The Undiscovered Country of Presence Management

April 20, 2009 · Comments

ghosts We asked for it. We wanted companies to come to us on our turf, to speak with us on Twitter, to participate with us on our blogs, to be on Facebook, and the like. But this doesn’t come naturally to many companies (especially larger), and it also doesn’t line up all that easily with existing internal work flows and job descriptions.

I mean, who is the right person at GM to Twitter? (They put Christopher Barger in Comms). Who’s the right person at BestBuy to be everywhere? Keith Burtis is everywhere (no idea what his official line of command is). Should the CEO blog? Not always. Not unless they’re Jonathan Schwartz.

Who runs all this is a huge issue to companies. It’s also the blood in the water that agencies smell from miles away as an opportunity. (This includes me, by the way.) And then there’s “we, the people,” those consumers that want to feel a genuine connection to these companies, not just marketing-ese pretending to be part of the fabled conversation.

Let’s rip into this a bit. This will be part 1 of 2. (Part 2 is about casting your nets.)

The Phone Tree Analogy

In thinking about who should man the various potential positions that social media provides, the question comes back to how you want to use it. Customer service? Marketing? Sales? This isn’t the same as putting up a website. In fact, think of it like this: a website is more like an automated phone tree, you know, “for English, press 1.” Social web presence is more like giving out everyone’s direct line.

Let that sink in. It’s every bit as much work to manage the relationships that come with online presence as it is to answer your phone without the robots to block people’s attempts. The payoffs are about the same, though. People appreciate the human touch of reaching someone online and having a “real” interaction. It might cost a little more, but it really shows a different level of care and service.

Is your company ready for that? Could your organization see shucking the phone tree in exchanged for a heightened sense of business contact? That might be a good gating question to consider. Hint: just having one person on the “phone” will rarely be the right answer.

And as for which employees should be involved in this, let’s get there a bit at a time. Because in lots of cases, the answer is “more than one,” but we’ll come to it.

Want to go a little deeper?

The Name Game: Who IS This?

How should a company identify itself online? Should you use the corporate brand? Should you be an individual representing the brand? What happens when the individual who’s built up all the credibility leaves?

I’ve seen it done all different ways:

  • @JetBlue – run by @MorganJohnston says it should be the brand first. He says it shouldn’t be about him.
  • @LionelAtDell and the rest of the Dell horde all use first name ATDell as their nomenclature. I prefer this, but have heard why that’s harder for people to search and find.
  • @WholeFoods tweets interesting things, for a grocery store. It kinda works, and yet, I always am left wondering “who.”

If you’re going to do a multi-person-using-one-account kind of implementation on a service like Twitter, use CoTweet, which comes with the recommended nomenclature of having ^CB at the end of tweets, so that you’d know “@chrisbrogan” was the driver of the @ShatnerRules group account (for example). This, at least, lets people know who’s at the helm.

Now, where should you be?

Where Are Your Fish?

Just because Oprah’s on Twitter doesn’t mean your customers are here. They might be hiding in forums, or very big into YouTube. Does your company need a Facebook group? Not always. Who’s there that you want to connect with, and what are you going to do for them there?

Deciding where to establish presence on the web is every bit as important as who should be at the helm of the various presence points. This also relates to understanding what you want. Are you there just to put a good face out for the company? Great. Then pick one or two places to start, see how people respond, get involved where you can, and work on it from there.

One way to find where people are talking about you is by using listening software. Tools like Radian6, Techrigy, and Scout Labs (to name a few that I like) can help you find where the conversation about you is hiding. (Oh, and if you don’t find much, don’t feel bad. It’s a good time to start stirring up some.)

Start with no more than 2 or 3 places for your presence. Maybe that’s “blog + linkedin + facebook.” It could be “linkedin + twitter + special forum.” And from the moment you start an account, think hard about what you want out of that point of presence. Are you there to answer customer service issues like @ComcastCares or are you hoping to just be a warm presence, like @LenDevanna of EMC (who has no actual “requirements” on him for Twitter, that I know of – correct me, Len) ?

Expectations and What Comes Next?

Let’s say you build a pretty decent stream of conversations on Facebook. Maybe it’s your junior comms person and they’re just drumming up excitement for a new product that the people want. Everything’s going great, and there’s an active group, and people feel like they’re being treated like humans. Know who comes next?

Marketing. In some companies, they come crashing down from the hills like angry Mongol raiders, set on converting people from interested community members into hot leads to purchase. They start asking to push materials down the community channel. They ask for lists. They push for opt-ins for email marketing.

