4. New Practice #4: The Communications (COMMS) Organizer
According to Wikipedia, the definition of the word process “typically describes the action of taking something through an established and usually routine set of procedures.” The key word here is “routine.” How many routine procedures do you follow in a day? Ten? Twenty? Are there too many to count? It’s easy to get caught up in a routine. Although a process may become routine over time, it’s only kept in place if, and only if, it helps you accomplish your goals. Social media should have caused an immediate change in your process. Unfortunately, many companies were not quick to realize how social media empowered customers to engage differently with their brands. The customer’s demand for immediate and direct communication required old processes to be reevaluated and updated to accommodate a new communications approach. The processes you put in place are just as important as the results you want to achieve. Remember, the process always has to map to the wanted results.
When social media surfaced as a new and powerful means for brands to have two-way conversations with people, there shouldn’t have been any doubt or delay. A change in process was necessary internally in your communications department. If you’re still relying on the traditional communications process to create and disseminate your company’s stories for public consumption and using social media channels...please, reconsider now! Older methods of communications are focused on the one-to-many, a broadcast approach. A broadcast approach doesn’t take into consideration people want to gather, organize, and share news and information with peers. It doesn’t take into consideration how consumers want to communicate directly with the people or the humans behind a moniker. They trust people more than corporations. An older model doesn’t take into account two-way dialogue and doesn’t promote active participation in web communities. The past focused on one-way messaging, which you know doesn’t work in your peer-to-peer networks.
It takes a proactive PR person or team of communications professionals to identify and uproot a long and tired process and literally flip it upside down. This type of process overhaul is critical to the success of your social media communications. Thus, Practice #4 comes to life: The Communications Organizer (The COMMS Organizer) is the PR pro who knows an old communications process does not enable the company to reach social media success.
It’s time for you to work from the inside out. The once accepted top-down approach to messaging is no longer viable. It doesn’t address how people talk about your company and its products and services through social channels, and how you, in turn, should respond. It used to be simple years ago. You could take the messages from the C-Suite (CEO, CFO, CIO...) or your senior leadership team. You would see these same approved messages appear through every touch point of the brand. From your news releases and customer newsletters to your direct mail and corporate brochures, it was a way to control the message. This type of practice never worked, only in the minds of those who were setting the “controls.” There is no control with social media. However, you can guide and direct the communication to benefit your brand and the relationships you build moving forward.
What Are the Responsibilities of the COMMS Organizer?
The COMMS Organizer begins by analyzing the company’s current communications process. How are messages and content created, prepared, and shared through the organization prior to public dissemination? In the past, most messaging started at the top (where executives have the business’ interest at heart) and was handed down to the marketing or communications department for development, routed back up for approval (depending on the communications), and then released by the account team. The account team did the monitoring and reporting and passed the information back up the chain of command. The top players in the process have the business acumen and key messages. The account team that disseminated the information may or may not have the savvy business skills, but are skilled in monitoring, and in many cases are required to field questions or the interest in the communications. In addition, the account team gathered the analytics and created the reports, which may not necessarily align with what the executives in the company needed. There’s a huge disconnect when this approach is used for social media outreach and engagement.
When you begin your new practice to evaluate the process for communications, you are identifying several new procedures, which touch almost every piece of your social media plan (see Figure 4.1). Start with your monitoring and tracking, which ultimately requires you to re-evaluate the manner in which you release your content in web communities. It starts with tuning into the relevant conversations (through keyword search) that uncover what the people you want to reach need and expect from your brand. More than three-quarters of what you deliver to the public relies on how much you listen, and then hear what customers and other stakeholders ask from you. Perhaps, you may even uncover certain groups that don’t want you to connect and converse with them, or have you share content in their communities. To find out, the process must begin with monitoring and observation of the conversations and behaviors of members of the community. This can determine, first and foremost, what people want from your company and your products and services. The messages are no longer handed down from the top.
Figure 4.1. The Social Media Strategy Wheel: PR Practice #4
The listening that’s done today happens on several levels of the organization. Because the actual conversations occur outside of the communications department, so does the research and observation function. It used to be that research was done by marketing and PR, and then the information was packaged and presented to the senior team. However, listening through social media can happen on many different levels. It’s all members of the company, from various departments that connect directly with your customers through social media. They, too, need to review and use the intelligence gathered. Social media moves across the organization and no longer resides in just one spot. So, in some cases, you have more junior members of the team listening for keyword conversations and managing a community. At the same time, you can have senior-level executives from various departments doing intelligence and responding appropriately on their blogs and networks.
