Chapter 23

Divide and Conquer

Over the years, I've explored the drivers that propel businesses into the social world, analyzing their initial steps and planning and implementation processes, as well as how they assess and apply resources.

The most common motives to experiment with social media are spurred because of an internal champion or from a reaction-based set of circumstances that created a sense of urgency.

It's a moment characterized by “Ah-ha” or “Uh-oh… .”

SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES A COMMUNITY EFFORT

If we've learned anything in this book thus far, it's that any one person or group does not own the conversation; they simply map to them based on their nature and intent. In fact, your customers are among the most influential stakeholders present today, and without guidance or participation, they may aimlessly steer your brand in undesirable directions. The simple truth is that everyone owns socialized media, including you. Perhaps it's better said this way: The conversation is omnipresent and not defined, steered, or controlled by any one entity. We are merely participants in a greater production. We determine our role as an engaged organization as well as individuals in cooperation with the powers that be.

Truthfully, many departments will be forced to socialize, and therefore require social programs at the departmental level to be executed at the departmental level and perhaps managed by a centralized group that most likely oversees other areas of branding, marketing, or communications simultaneously.

In the meantime, without organization, unity, and direction, the risk and likelihood for social anarchy prevails. If we pay close attention, we don't need to look far to observe and pinpoint the disjointed efforts of even the best brands engaging online and the discontinuity and fragmentation in their use of social networks and participatory programs that seem only to muddle and dilute branding efforts and the state of existing equity and resonance.

DECENTRALIZATION AND CENTRALIZATION: ASSEMBLING AND CONDUCTING AN ORCHESTRA

Many of the cases that I'm reviewing these days demonstrate either a decentralized or centralized approach to social media. To give us clarity into the process of organizing teams and established hierarchy, think about an interactive media program as an orchestra. There are few, several, or many musicians who comprise an ensemble, representing a variety of different instruments arranged to perform particular pieces as designed.

Decentralized media is either intentional or simply the victim of an overambitious company tackling social media across the organization, without a hub or gravity. Using the orchestra analogy, this is less representative of a unified, structured group and more similar to a group of jazz improvisers. In some cases, the free flow and unscripted jam of these musicians fuses to create something truly incredible. They can riff on their own and come back to music without losing the flow. But in other cases, listeners are lost in the disarray and lack of structure of the music and the competing soloists. In jazz, however, musicians are usually virtuosos in their own right, in contrast to those new to social media. For the time being, very few are truly maestros.

Harmonious social media programs are the result of organization, rehearsal, and arrangement, and inspired by talent, leadership, and imagination. These groups are directed by an individual or team that coordinates the roles and contributions of those involved. Someone must assemble the players, synchronize their positions, and guide the flow of the production. It's the only way to strategically score and present an integrated performance. And each player is selected because they've proved their merit. Simply said, they have earned the right to represent the brand.

Even though the doctrines guiding the evolution of the Social Web profess democratization, within a business it's impossible to scale and perform harmoniously without instruction and administration. What's constant, however, is that without the establishment of structure from the onset, it's impossible to reel in existing efforts to redesign the social architecture or launch a Day Zero program.

THE SOCIETY AND CULTURE OF BUSINESS

The true value of a more socially aware mindset can positively affect every department within an organization to create a team that together nurtures a respected and trusted brand.

Our presence is requested in more than one channel and in more than one capacity.

Where new and emerging media is permeating the existing corporate culture, the behavior and culture of the workforce is also disrupted. Aside from the usual politics, lobbying, ambition, and ambivalence, the socialization of existing processes and systems is inevitable. However, the role of the workforce in its introduction, adoption, and success is crucial. Consequently, we must account for the human factor in anything we do while moving forward. It is they who will lead us into the future.

MEETING OF THE MINDS: CONSENSUS AD IDEM

The creation of a New Media Board of Advisors can help steer the evolution of change within the organization. This body is designed to help foster collaboration and cooperation, advise decision makers, and manage the division of labor.

The socialization of every department will lend support and direction to myriad important conversations taking place, currently without you, across the Web. Having representation from each is critical to organization, buy-in, and practice.

The Board of Advisors should be structured as any standard board used to advise businesses to help make critical decisions that have positive impacts on the bottom line.

The anatomy of the board should include the following representatives (where applicable):

• Legal
• Finance
• Product
• Service
• Marketing
• Communications
• Executive management (VP level or higher)
• Sales
• HR
• Web
• IT
• Research
• Interactive
• Advertising and branding
• Community manager

The list should also include any individual or individuals who are passionate about social media, either personally or professionally, to a certain extent. While their expertise may or may not add value to strategic discussions and calculations, their experience is invaluable and their energy is transmissible. We can all learn from one another.