Is it the right move? Not as listed above. Not if that’s not how you set the presence up to begin with. It will feel like horrid bait and switch. People will flock away pretty darned fast if you switch them over into convert mode. They’ll also hate you if you just pull up stakes and run after the product is launched. If they’ve committed to talking with you at those points of presence, they want you there for the long term.

Be wary of this. Think further out than a single campaign. If you set up the direct line, you have to be willing to answer it for more than the short term.

Checking In

Tomorrow, we’ll talk a bit more on how to get your feet into it, and where agencies can help, should you need/want that. We’ll also talk about what I think agencies shouldn’t do for you (but that’s my opinion).

What’s your take on this so far? Scary? Good? What you expected?

Photo credit peasap

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  • codruta
    This post helps me put some order in my head. It's like having a lot of puzzle pieces that now I'm putting together.

    thanks
  • All excellent points to think about
  • Makes a lot of sense @Chris. We're sort of figuring this out where i work ... well ... maybe not 'figuring it out', but working on and trying to figure it out. It's exciting, but identifying those who should be involved, what our purpose/goals are, what tools we should focus on and what we should be focused on (support, sales, comm, etc...) is a never ending story. We're learning weekly.

    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • Hi Chris.

    Re your phone tree analogy - in my opinion, the best person suited to the task of co-ordinating and overseeing (or writing) any social output needs a certain carte blanch - a special licence so to speak to operate 'outside the law' (by that I mean normal management structure of a company).

    If it's customer services, then the power to look into any record, offer a settlement and deliver it.... my neigbour recently had his very posh car stolen (not recovered). The insurance company were dragging over payout - kept requesting extra documentation etc. In the end he got so fed up, he tweeted that he 'was phoning the car insurer again'.

    Same day, he got a reply asking for more information which he forwarded. 2 days later he was choosing his replacement car and had it delivered that weekend.

    So someone in that company has the 'go anywhere' power to resolve issues quickly ensuring customer satisfaction.

    I'm not suggesting all social media is about responding to complaints but it will increasingly play a part and those of us who use social media as a means of publicising our companies will have to respond because there's a big audience out there now.

    That's why the person responsible in your organisation has got to have the authority to begin with.

    The other quality has got to be enthusiasm for the 'cause' (product, service, customer, topic) as real enthusiasm carries a far greater conviction than someone just 'employed' to do the job.

    Jonathan.
  • spryka
    Thank you for writing such a thorough and rich article. I learned something new and hope to give this technique a test drive soon. Really fantastic article.

    Matt
    http://www.epostmailer.com/
  • Some incredible thoughts and analogies here, Chris. Great insight you're bringing back from the Big Company battlefields
  • Great post.

    I recently attended the Frost & Sullivan executive MindXchange, where social media, and in particular, business applications of social media were the hot topic. Almost every conversation eventually turned to the legal implications of social media. It was a concern that obviously had alot of executives nervous about venturing into the social space.

    We've heard alot about keeping lawyers out of the day-to-day conversations that happen, but there just isn't alot of information on the legal ramifications of those conversations.

    Is this something that you frequently encounter in your business? What is your advice? [possible blog post?]
  • Chris: As usual a great post with comments just as interesting. I echo what Keith, Beth and Len say. I think every company or brand needs a different strategy that makes sense for them. While I believe it's important to have a personality behind a brand, most big brands are much, much more than any one brand and unless the CEO is at the helm of their Twitter or Facebook id, you're never going to have a true voice of the brand. Larger companies require multiple points of contact for marketing, CS, leadership, promotion to truly engage with their consumers. While I agree that you should have a top down strategy before jumping in, sometimes you need to just dive in because there are conversations about your brand taking place without you!
  • Chris,

    Many many thanks for the followup to my question on the previous post. Really looking forward to the 2nd part of the story. I think a lot hinges on keeping the conversion folks at bay. Its incredibly tempting to just dive in and ask people to buy stuff. Its also hard to convey why you SHOULDN'T do that to a client - who is rightly concerned with during conversations into dollars.

    SM isn't just a cheaper way to do advertising, and its not a megaphone. Its a tool and can be used in all the different ways you pointed out above, depending on the barnd. Its a telephone, suggestion box, and market research. And that needs to be driven home right from the moment a company wants to engage.

    Way to be an example of a person AND and a brand (afterall i think like it or not, you are a brand of sorts) that is heavily engaged, responsive, and useful in this space.

    @ryancmiller
  • Very thought provoking post Chris. Thanks. I've actually pondered this same point for myself and clients. Who should we "be" when we're engaging in social media? Especially if your purpose is to develop a brand or presence for your business.