The COMMS Organizer must help create a new process and management of information on a macro level and then have the individual departments manage the process on a micro level.
Intelligence and meaningful messaging require a flatter structure, in which information is shared unilaterally among departments and levels in the company, as needed. Part of the reason for the change in information gathering has to do with the fact that more levels and departments want to engage in social media. Social media champions are popping up in every department, not just communications.
Social media spans the entire organization. You may have the senior team thinking of ways that it can connect with either its own employees or customers directly to show thought leadership in the market. Marketing teams have a reason to participate in social media to share great content and drive traffic to the company’s website for leads and sales. Of course, as a PR person, you’re ready to listen and respond to the public when they have questions or issues about the brand. The customer service team must be available through social channels to field inquiries about products and services, and aid a customer who has a concern or problem. Human Resources (HR) is also a part of the mix. HR wants to be out there on niche networks, such as LinkedIn, recruiting the top new talent for the company. Then, there’s the sales team that want to use social media for networking to find leads and possible sales targets. As you can see, social media spreads across the company, and there is no single department that handles all the communication. Rather, all departments are involved and work together proactively to listen and participate with value to help customers.1
The COMMS Organizer is faced with the challenge of helping to introduce and implement new procedures. It’s your job to plan the best ways to create cohesive and consistent messaging so that social media does not fragment the brand. You will be involved in setting up new processes that enable communications to accurately flow from the organization; communications that reflect your brand, yet enable an army of employee champions to apply their unique voices (keeping the brand voice in tact will be discussed more in Chapter 7, “New Practice #7: The Reputation Task Force Member”). You will also make sure as social media continues to move quickly through your company; no matter how large or small, new processes in place facilitate better communication.
Following are five new procedures, which help a company to focus on effective internal communications for employees in the company to offer valuable contributions through your social media channels. The new procedures are meant to create more organization of social communications on the inside, as you and your peers work to build stronger connections with customers.
• Setting Up Overall Company Monitoring and Customer Intelligence
• Building a Two-Prong Approach for Content
• Creating a More Universal Sharing System
• Developing a Social Media “Share” Book or Playbook
• Creating the Social Media Purpose Brief
Setting Up Overall Company Monitoring and Customer Intelligence
For overall communications intelligence, PR and marketing monitor the brand and report back to the C-Suite. As discussed, because social media enables various departments to use social media for their own programs, it’s important to turn the listening intelligence on for these areas. On the macro level, companies monitor for overall message penetration, reputation, Share of Voice (SOV), and customer service satisfaction levels. Then, on the micro level, there’s tracking for specific program awareness, sentiment, buzz or amount of conversations, sharing habits, community growth, and so on. In a smaller company, the community manager (often in the communications department) gathers all the intelligence and responds appropriately. As the information is analyzed and dissected, it can then be routed to the appropriate areas within the company for response and information to share. However, as a PR professional, you don’t want to answer the technology questions (that’s reserved for IT). If it’s a customer service issue that needs specific handling, it must go to customer service; and if it’s an employee who’s chatting inappropriately, once again, not your area of expertise—you would send it to HR. You quickly learn that operating in a silo or a vacuum doesn’t work. On the contrary, you need to share with those experts or employees who are qualified to answer appropriately.
At the same time, there’s a lot that marketing and PR will be doing with respect to listening intelligence, using information from virtual focus panels, and creating content and strategy that map to the needs of your audience. PR especially will always be listening to all customer and stakeholder feedback, whether it’s monitoring for reputation or tracking proactively for what looks like a potential crisis. (You learn more about Practice #5: The Pre-Crisis Doctor in Chapter 5.) However, it’s important to determine whether you will be doing the overall listening and passing along the intelligence, or if individual departments will monitor on their own and use the feedback proactively. It just may take a social media champion who steps up in each department, joins the Social Media Coalition, and begins the monitoring process (which actually means that department has its own community manager). Either way, the intelligence is passed across the company rather than messages just filtered down from above. The new process leads to much better content development, more appropriate methods of sharing, and deeper interactions with your company’s customers.
Building a Two-Prong Approach for Content
You’ve heard the saying that content is king, but it’s also a known fact that context is queen. Developing content means making sure it’s shared with meaning and reflects proper timing. In PR, you’re used to timing your news or coming up with angles that make sense with what’s happening in mainstream news. It was a common practice to offer your company experts for a major news story that impacted your industry. Social media requires you to still listen to mainstream, as well as quite a bit of daily community listening. It’s the community conversations that allow you to determine what, how, and when to share your content.
