Top Risks To Watch Out For In Your Social Media Strategy

I’m beginning to hate the term “social media” more everyday. As David Pogue, tech columnist at the NYTimes once said, “What is social media? A bunch of televisions talking to one another at a cocktail party?”

Regardless, self-expression and peer-to-peer communications are changing the game in how businesses and customers interact. In fact, one of my very near-term initiatives at Clickable is defining and executing our so-called social-media strategy. So it was good timing that Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff sent me his new report: “Objectives: The Key To Creating A Social Strategy”.

Summary:

  1. People – Assess your customers’ social activities
  2. Objectives – Decide what you want to accomplish
  3. Strategy – Plan for how relationships with customers will change
  4. Technology – Decide which social technologies to use

While the framework boils down to straightforward strategic planning 101 (i.e., defining stakeholders, objectives, strategy and tactics), Josh’s most valuable contributions are in the strategic and executional risks:

  1. Customer profile mismatches
  2. Poorly defined objectives
  3. Strategic timidity (or lack of internal buy-in)
  4. Flawed technology implementation

There’s a number of other watch-outs I’d add as well, such as:

  1. Poorly defined scope — what resources are truly necessary to carry out the plan
  2. Mismanaged expectations — “social media” is an ill-defined term that carries great hype, so you better expectations appropriately
  3. Technology product/service complexity — the fact is that social-media technologies range from open-source to utmost proprietary, and can be standalone or bundled inside of expensive consulting services; it’s messy, so you must accurately gauge your internal competencies and match them according to what’s truly being marketed to you
  4. Technology immaturity — Josh’s report starts to get at this, but social technologies are in their infancy and we’re bound to see tremendous change continue, as well as consolidation of an over-bloated product landscape

Thanks for the report, Josh!

Published by Max Kalehoff

Father, sailor and marketing executive.

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5 Comments

  1. Max reading the first paragraph in your post made me think enough to write a post. BTW you seem to have dropped the phrase ‘customer engagement’ out of your vocabulary completely.

  2. Max reading the first paragraph in your post made me think enough to write a post. BTW you seem to have dropped the phrase ‘customer engagement’ out of your vocabulary completely.

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