    I've come to the conclusion (at least, as of today! That may change, as this is definitely an evolving medium!) that it definitely depends on the business and what they're trying to accomplish. And most importantly, what relationship do your consumers already have with you?

    For instance, I subscribe to tweets for @NYTimes because I want the latest, breaking news. Or @spurs because I want to know how my favorite sports team is doing. I don't necessarily need to develop a relationship with them. I just want to stay on top of them via the channels that I frequent.

    But for companies looking to deepen their relationship with their customers, it can definitely help to have a face--and cruicial, a personality--behind the name. Dell and Rackspace have done a good job of getting their employees involved at all levels, not just marketing and/or senior executives, to be brand advocates through social media.

    For my business, we started out with just individual Twitter identities to better connect with our market. But we've found that adding a company Twitter identity to work in collaboration with our personal handles has better helped get our company name out in the public, enhance our brand and expert positioning.

    Again, it definitely depends on the company.

    Thanks for interesting topic. Will stay tuned for part two!

    --Tracy
  • Michael Bailey
    Great post Chris - I've forwarded it on to a colleague of mine.

    Because of the initial technical knowledge required for most of what (we all) we do online, I expect that as the years move forward, this will all become one big "well duh" to a majority of the companies. I can say that because as the "online generation" continues to get older, this technical stuff will be as second nature to them as ringing doorbells was to the Fuller Brush(people) of the past.
  • Working for a franchised company is interesting when it comes to these questions, and I've faced them a lot, because my role is both corporate (as far as "brand management" - or whatever you want to call it - in social media) and agency (as far as equipping our franchisees on engaging in social media themselves).

    It's no small issue that social media blurs the lines between communication, customer service, and marketing in any large business. But it's complicated greatly when you have 600 people who have such a stake in your brand. That said, it's not impossible, and I know first-hand that it's absolutely critical to be talking about these issues internally and working together across departments to put solutions in place.... and more importantly, that it's possible :)
  • JenHarris
    Twitter and social media in general is what you want it to be.
    If you want it to be press releases and your followers are ok with that, so be it...they either knew what they were signing up for or their bots do. :)
    We will keep our circles & let in who we want, when we want.
    My prediction (probably won't happen for at least the next 6-12 months) is that you will see our "followers" list have a huge spike and outweigh our "following" list. (this is for the non-autoFollowers that is).
    I don't care who follows me or why...just when I give out the cry for help, they are there.
    -jen
    @jenharris09
    @Consilio
    @PerfectOrder
  • Thanks for this post! I agree, just because some outlets like facebook or twitter work for some companies, it may not work for you because your customers aren't there. Do you know your customers well enough to know what forms of social media they use? If not, then you don't know your customers nearly well enough and that increasing that knowledge and that relationship is something you need to work on before you spend your time blindly trying to network.
  • Insightful commentary as usual, Chris.

    My role is to facilitate the adoption of social tools, while helping our global employee population understand the value. I engage with our audience through a variety of channels to find ways to better the relationship. Sometimes it's simply a 'warm presence' as you suggest, other times it's proactively finding issues or questions and working within my internal network to lend a hand.

    When we started our journey 18 or so months ago, we really focused on establishing 'employee proficiency' within the social web. My goal is to get every employee to serve as representatives of the brand - offering their own unique expertise and talent through a variety of social channels.

    This 'viral' approach has worked wonders for us, as you'll now find hundreds of employees out on Twitter proactively watching for brand mention - and engaging with the audience when something crops up that they can positively influence. Some sharing new job postings, some dealing with support issues, others helping with interoperability, etc;.

    I guess I'd equate it to when you have a friend in a particular company... You may look to that person to help gets answers quicker, help understand processes a bit better, etc;. Social let's us scale this exponentially - where Chris Brogan will someday have tens of thousands of 'friends' at EMC... Each ready and willing to lend a hand.
  • Unfortunately, Eric, most PR firms and ad agencies have not kept up with the evolution of the Internet into one where every customer has the tools to be heard. The vast majority of PR firms are still sending out "Dear Blogger" pitches and canned corporate press releases, while ad agencies are still trying to hit us over the head with messages we don't want to hear.
  • Eric Toczko
    I think the best advice for companies who want to tweet is let somebody from your advertising agency or PR agency do it. They know how to speak to individuals, especially in the target market.