Creating content is a two-prong approach, but before you learn how to develop and curate the content, you first must understand that PR and marketing will not always be the keepers of the content or the social objects shared by other members of your organization. Other departments will create specific social objects and time their sharing around the relevance of their own programs. Depending on your company, PR and marketing might work to develop content that goes across several departments, but at the same time, you can’t be responsible for everyone’s content, timing, and delivery.
The two-prong approach makes it easier to use some of the content you already have. The first prong is the “Existing” content you need to repurpose so that it becomes social. You can’t take your news release and post it on your Facebook page. You can’t take copy from your brochure and use it to answer a question on LinkedIn. On the contrary, you can take ideas and information from marketing content and put them into a human voice. You have to figure out if what you’re saying actually solves someone’s problems or helps them to make a decision. You can also take existing photos and create albums on photo-sharing sites including Flickr, Picasa, or SmugMug, and you can take video footage from events and edit and share on YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook. When you’re short on resources, you can use existing content, with a few tweaks, and figure out the best way to curate it through select social media channels. Based on your ability to listen and respond with meaning, you can abandon the spammy marketing messages that insult your social media friends.
When you create your social media plan, you need to evaluate your resources to determine who will do it and how content will be developed. The “Discovery” process, as illustrated on the Social Media Strategy Wheel, is a good time to see if the resources currently in place are enough to move forward to accomplish your social media content goals. Then, moving into the Communication/Content Creation phase on the wheel, you will have clearly identified what existing content can be repurposed and what resources are needed to get this job done.
The next part of the content development requires your search for new content ideas (the second prong in the two-part approach). As the COMMS Organizer, there are several ways you can uncover the most riveting content for your audience. One of the best ways is to listen carefully to the influencers, who drive the community, and identify their critical issues. Revealing the critical issues and then developing content that touches on or solves the issues is always welcome. If you’re not uncovering the trending topics, you can also poll or survey your community advocates to find out what the “hot” buttons are. But the best way is to ask them outright...“What do you want to learn, solve, use, create, cause, and so on.”
There are also companies that work directly with their customers by crowdsourcing information. Throw a problem out to the community and let them solve it for you. From the interaction and discussion comes innovation in the form of how they want to interact with their favorite brands. However, although a lot of your interaction might involve comments and responses to questions, you may also find out quickly some content you want to create (for example, podcasts, videos, applications on Facebook, widgets for your blogs) requires additional budget.
Crowdsourcing is a great way to learn what your community thinks and what they want from your company. There are global companies using crowdsourcing techniques in marketing communications, as well as R&D and innovation. For instance, Starbucks is a famous example of loyal fans offering their suggestions and ideas to enhance the Starbucks experience. They actively participate on MyStarbucks.com. Tens of thousands of suggestions are generated from this collaborative effort. The result is great content, a better product, and sometimes better service from Starbucks. Another popular example, back in 2010, was the General Electric (GE) Ecomagination initiative. GE created a platform in which entrepreneurs, innovators, businesses, and students could gather and generate ideas for the “next generation power grid.” There was no skimping on this crowdsourcing idea with GE and its partners offering $200 million in capital to the winners (startups) with the most promising innovation. Asking your constituents or crowdsourcing to gather their ideas and unique solutions is a great way to not only participate but also to truly engage with people.2
The COMMS Organizer must think about the pieces to build the content process to truly get the right information and great collaboration jumpstarted. Whether you start with your existing content and tweak to socialize, or you take the listening approach and gather ideas for content, the reward in the end will be a better connection, which ultimately leads to a deeper relationship.
Creating a Universal Sharing System
Moving away from communication in silos and built on years of routine procedures is no small task. Making the change might require incremental phases. First, you may set goals to show some small wins in your own department based on a new process. When different groups build social media channels, focus communication around their own initiatives, and don’t share or support overall brand communication, social media does not work for the company as a collective whole. Clearly, social media is working only for individuals or small groups. To make social media work for the entire company, there must be a coordinated effort from the development of the content to how the information is shared.
As the COMMS Organizer, you know businesses today are not run by individuals but by teams of people who work together. The success or failure of a social media initiative depends on how well the team or teams collaborate and perform. Social media in the organization should not be a series of parts working independently. On the contrary, you need to look at how the whole engine functions—the combination of the people, their collective innovation, and the synergy they create to get the job done. Teams working interdependently always outperform those working in a vacuum.
