AFTERWORD

If there’s one thing you can bet the farm on with your social media program, it’s that you’ll be thrown plenty of curveballs. I offer myself as support of this maxim.

When I began developing this book and for most of its writing, I led social media at General Motors. I fully expected to be in that position at the time of its release and at the time when you were reading it. Three weeks before I finished the first draft of the book, however, an opportunity arose to join an agency I’ve always greatly respected—Voce Communications—and I jumped at the chance. And suddenly the guy who was writing a book based on the premise that those outside a big organization often don’t understand the challenges inherent in executing social media at such an organization was no longer working inside a big organization and had become instead one of those outside voices. A pretty good curveball if I do say so myself—although it hardly affected what I’d written and has no bearing on the validity of what we’ve just spent 250 or so pages talking about.

But that’s the one constant in social media: things change—fast, and often—and you have to adjust on the fly as smoothly and in as undeterred a fashion as possible. Few of your initiatives will go quite as planned, and you need to understand and anticipate this before you start. In four years at GM, not one of the programs I was responsible for went precisely as I’d drawn it up. Our success can in many ways be attributed to our willingness and ability to adjust course in midstream and go in the direction the current was taking us (or in some cases, to adjust course quickly to avoid oncoming rapids and whirlpools!). Your success will also rest in part on how adroitly and smoothly you are able to adjust for rapid changes in the online environment or unexpected directions or developments in your campaigns or programs. To further the baseball analogy, you don’t ever want to dig in too deeply at the plate because you don’t know whether the next breaking ball will break down and away, up and in—or at your head! Don’t get rattled; just adjust your swing and make contact.

“Nothing will go as planned” is just one of the bottom-line thoughts I want to leave you with. Here are a few others.

This Is No Fad, and It’s Not Just for “the Kids”

I don’t know that anyone in business still really thinks that social and online channels are a passing fancy anymore, or really believes that all this social media stuff is going to go away. (Some might wish it would go away, but you might as well wish that Santa Claus will bring you a unicorn for Christmas.) But there is still an attitude more pervasive than you might think that social is something for “the young people”—used primarily by Gen Y and the Millennials but not by the demographic with the most money to spend, and as a result is often assigned to any under-30 in the office regardless of interest, experience, or aptitude. This just isn’t so. More than half of Americans over the age of 12 are now on Facebook¹—dismiss social media as the domain of teenagers and twentysomethings, and you miss a critical opportunity to become more relevant to not only future customers but your current ones as well. This isn’t going away, and it’s not just for kids. It’s a vital business tool that’s been added to your potential arsenal if you embrace it.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

It’s easy to get rattled or intimidated by the social media landscape. There’s so much jargon, so many bright and shiny objects in the form of emerging new tools to distract you, and it seems like there are unwritten pages upon pages of etiquette and online cultural norms to try to intuit.

It can seem that the online world is very unforgiving of mistakes, too. Because of the cantankerous nature of some vocal online critics, it’s easy to become afraid to leap for fear of falling down or attracting criticism and generating “how not to do it” case studies.

But fear of failure shouldn’t deter you from getting involved in social media or developing your program. No one gets it completely right the first time out of the gate. Most companies well experienced in social still occasionally stumble. You learn from each mistake, and people really are willing to forgive just about any error or failure you may have. If you never try anything for fear of what could go wrong, you’ll never accomplish any big wins either. It’s somewhat sanguine to drop a quote on you here, but Teddy Roosevelt’s words about critics come to mind:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.

If you fail, you fail. Pick your program up, dust if off, and try again. Don’t sweat it. You don’t want to dismiss critics when they’re right or at least being constructive, but you have to understand that the social media world is full of backseat drivers who love to point out all the turns you’ve missed. Don’t worry about the backseat drivers; if you know where you’re going, just stay on the route you’ve got mapped out.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

The world of social media can be intoxicating because of its tendency to magnify or amplify any light that shines on you. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea of having Facebook and Twitter interactions that get people talking about your brand or organization, of creating videos that generate millions of views, or of getting feted by Mashable as a brand that truly “gets” social.