OUTSIDE THE INSIDE: ESTABLISHING AN INSIDER PROGRAM

Internal advisors are instrumental in the definition of programming and also in the establishment of protocol. This specialized board also assists in the solidification of a chain of command required for the design, management, and execution of all things social. Once a program is in the process of creation or refinement, an outside point of view is helpful. In addition to the creation of an internal board of new media advisors, I also recommend either the addition of strategic partners to the team. The formation of an insider program counsels the team on ideas, activities, and performance. This program can either incentivize or reward its members through pay or products or services, or simply for credit and recognition.

For example, Intel Corporation inaugurated a group known as the Intel Insiders (now known as the Intel Advisors), of which I am an alumnus advisor. The advisory offers guidance on the company's new media events, initiatives, and objectives. Other board members include Tom Foremski, Frank Gruber, iJustine (Justine Ezarik), Cathy Brooks, Sarah Austin, and J. D. Lasica. We were specifically tasked with reviewing new product and program initiatives to offer input and suggestions before or following their introduction. I also was involved with the review and planning for the company's use of Twitter under the @Intel moniker. This advisory board has been in place for more than three years and its members serve voluntarily, without compensation. However, Intel is a household brand and a global brand, and therefore, association offers value for all involved. When reviewing smaller or emerging brands and businesses, insiders or outside advisors have been compensated with shares or a stake in the company, a percentage of revenues, with gifts or products, and or simply appreciation and recognition.

An insider program should feature the perspective of those who can affect perception, reach, and velocity, or those who are directly or indirectly affected by the actions of the company or its competition:

• Market partner
• Customer
• Investor
• Influencers, enthusiasts, and advocates
• Industry expert
• Delegates from any relevant external agencies

EXAMPLE: NEW MEDIA BOARD OF ADVISORS

Governance

The role of a new media board of advisors offers value beyond its creativity, innovation, and resource and content management. The board regulates the strategy and activity from the creation of accounts and profiles, assigning responsibilities, and establishing conversational workflow and response processes (see Figure 23.1).

Figure 23.1 New Media Board of Advisors

The board's strength lies in its ability to not only contribute to or define guidelines and policies, but to also enforce them when necessary.

For the board of advisors to run seamlessly, members would act wisely to elect an individual as its chairperson to oversee interaction, communicate status to executives, and also communicate direction back to the team, as well as to ensure productive collaboration. While much of this activity is brand new, and the rules are just now catching up to internal transformation. Sovereignty and jurisdiction is vital in these initial phases. I suppose that's the true essence of new media. It's always new… .

In the long term, though, as the company learns and adapts to emerging media, the board may no longer be necessary or of any consequence. Eventually, the teams persevere and master the art and science of new media and the corresponding methodologies. Eventually, everything folds back into the grind, or routine, however you may view it. For now, however, we have much to learn, and we're doing so, together.

The Mission

The charter of the new media board of advisors is to establish inbound and outbound processes and management protocol, answer questions, encourage inventiveness, educate, and assemble the teams responsible for engagement. Without a mission, we are bound to very little. And in this case, anarchy is not represented in the form of an overdue insurrection or revolution due to oppression. It is representative of the chaos of misdirected, competing, and potentially brand-damaging social networking and content creation.

We need a democratic parliament to act on behalf of the people in our markets and the people within our organization. Namely, the mission of the social board of advisors (sBoA) is to distinguish between hype and resolution or, as referred to in the geek world, shiny-object syndrome versus real-world applications. With the right team, the whole is better than the sum of its parts; hence, the first act of this governing body is to establish its mission.

The constitution of the sBoA is hereunder relegated to:

• Establishing guidelines and policies
• Auditing and documenting the state of the brand in the social realm
• Passing through an initial round of the Conversation Prism to establish a beta version of the Conversation Index
• Documenting the new media style guide
• Customizing and applying the principles and ethics of the Social Compass
• Overseeing and guiding content production and management
• Organizing the effort to discover and define the personality of the brand as well as the associated personal brands of those who represent it
• Ensuring that online and representative brands and associated personalities are in alignment
• Evaluating competitive and market behavior
• Constructing and introducing social architecture and workflow
• Identifying and recognizing capable and worthy representatives internally before scouting outside the fold, so as to assemble the most capable and exemplary teams
• Ensuring that resources are collaborating and performing as intended
• Maintaining a standard of education to ensure that all who are involved progress and develop over time
• Establishing metrics and key performance indicators

Assembling a New Media Task Force

The board will help guide us, using our Social Compass in addition to the established guidelines and policies that serve as the foundation for everything we do moving forward.