The creation of a Universal Calendar System enables the Social Media Core Team to work with the Coalition (department champions and other employees) that want to cross-promote their programs through the main company Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, and so on. The Universal Calendar is designed to highlight different events, broken down by themes, areas of focus, and keywords common to the company and may be promoted companywide. Your social media audit may uncover how different social media properties are not cross-promoted and do not support one another. A Universal Calendar can also enable members of one department to be tuned into the programs and activities of other departments occurring during the calendar year. Universal calendars can also be developed specifically for different departments to preplan their sharing of weekly/monthly content. The Universal Calendar System is housed on a collaborative internal platform and coordinated by the Social Media Core Team. The calendar helps everyone work together to maximize the impact of a shared effort.
Developing a Social Media Playbook or Share Book
The COMMS Organizer should be involved in developing a social media “share” book, or what’s commonly known as the social media playbook. The playbook is an essential part of overall social media strategy or can be used for specific program initiatives. Jay Baer is one of the top social media consultants in the United States, co-author of The Now Revolution, and founder of the popular Convince & Convert social media blog. Jay shared his thoughts on how a social media playbook unifies the organization’s social media strategy and keeps the employees on the same page.3
Q: From your experience, who is responsible for creating the social media playbook or share book in an organization? Should the PR department be involved in this process?
A: Initially before the operational element, it’s a Noah’s Ark approach; all corners of the organization are involved. Collectively employees can decide what the playbook look like, what it should contain, and how is it used? You often see customer service, legal, operations, sales, PR, and marketing coming together as a cross-functional effort. Some of the issues I’ve experienced when it comes to embracing the cross-functional thinking are that the committee is created by business card. People are appointed to participate; the head of IT, the head of legal, the head of operations, solely based on their job functions.
However, your title doesn’t determine your social media experience. Social media merits experiential learning. If you don’t love social media, you might “suck” at social media. It’s important to find the people who have the passion for social media and include them. It’s those employees that spend their nights and weekends using social media, whether they are natural champions in the organization or the people who just love social media outside of their job function.
Q: Are PR pros responsible to successfully communicate the value of the playbook to get their team members, other departments, and all employees on board?
A: There is an opportunity for PR professionals to communicate [the value] the playbook, but it’s still a cross-functional effort right down to who introduces the playbook. For example, if a single area of the company introduces a playbook, then it’s looked at through that prism. Unfortunately, there can be baggage that goes along with that. If the company’s legal department introduces a playbook, then everyone expects the book to be about the lawyers and their needs. The ideal scenario is to have PR, Customer Service, and Human Resources working together to communicate the value of the playbook, especially if there is an opportunity for all employees to get involved ad hoc, and in a more natural way. It’s important to realize that every employee is in marketing and customer service. Customers don’t necessarily call the 800 number for help through an “official” channel, but rather reach out to anyone they can on Facebook. The companies that are great with social media on the outside are the companies that are also great with social media on the inside.
Q: What are the most important components of the playbook?
A: I think of the playbook as a strategy cake with operational frosting. A playbook has to make people understand why they are using social media. For example, it answers the question, “Why are we active in social media?” They also have to understand what will make their efforts stronger and how the company is going to measure social media. Focusing on the measurement and sharing the analytics is so important. If you can’t trust employees with social media statistics, you don’t have a social media problem, you have a hiring problem. The more specific you can be about social media measurement, and the wider you can distribute the information, the better off you will be.
Q: Can you give an example of a client using a social media playbook? Did the playbook make a measurable difference?
A: A great example of a client using a social media playbook is the marketing agency, Bailey Gardiner. We worked with the agency when it started out in social media and employees were blogging about seven to eight blog posts a month. There were also a handful of people on Twitter and Facebook. Through the use of a playbook, the company asked all employees to contribute one blog post a month. As a result, its seven to eight posts a month turned into more than 20 posts per month. It saw its website traffic increase six-fold and its inbound leads skyrocketed. One of the most impressive results of the playbook was that digital and social media services revenue at the agency increased significantly. The company experimented with its blog posts and actually wrote about companies that it wanted to work with. Because Bailey Gardiner was smart about search and the use of the right tags, two of the companies reached out to them as a result.
For any employee resistance, there’s always some hesitation in the beginning. With the phones ringing, emails non-stop, and something to do at the agency at all times, it’s difficult to balance social media with other work responsibilities. Some people may have thought that social media was a time waster; however, the positive results including the increase in traffic and actual sales for the agency was proof of the playbook’s value.
