Have you read the latest news from SNCR? Professor/Dr. Barnes from the University of Massachusetts has released the results of her study on Fortune500 company adoption of social media. Read more about the study here.
Ruminating on this tasty nugget of research, neurons began madly firing so I thought I’d share my questoins with you, dear reader.
Essentially, blogs with comments enabled substitue as the poor man’s focus group — or focus group 2.0. Under the old marketing research paradigm, this dissent was collected privately by the marketing group, massaged into a power point presentation and delivered privately to C-level executives in an easy-to-digest format. Under the new paradigm, focus group 2.0, these conversations are public, raw and unstructured. This shift in control over brand conversations is a monumental cultural shift for many Fortune 500 companies, whom are typically highly-matrixed, insular and conservative. For them, the financial impact of such public discourse is ladden with risks. And, frankly, until social media can be more accurately measured, no one can prove them wrong.
Of the five companies listed as market-leaders in social media within this community, I wonder what the impetus was for their adoption of social media. Did they spark the social media conversation or was it thrust upon them by the public as in the case of DellHell, Domino’s or Comcast?
If these companies actively solicit feedback, how do you moderate or censor the conversation to protect the brand? How do you maintain an authentic tone and compelling incentives that inspire brand loyalist or critics to spend the effort to contribute feedback – what’s in it for them?
Operationally, whis group within the company is accountable for the impact social media has on its brand reputation? Marketing? Operations? Or, a completely new stand alone group? Companies like Starbucks manage their social media channels within the marketing department. Others, like Comcast, have developed new standalone groups to manage this new paradigm of customer relationship management.
On a tangental note, there’s an interesting debate occuring in the business community around the use of social media as a communication channel for company disclosure of information. Urged by Sun’s CEO Joe Schwartz, the SEC chairman reported last July that the SEC is currently reviewing its full-disclosure policy to consider recognizing corporate blogs as a communication channel to disclose and disseminate shareholder information. Now, that’s an interesting evolution in the social media space and a hell of a cost-saving step for the corporate bottomline. Will save this analysis for another post. While I’m not expert, I definitely expect social media adoption to accelerate, industry standards and social media procedural guidelines to develop.
Last but most important, I look foward to the evolution in this space and hope like hell they are hiring an intern for the summer of 2009 or in May of 2010 when I graduate? *wink*
Cheers,
J