The initial challenges are both similar and unique to each organization. Size, shape, and state of affairs determine where many begin and who joins the fray. Small businesses, for example, will have owners or employees or both who wear multiple hats so they can build a framework and engage. Larger organizations will have to recruit and progress at a pace that is compatible with their cultures and infra-structures.

What remains constant is the need for structure, organization, and thoughtful execution.

The task force works in concert with the board, but is unique in its mission. In my experience, the board is clear in its structure and goals, but it's not necessarily adept in the execution area of new media. Ideas and objectives aside, a specialized task force is also necessary to help transform corresponding strategies into functional reality across the organization.

Within every business, at least one person or persons emerge as either definitive champions or resident specialists. If this doesn't occur, hire a qualified individual immediately. This person or individuals will serve as the leaders of this new team (and, yes, I'm officially recommending that you add a new role and team to the organizational chart) and will serve as an internal new media agency, while the organization itself adapts to outside influences so it can better contribute to its direction in the market.

Organizational Transformation: Redesigning the New Marketing Landscape

During these crucial stages in the organizational transformation process, an internal expert can provide direction, and in some cases support, to help each division begin the process of socialization or refresh its current approach, according to a logical and useful method.

Figure 23.2 illustrates this new media infrastructure. It is a representation of the realignment of organizational and resource structures that I have successfully architected and implemented within many companies. In this case, I spotlight a model used within a particular Fortune 500 business.

Figure 23.2 Workflow Evolved

EXAMPLE: INTERNAL TASK FORCE

At the center of the chart is the brand. The board of new media advisors advises the brand and, in turn, feeds the business units and corporate teams dedicated to marketing, Web, communications, and service. Those divisions can then tap the internal wisdom of the internal new media task force for help as needed. The task force thus retains a team of experts and mavens either on staff or through consultant relationships. Note the areas of expertise and resources that could benefit the new media agency, such as digital librarians, architects and engineers, anthropologists, cartographers, and ethnographers (new roles and responsibilities are highlighted later in the chapter).

In this diagram, the community manager reports to the marketing function, providing the general team with information, data, and advice related to the corporate brand. Each business unit assigns a team member to the task of community management as it relates to their specific areas of focus to engage at the product or service level. This member would interact with the brand community manager to ensure collaboration and support. The project-level community manager may also serve another, specified role, such as project or product management, content creation, and so forth, and provide project community management support as needed or in a part-time capacity.

For example, if the public relations staff needs help identifying and mapping new influencers, the task force can help through direction, education, or execution. When the marketing team needs to reach trust agents or tastemakers through a direct marketing or sponsored tweeting initiative on Twitter, the resident experts will have access to best practices, partners, and most likely an idea of who these tastemakers are and where they communicate.

EXAMPLE: ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION

In this example (see Figure 23.3), we visualize the new organizational landscape as it integrates the role of new media experts into the hierarchy of business processes. While off to the side in the image, the social media management function and its supporting resources serve as a central facility to provide cross-functional direction, support, and knowledge to all teams and divisions with a role tied to any outward or inward interaction through new media channels.

Figure 23.3 New Marketing Organizational Transformation

While the group reports to a high-level corporate function or the new media board of advisors or both, it is designed to serve almost every applicable division and discipline.

The social media agency maintains day-to-day responsibility for many core functions and is empowered to serve and also police its peers within the organization:

• Conversational alerts, channeled to the affected person or team
• Counsel on specific programs and initiatives specific to each unit or division
• Ongoing advice and best practices
• Contributed content, personnel, and programming to the internal educational program
• Listening at the corporate level and assigning actions based on proactive or reactive scenarios
• The documentation of best practices
• Training based on specific initiatives
• Execution on behalf of business units and teams when applicable and necessary
• The creation of specialized teams around programs or the facilitation of external resources to help where appropriate
• Assessment of resources and associated costs per campaign
• The ability to identify influential communities and influencers
• The state and sentiment of the brand and competitors within the Social Web
• The culture of primary communities and the opportunities for immersion
• Trends
• Internal audits on social usage, content production, distribution, and engagement
• Listening and monitoring and documenting—intelligence gathering and trend analysis
• Engagement in the networks and groups within which relevant conversations are pervasive and warrant participation
• Content creation
• Conversation management and trafficking
• Influencer and tastemaker identification and networking
• Product and service refinement
• Community management, empowerment, and cultivation
• Event hosting and franchising
• Story development
• Humanizing company and product messaging and redefining the online journey and experience associated with the online presences associated with specific brands and products.