Creating the Social Media Purpose Brief
The Social Media Purpose Brief is definitely a common missing piece in a social media program. The Brief is not meant to stifle social media or make people feel like there’s more paperwork to be created. Rather, it’s meant to make sure the social media profiles initiated on behalf of the company have a strategic purpose and will be administrated properly for success. The COMMS Organizer needs to create a Social Media Purpose Brief, so everyone interested in social media understands they are accountable for their profiles.
It’s not uncommon that process is often overlooked because everyone gets busy with daily department work and resources are usually scarce. When everyone is in multitasking mode, there is a natural tendency to think someone else has a process covered. It’s important that social media profiles and pages are built with purpose, so you need to create a system that enables your Social Media Core Team to evaluate and help a department properly set up a new profile.
The Social Media Purpose Brief includes the following information, which needs to be filled out and reviewed by the Core Team, the department head, and so on, depending on the size of your company. Following is the information you should consider capturing from groups in your company that want to start a social media program and set up a profile on Facebook, Twitter, blog, and so on:
• Sponsoring Department/Program
• Social Media Purpose Brief Date
• Type of Social Media Initiative
• Strategy/Purpose of the Initiative
• Goals/Objectives
• Target Audience
• Execution/Maintenance of the Profile(s)
Ensure the information is reviewed and there is a process in place to prevent countless social media profiles from popping up across the social landscape with little purpose or passion. These channels usually end up as abandoned channels or social activities that don’t reflect your company brand voice. Remember, you can cut down on paper by making this an online form for submission. The COMMS Organizer can help to keep the social media effort coordinated and on track.
The Social Media Purpose Brief serves an important purpose for higher education, as pointed out by Joseph Provenza, CIO at Flagler College:
We live in a world where everyone can get the kind of exposure formerly reserved for celebrities. A lot of people want a piece of that action. However, an organization must be very purposed about its social media voice lest it gain the kind of publicity that no one wants. In addition to this, some best practices in social media remain undefined. Who is to say that the janitorial staff at a college should not have a social media presence provided that they have someone who is capable of providing good, if not unique, content that fits within the college’s voice?
The real question is, “What are we trying to accomplish with our social media voice?” That leaves room for many different areas to have a voice, provided there is some purpose to their existence in the channel. It may be a voice to disseminate information that is key to the students and their parents as they apply, register, and pay the bills. It may be to continually share the vision of the school so that potential students know what they are getting. It may be to show that the school has a fun side. In each of these examples, you can imagine who might be the voice, and it isn’t always the same voice. However, social media with no purpose will likely send a very different message, which is the school doesn’t really know or care who it is or what it is trying to say. Therein, a purpose statement for any proposed social media voice that is under the governance of the operation, which is ultimately responsible for the message, is critical. Let’s call it the “organized chaos” approach.
What Are the Best Practices of the COMMS Organizer?
Priya Ramesh is Director of Social Media at CRT/tanaka. She works closely with her agency’s clients on new communications processes to strengthen social media programs and the results of their clients’ campaigns. Priya answered several questions, which focused on her work with Network Solutions and Charles Schwab. Following are a few of Priya’s thoughts on public relations, a changing communications process, and adjusting the PR person’s mindset to pay attention to new ways to think to engage with consumers today.
Q: How do you think the communications process has changed in the PR department?
A: In 2007, social media was related to blogs. Twitter and Facebook were just surfacing. Companies didn’t talk about being in “listening” mode for intelligence. It was the widespread growth of Twitter when consumers realized they could air their concerns and complaints. Suddenly, Twitter became a customer service platform. Companies woke up and recognized that there was a whole universe of conversations going on without them. However, it was a different conversation, about the companies, their products and services.
One of our clients, Network Solutions, a company known for domain names, web hosting, and online marketing for small business websites, saw a lot of complaints through its Twitter and Facebook profiles. In 2008, most of the conversations were negative, almost 60% at the time. We suggested an audit to review the sentiment and to see if it were a specific product issue, or if the negative conversations were related to the culture of customer service. It was time to uncover and address what its customers, which included developers, designers, and small business owners, were thinking and how they really felt about Network Solutions. Of course, the information obtained from the audit was used to help Network Solutions answer customer questions, solve problems, and directly address their concerns.
Only when customers are talking, and it’s mostly negative, PR departments in corporations and on the agency side started to use a listening strategy.
Q: Why did it take social media to change the process?
