ness, not some­thing to high­light your CV (if the idea is good, it’ll end up there anyway).

But how is this about long bets?

Well, it’s this. While I’ve mis­ap­pro­pri­ated the term, “long bet” for this piece (long bets are actu­ally about much longer term think­ing and out­comes than one to five years — they’re worth read­ing about), I want you to con­sider the pos­si­bil­i­ties if you took the four things I men­tioned at the start of this piece — user expe­ri­ence, social media, web strat­egy and knowl­edge work — and built your strat­egy for the work you’re doing, whether it’s for a client or your own busi­ness, with them in mind, over at least a year. What ben­e­fits could you realise? Who could get involved? What addi­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­va­tion or ideation (is that really a word?) might arise?

Car­ing about the peo­ple who are going to expe­ri­ence your cam­paign, or strat­egy, or prod­uct, or what­ever, counts for a lot. It wins you points. Peo­ple will talk about you. Treat them well and that will talk about you more. Treat them well over a long time and they will talk about you a lot more.

Every­one read­ing this is prob­a­bly a mem­ber of a social net­work of some descrip­tion. It’s in social net­works, whether they are real life at the foot­ball or the pub or online on Twit­ter, Face­book, LinkedIn, or the inter­nal social net­work in your busi­ness, that they’ll do that talk­ing. And those places are their turf. You need to play by their rules. Page takeovers, intru­sive ads and shouty sales­men just annoy peo­ple. And sooner or later, they’ll shut you out or invoke Gilmore’s Law on you.

Karma can be great, or it can suck. Depends on the fla­vor. Share some of the knowl­edge you build and the things you’ve learned around and you’ll get less of the sucky kind.

And please, what­ever you do, think strate­gi­cally. Think about the long view.