NEW ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE ERA OF EMERGING MEDIA

In February of 2006, Intel announced that it was in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work alongside its engineers.1 Intel believes that to humanize its company, it must humanize its products. So much so, that the company placed three anthropologists as managers in business units: Eric Dishman in Digital Health, Genevieve Bell in Digital Home, and Tony Salvador in Emerging Markets. Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president at Intel, in an interview with MIT's Technology Review magazine emphasized the impact of these new scientists having influence in more than just tactical product development: They're also playing a key role in long-term strategic planning.2

Nokia has also integrated the role of social sciences into its research and design. The company hired Jan Chipchase3 to observe and understand how mobile design fits in to and affects lives, societies, and cultures.4 In an interview with New Scientist, Chipchase shared insight into his mobile research in the emerging and rural markets around the globe: “We do research in such communities because these are the places in which we can best learn about the kinds of mobile use that will become mainstream in other parts of the world. We find these communities to be incredibly innovative in the way they use their mobile phones.”5 It's more than humanizing products. Social science can also humanize business processes to activate the fifth P. The following are other roles that social science can play, in which they will affect and benefit everything from marketing communications and public relations to product development and service programs to advertising and sales to company culture and management behavior.6

• Content producers: As brands become media companies in their creation of social objects, this role creates all necessary social content, including videos, images, Web pages, blog posts, policies and guidelines, tweets, wikis, comments, online experiences, profiles, and so forth. In many cases, connectors and industry experts and strategists wear this hat and assign the creation of important content to either content producers or other members on the team with direct experience, or simply produce it themselves.
• Digital sociologists: Observes the cultures, trends, and behaviors associated with communities, networks, and forums, and compares the interactivity around keywords and brands to contribute to engagement strategies, customer service policies, and improvements and product modifications.
• Digital ethnographers: Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures. For those projects within which a deep study of online culture and communities is critical, an ethnographer is ideal for documenting a descriptive study of a particular human society.
• Research librarians: Complements or augments in-house or contract sociologists by analyzing relevant keywords used by customers, listening to and documenting conversations by content and sentiment, charting volume and frequency within social networks, identifying and analyzing true influencers and tastemakers across media, blogs, and social communities, and presenting data and charts for analysis by strategists.
• Community managers: Listens to conversations in social networks, forums, and the blogosphere documented by research librarians or through their own process; assigns relevant dialogue to appropriate team leads; manages the workflow and response status; and in most cases is the first line of response.
• Digital or social architects: Digital or social architects are responsible for building the online bridges between the company brand and consumers through widgets, sites, online dashboards, blogs, social newsrooms, social media releases, wikis, social networks, fan pages, forums, groups, and any other application, platform, or group responsible for hosting content, conversations, and interactivity.
• Social engineers: Engineering can create the roads and highways that connect a brand to its audiences and communities. Engineers can also observe behavior and trends within communities to better inspire new product designs, programs, and corporate initiatives to align more closely with the needs and desires of its consumers.
• Connectors: Informed individuals and teams that can connect stories to influencers and inspire activity, direction, and conversations. Connectors act based on intelligence, empathy, sincerity, and the ability to truly bridge a story to someone else in a way that's specific and compelling to them as an individual and also as it relates to their audience and social graph.
• Industry experts and strategists: Someone has to act as the conductor to this all-star orchestra. Qualified individuals have mastered the art and science of attaching new and traditional media to the bottom line of their business and also possess a deep understanding of and experiences with customer empathy, market trends, and the governing technology that connects the people within desired market places.
• Cartographers: Those responsible for visually mapping relationships, linking patterns and influences in social maps of relevance (through the Conversation Prism) and interaction, among other ties.

These new job functions create a new level of services that complement existing, traditional, and emerging corporate activities. The opportunities are limited only by the imagination of those responsible for engendering change from within.

NOTES

1. Michael Fitzgerald, “Intel's Hiring Spree,” Technology Review (February 14, 2006), www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16340,294,p1.html.

2. Ibid.

3. See www.janchipchase.com/.

4. “Meet the Mobile Anthropologist,” Nokia Conversations (July 2, 2008), www.conversations.nokia.com/2008/07/02/meet-the-mobile-anthropologist/.

5. Jason Palmer, “Interview: The Cellphone Anthropologist,” New Scientist (June 11, 2008), www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826602.000-interview-the-cellphone-anthropologist.html.

6. Brian Solis, “The State of PR, Marketing, and Communications: You Are the Future,” PR 2.0 (June 8, 2009), www.briansolis.com/2009/06/state-of-pr-marketing-and/.