A: Before social media, professionals in public relations and communications used to have this self-fulfilling prophecy. We would send out a news release or a newsletter and thought that this was a type of dialog. Pre-social media, we may have thought we had two-way conversations, but we never did. There was no way really for us to find out the customers’ reaction. No technology was in place that provided us with real-time data and feedback about our customers. Thanks to social media, customers became empowered. Our audiences had the ability to let us know how they felt about their brands. At this point, we had to change not only how we created content, but also how we communicated with the public.
Q: Do you think companies are doing a good job at listening to their customers and other constituents to learn what needs to be communicated through social channels?
A: There’s a huge gap that exists. The digital natives have closed the gap between what they uncover in conversations and what they do with the information. Dell is a good example of truly listening and taking action. However, not every industry is as far along as technology. In many cases, companies are hardly asking questions or crowdsourcing with their customers. It may not be that they don’t want to; they may not know how to begin this exercise. The PR professionals for nontech companies have a larger challenge. There is often more resistance to social media and the potential opportunities to use listening for great customer feedback.
Q: Do any of your clients use polls and surveys, or do they just come out and ask what their audience wants them to share?
A: In 2008, we went back to the Network Solutions executive team with all the negative sentiment we had uncovered and told them they needed a listen and respond strategy. It was at this point when Shashi Bellamkonda, director of social media, was the face of Network Solutions. As a community manager, Shashi became known as the Social Media Swami, which brought both humor and was a great topic of conversation. Shashi went back and neutralized all the negative comments on the Network Solutions Twitter feed and Facebook page. He responded personally to the customers—in his words, not canned. His efforts were focused on the issue, often apologizing for the experience and letting customers know that Network Solutions was there to help.
As a result of prioritizing and responding to the negative comments, the new human approach decreased the negative sentiment dramatically within six months. Network Solutions listened, asked questions, and then used the information. For example, they would turn frequently asked questions into blog posts to help customers. Network Solutions focused on “what can we do to help your website.” We identified a Monitor/Listen/Response strategy that led to action. We also populated a document to review the complaints, which allowed us to produce FAQs and content to better serve the needs of Network Solutions’ clients.
Another good example of a client using crowdsourcing for corporate social responsibility is Charles Schwab. It has a program for charitable donations called “Schwab Gives.” The initiative launched to engage the community in supporting the work of select local charities in Denver. Every year during Schwab Volunteer Week, thousands of Schwab employees across the U.S. receive paid time off to roll up their sleeves and pitch in at local nonprofits. Traditionally, Charles Schwab Foundation matched employees’ donation of time and energy with a $500 grant to each participating organization. What’s new this year is Schwab will donate an additional $10,000 to one of these nonprofits, based on the people’s choice. The public was invited to cast their vote on Facebook for the organization they would like to see get the additional $10,000 grant.
Q: What are some tools or types of training that your clients use internally to help them with better ways to coordinate social outreach among their employees?
A: Shashi Bellamkonda spearheaded internal training sessions at Network Solutions with a particular focus on Twitter. He educated the customer service team on how to respond and what kind of tone to use. It put a new process into place, and then used monthly sessions for employees to learn and to remain up to speed on social media responses. As of today, the Network Solutions customer service team personalizes its tweets by using initials.
Another new process set into place was the Social Media Advisory Board. It was really important to completely remove the skepticism that surrounded social communications. We realized quickly there was some skepticism; so as the agency (myself and Geoff Livingston, SVP, Social Media, CRT/tanaka at the time), we knew that getting a new process in place would include an Advisory Board, all in an effort to get Net Solutions to further help the small business. No matter how much the agency preached or the internal team made recommendations, it was the advisory team that brought the credibility to social media and who understood the concerns of small businesses. The Board was made up of 10 social media leaders who gave advice and reinforced to company executives how Network Solutions should engage online. We quickly saw the trust factor go up, and it was amplified. The Board reinforced the use of social media and the importance of honest feedback.
The COMMS Organizer Check List
Realize the accepted top-down approach to messaging is no longer viable when you need to address how people talk about your company; its products and services through social channels.
Evaluate your current internal communication process to then identify a few new procedures, which most likely touch upon and relate to every part outlined on the Social Media Strategy Wheel.
Create a flatter internal structure in which information is shared unilaterally among various departments because those departments and different levels of management want to engage in social media.
Plan the best ways to create cohesive and consistent messaging so that social media does not fragment the brand.
Determine which of the five new procedures outlined in this chapter are necessary and can be useful in your company to create more organization and cohesive communications.
Set up a Monitor/Listen/Respond strategy to guide your process.