    -Eric T.
    http://www.jazdcommunications.com
  • Excellent post Chris! however, it's so hard for a company to decide who will be their public "avatar"
    What if he/she leaves? what if it's the CEO with a ghost writer and the ghost goes crazy? what if? what if? So the opt for the easy road, through a logo and a company name and fail the whole point of personal connection. They need more time, this is still too new to most companies. Let's see what happens!
  • Great post. Right on target.
  • Chris: Your posts are always insightful, thought-provoking and just about always dead on. There is a place where traditional marketing communications will and must coexist with social media. For business to business marketers, that intersection is proving more elusive than for consumer marketers. As a B2B marcom consultant, I'm pushing and pulling my clients into the new world, testing and tweaking as we go. The bottom line, as you stated so well, is that there must be a personal connection - a real name to an online ID. I recently blogged about the earliest social media - large gatherings of cavemen for worship or competition - and the similarities in the current form.There is still great fear among larger companies that if they expose themselves to this untamed media that they're brand will be severely damaged. What they don't yet understand is that their brands will be exposed with or without their participation. Just as they were reluctantly launched websites in the mid '90s, and gave their employees access to email, they must embrace and integrate social media as a part of their integrated marketing communications to stay competitive.
  • Good Post!
    Companies like to compartmentalize their approach to job descriptions and as I wrote in a review of Barry Schwartz's video from Ted on Practical Wisdom we all need to learn to think outside rules, bureaucracy and incentives.

    In social media companies would be best to not fit a job to a person but to find the right talent who fit with social media. This might be the CEO, Marketing, Customer Service people.
  • I'm looking forward to your next post. I struggle with this one. As a business owner I want to be the one to maintain that online presence for the company brand. But, again as a business owner, my plate is always so full that a lot of time it doesn't get done.
  • I think Public Relation or marketing division should do that, promo the company event or news using twitter.
  • So is Twitter a place to announce press releases and promos? I'd say that's not exactly how it's being used, nor would I want to read someone's stream that's just a bunch of press releases.
  • Lee Hales
    Great post, thank you Chris. This very much cemented some of my thinking post the Marketing Now conference. I'm looking forward to the next installment.
  • Your thoughts on "where" customers are hiding is superb. I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing.
  • Hi Chris!

    My name is Lauren Gaulin, and I'm a student in Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu's (@prprof_mv) PR Principles class. I've been subscribing to your blog and have been reading all semester. I've learned a lot from your post, but this one in particular really got through to me. In Dr. V's class we focus a lot on social media and having an online presence individually, and we have also focused on how companies, organizations, etc. should start, manage and maintain their online presence. This post really supported everything we've been talking about in class, and it kind of just summed it all up and put all the different things we've learned "in a nutshell" if you will. We've discussed everything in this post from Twitter users, to who should Twitter, to whether or not Twitter is effective for different companies, to Facebook, to the blogosphere, to viral videos on YouTube, etc, and this post really helps put things into perspective. I'm looking forward to your follow up post. Thanks so much!

    -Lauren
  • Chris, thanks for the mention here. Officially I started as a community manager, and that has funneled itself into social media outreach, education and research. I find the most important thing for anyone or any company in this type of position is to be able to have a combined voice. What I mean by that is; Social media is a fire hose of information. The "Front Line" people need to be able to have an outlet for this information to be passed on to, acted upon, and republished if necessary and relevant to the organization.

    There is a lot that goes on here. What is right to republish? Can we take ideas from our community and implement them without liability. Do the internal departments have a handle on the "why" of social media? It's interesting to watch folks like Scoble attack Best Buy because they are not "social" enough, but the fact is that big business is working these things out. Brand managers, marketing VP's and CEO's are not used to their underlings having more knowledge in a certain area than they do.

    It's interesting though. I was listening to Shel and Neville's "For Immediate Release" podcast last week and they were talking about how the kids coming into organizations are very social media savvy, but fall short on the business side of things.

    Maybe it's time the old guard and the new guard learned to play a little nicer and innovate together. I am writing an ebook on this very topic. It should be finished within the next month.

    @keithburtis
    @bestbuyremix
  • Thank you,Yes you have to start with "Where Are Your Fish?"
    The key ingredient most marketers/people miss is they get enamored with teh latest tool and believe that is the only way to communicate with their customers.

    I have potential customers coming to me saying we need to be in "Facebook" or Twitter or ...or... and I have to stop and ask them if there customers are there and if they've asked their customers where they would like to be communicating with them. Sometimes they're right and sometimes we go a different direction entirely

    Doug
  • Chris, I definitely side with Amber Nasland. Bigger reach is not always better. I would rather have 1000 raving fans than 10,000 people who just admire but would change if a better alternative approach.

    Sustained effort is the key to any social media campaign. As far as the handle on Twitter, if it feels impersonal, it will lose. It has to be transparent, genuine and authentic. If it is, then people will engage, which is your overall goal with this media anyway.