But that’s all ancillary. Social media is a business tool that can help you achieve business goals. Never forget what you’re trying to accomplish via the use of social networks—or that investing time or money in your social program means not investing them somewhere else. You have to make sure that your efforts pay off for your business and justify directing those resources to social media. Don’t get caught up in the social media echo chamber and its occasional penchant for self-congratulations or adulation; don’t let your organizational ego get caught up in pursuing social media buzz at the expense of achieving business goals, and don’t let your individual people get so caught up in becoming “rock stars” or in their “personal brand” that they lose sight of the fact that they represent your brand, not their own.

There’s No “One Way” Sign in Social Media

We covered this in the Introduction, but it bears repeating: there’s not a One Right Way or a cookie-cutter template to make a program win in the social media marketplace. No two industries are exactly alike, and what works for a company in one business may not work for a company in another. Even within the same industry, there can be more than one path to success. In the automotive industry, for example, General Motors and Ford took very different approaches to social media and how they built their programs—yet each company’s program is considered successful, ranking among the best (according to many social media observers) among the Fortune 500. It’s just proof that there’s more than one road to Oz, as it were.

Don’t get caught up worrying about what other companies are doing in social media and why you’re not doing it. You especially don’t want to get caught up in a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality when observing what your competitors are doing in the space. If you become too focused on what “they” are doing, you end up simply trying to replicate their programs rather than finding your own way and innovating in your own right. Observe what works for others and incorporate what makes sense for your program, but always err on the side of blazing your own path.

If You Want to Go Viral, Sneeze on Someone; Otherwise, Just Build Good Content

Remember back in high school? You could always tell which kids were trying really hard to be popular—because they looked very much like they were trying really hard, which just got them dismissed by the in-crowd for trying too hard.

The same mentality applies in social media, especially with video. By definition, something goes “viral” when an audience chooses en masse to share a piece of content with its networks. If you design video content and call it “viral” from the outset, what you’re saying is that you actually believe that you know—and can dictate to the audience—what it will find enjoyable and choose to share. That’s an arrogant point of view, to say the least, and is the digital equivalent of trying too hard to be popular. When you’re developing video, just focus on creating good content—make it informative, make it entertaining, make it touching, or make it controversial. But don’t make it while calling it “viral.” That’s a designation that the audience grants—and that you don’t have the right to.

Grow into Success

While you should have a sense of urgency about building out a strong social media program, you shouldn’t plow into it so rapidly and headlong that you make easily avoided mistakes in the rush.

We’ve all seen chipmunks running around with their cheeks stuffed so full of food that it looks like their faces will burst. We laugh at them, generally. If you have kids, you’re probably familiar with telling them to take smaller bites and slow down, or else they’ll choke.

Well, in a social media setting, biting off more than you can chew is similarly unwise, a much worse sin than not being everywhere you’d like to be. So assess what you really want to do and what you can effectively manage, and focus on executing those things well before you try to add more elements. Perhaps you start with a blog, or a Facebook page, and build up both a loyal community and some experience managing that community, before you plunge into the even more uncontrolled world of Twitter. Build in other elements—video production, or geolocation initiatives, or conference/event sponsorships and programs—when you’ve got the money, the cultural imprimatur, and most important, the people, to carry out each element well. There’s nothing worse than an official Facebook page on which the community isn’t responded to or an official Twitter feed that goes dark for days or weeks at a time or a video channel on YouTube with the same three videos (often commercials) for weeks or months. So don’t “chipmunk” your social media program. Start with what you can effectively manage and do well, and then grow into further successes.

