What will social media look like in a year or two?
Let’s lose the Social Media Director position right now. From now on, the Customer Service director issues the tweets, and the product manager does the product release tweets. They all report into the Brand Manager as far as communications go. And to train all of us for the future of how we get information, grammar school curriculums need to maintain a serious focus on reading and writing to put the orthography debate to bed (who knew social media could save orthography).
Social media is merely a tool and an extension of how we get information, and it should be incorporated into the life of the company brand and marketing strategy, just as the website is today.
Here are five things I can call myself an expert on after having sufficiently screwed up, learned, and proved:
- If you are a CEO, assign each manager a set of social media editorial objectives for the week at the Monday manager’s meeting.
- If you are an advertiser aiming to outsource your social media, keep the customer service and product launches in-house and outsource the public relations and brand awareness.
- Social media does not mean informal. I love the CEO of Zappos, but he’s not my friend, and he’s not going to pick me up at the airport. So spare me the personal details (unless, of course, you will pick me up at the airport).
- Don’t lose the connection with the spiritual grandfather of social media: the corporate website. Content needs to be tied into it in a serious and prominent way. Redundancy is king.
- Don’t be afraid to make your own rules and get support for your pioneering initiatives. Your social media strategy may be the inevitable phase of the social media revolution.
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