    Seth Godin today talked about how by 2011 he felt all business would come from digital or word of mouth... So we better grip tight and continue working every day to see how to best utilize the medium... Cant wait for part 2.

    Chad Rothschild
    http://employeeandclientengagement.wordpress.com/
  • Thanks Chris. I'm dealing with similar situations at work as far as who's going to manage it, how much marketing are we allowed to inject, and what voice is used (personal vs. Brand Guidelines). Looking forward to #2. Cheers!
  • Thanks, I have a small consulting firm dealing with many of the same issues as large enterprises. Even having the enabling technology to get web hooked up with blog hooked up with ezines, mailing lists, opt-in, everything. Your parsing of the presence questions is helpful and also helps reduce the overwhelm.
  • Chris, I think it's good and it's scary. What a great time to work in marketing. So many changes under way. The answers seem a little different for everybody, but at the base of what you posted lies a simple truth: be good to people. Be good to your customers and those who want to talk with you. Don't force it, don't abandon people and don't be rude -- and you can probably get away with some minor speed bumps as you learn.
  • We talked about a similar issue over on our blog today, only we called it the "FAKE personalized email from the Executive Director" strategy. We received a personalized email from an Executive Director of a very well known, very popular charity. It looks real, only when you hit reply to the email, you never get an answer. We'd say that they missed an opportunity to create relationship -- they could have at least pretended to have him to reply with another fake email rather than not reply at all.

    Those execs who choose to Twitter or use Facebook and also choose to have others do work on their behalf at least have an appearance of building or maintaining a relationship with their constituents. We recommend they do the same when they employ personalized email strategies. Just as Amber says above, there's got to be a commitment to be available so that when someone responds you don't miss the opportunity to connect.
  • jaredcovington
    I think that @pitchforkmedia does an excellent job of having multiple individuals posting to one Twitter account. When posting updates from the site, there is no name included; but for other random comments, show reviews and live tweeting, whoever is posting always leaves their name at the end in parentheses (an excellent example of this can be seen in their Coachella coverage this past weekend). To me, this strikes a nice balance between maintaining the brand and allowing followers to see who the people are behind that brand. It also avoids the confusion of one brand having dozens of different affiliated accounts.

    Thanks for this article--it has given me a lot to digest. Looking forward to part two tomorrow...

    http://twitter.com/jaredcovington
  • I'd trade any day the scale of reaching masses of people for the long-term impact of carefully building relationships and loyalty within and among the people who want to be talking to you. The trick, as you point out, is that there's no reverse gear. You engage, you stay there. That's the promise you're making by being present and accessible in social channels.

    You wouldn't suddenly just disconnect your phone because it rings more often. You don't just turn off your email when people start reaching out to you (though we might like to). Answering the question about WHO should be behind these interactions isn't about who can best recite the brand messages, but rather who can make the commitment to be available, accessible, and connected to the customers when they reach out, and who can help be the bridge between them and what they need from the company. Sometimes people can just lend their voice on occasion (like a CEO). But the inner workings of the listening and engagement grid have GOT to be woven into daily functions, even if we're redefining them. In fact, I think we *have* to be redefining them.

    Nobody ever said that this stuff was going to be easy, or wasn't going to take work and some reinvention. But the payoffs for committing to the right intent and the long-term mindset are immense.
  • Good advice. I think you're right on target. Strategy must have long term in mind.
  • Chris, a well-thought out approach to what is a real challenge online for many organizations. We are a small communications agency - that includes social media in our tool kit - and one of the key points we want clients to understand is that it's about making the connection and joining the conversation in a way that is relevant to their specific community. It's a big shift in thought process for many and the key points you list is a great explanation of the when and why -- and that finding the right "where' is very important.

    Right now, there is so much "buzz" on social media, a large part of our role has been calming down the conversation so that our clients approach using social media strategically and bridge it with their traditional communications outreach. I have been fortunate enough to have been following smart people like you for some time and now feel that I have some of the knowledge necessary to share with clients... small steps in, staying strategic, planning and finding our communities rather than the old school approach of putting a bunch of info out there to see what sticks.

    it seems that we're at a new cross roads of communication, it's exciting and scary as heck all at the same time. I think most organizations want to do things the right way, but some just don't know what that is yet. Blog posts like this help us all to learn and share best practices.

    Thanks
    Ruth
  • Good points, Chris. Having a big company's presence on Twitter handled by only one person is shortsighted (unless that company has only 1 product or 1 perspective to share or 1 customer or some other limiting factor.)

    I talk a lot about the "reputation cloud" that a company creates through its online activities (or INactivities) here and in my new book, e-Riches 2.0, too.

    You and your insights are referenced repeatedly, fyi!
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