Find Smart Partners Who Are Committed to Your Success

No matter how effectively you draw your program up and how well you’ve resourced to support a social media initiative, the odds are very strong that you’re going to need and want partners to help you out. Whether it’s scaling to accommodate the high number of conversations and relationships your social activity makes your brand part of, helping to manage the communities you’ve joined or created, planning strategic direction and brainstorming, providing advice and counsel as to how to handle particular situations, or helping you build platforms of your own to publish your point of view, there are going to be multiple opportunities for you to ask for needed help. There’s no harm in that; collaboration and working in tandem with others can bolster your efforts. Your agency partners, or any consultants you bring in, can be vital contributors to your success—as integral to your team as anyone working directly for your company. But take care to select partners whose first questions are always about what you want to achieve, about how you will measure success, and whose objective is to meet your objectives and get you credit.

I’ve seen situations where agencies have wanted to issue press releases proclaiming their latest client before they’ve actually even done anything for that client. To me, that’s a sign that the partner is more about its own goals and reputation than yours. I’ve seen consultants who’ve come in to an engagement with a company paying for their insight, only to give their standard stump presentation, collect their check, and go on—without ever providing any actual strategic benefit for the company that engaged them. (Yet they’re quick to add to their résumé and talking points that they’ve “worked with” that company as they continue to inflate their CV.) For partnerships to work, everybody has to be on the same page and working toward the same goals and the same ends. Just as a good manager recognizes that she looks best when her people are excelling, a good partner will recognize that when you look good, he looks good. Take the time to look beyond an agency’s or consultant’s name recognition and assess whether its counsel or proposals seem designed to elevate your brand, enhance its place in social communities, and achieve your business goals.

Go to Summer School

When you were a kid, the idea of summer school probably annoyed you. I just finished school for the year, you may have thought. Why do I have to go back and keep learning? The tendency to think we’ve got a handle on everything we need to grasp can follow us into adulthood, and it’s easy to feel that after a few successes you have this whole social media thing down cold. Trust me, you don’t.

It’s not that you don’t know what you think you do—it’s just that this space evolves so quickly that what was innovative last year is already tired and passé this year. If you want to be a leader, you have to commit yourself to the idea that you never will know “enough,” that you need to keep reading and learning and experimenting and failing and evolving your program and even your mind-set about how social media should work. You should be prepared to challenge the thinking of the top influencers in social media and to challenge your own thinking. You have to constantly be in a state of feeling as if you’re a little behind the curve. Read social media blogs and sites voraciously; go to as many conferences as your schedule and budget will allow; interact with as many people as possible in the social space. You haven’t ever completed the grade. There’s always summer school to go to.

Remember That Success Rests with Meeting the Audience’s Expectations and Needs

Yes, you have to keep your eye on your own expectations and goals, and you don’t ever want to get into a position where you’re pandering to an audience’s every whim or letting the network lead your program away from what you want or need to achieve. But your program and your content cannot be just about your key messages, your branding, and what you want people to know about you. A truly successful social media program begins and ends with listening before you talk, with putting yourself in the audience’s shoes and asking, “What will be relevant to them, and would I care about this content if I didn’t work here?” If you stay committed to listening as much as you talk and letting the audience control the direction of the conversation most of the time, you’re doing it right. Keep the idea of being relevant to your audience ahead of the idea of being relevant to the suits in your organization, and you’ll do fine.

Social Media Is About People

This is the most important lesson of all. This isn’t about a bunch of new technologies wreaking havoc on the old communications power structure, and it’s not about leading with your logo. Ultimately, it still is about relationships, humanizing, and people liking your brand or organization because they like your people. Humanizing your brand does no good for you unless people like the humans they meet from your brand.

So the most important asset you can invest in and the most important element of your social media program will always be people. The smartest, most expensive, and most well-marketed social media campaign in the world won’t succeed without the right people to make it work. But if you get likable, credible, smart, and responsive people involved in your social media efforts, you’re going to win every time, even without the biggest budget in the world.

When all the elements we’ve discussed are in place, and you’ve got the right mind-set instilled in your people and your organization, your social media practice can be the most rewarding and fun part of your organization—while still contributing to the business goals that got it funded in the first place. This isn’t a fluffy “Kumbaya”; this is a business tool that can deepen customer loyalty, win new customers, and change the way you service the people who keep you in business. If it’s not the best thing since sliced bread, it’s pretty darn close.

So go knock it out of the park.