Scaling social media programs
A number of people have picked up on the scalability issue of social media programs which I mentioned a while back. Some questioned the need for super large communities, while others wondered about the viability of those communities.
Let me take a few minutes to expand on my views around scalability – as I think this is a very important topic.
Scalability does not necessarily mean having large number of people in your community, or a super large number of bloggers in a social media outreach program. Having programs with the right scale means that they impact your business in significant and measurable ways. Sometimes you can achieve that with small crowds, sometimes not.
Take an influencer program in customer support for example. Comcast can do with 5-10 people on twitter what thousands of people in the call center cannot. Or take a new product innovation initiative. You can get significant customer insights with communities that range in the few hundreds. Of course I would argue that you would get better results with larger communities if you have thousands of customers, but the point is that you can do it. And then there are also those cases where you will need hundreds of thousands or millions of people in order to move the needle – especially in communities which are focused on increasing word-of-mouth, those that are meant for customer support, and even in certain developer communities.
The issue with scalability is not a people issue – it is one of business results. You want to make sure that the results you are getting are going to make a significant impact on your business. If you have 600,000,000 people visiting your stores every year and you try a social media program that will increase that traffic through word of mouth – having a target of a 0.1% increase in traffic means getting 600,000 additional visits. You won’t get that with a community of 10,000 people. Now if that same company is trying to get feedback on how to improve the store experience so that customers stay longer and buy more, they could do that with 10,000 people.
Again, scalability is not a people issue – it’s a business impact issue.
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December 4th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Good post, but I think we really need to “get back to basics” to make social media scalable. You cite Comcast and Twitter, but there’s an anchor foundation there in the “consumer relations” department. (Disclosure: they are a client.) That’s where many of the best folks in the organization — and the ones with the most intimate relationships with “actual customers” — reside. Point being, I think 2009 needs to be the year — with social media sustainability in mind — where we more aggressively expand the discussion/exploratory net to accommodate the folks who manage “direct” interactions with consumers. Of course, it all intermingles because the same folks who knock on a brand’s door to complain or share love are the same ones who have a high propensity to spend time on boards, blogs, even twitter. But if we don’t get that right — e.g. make sure the brands waxing poetic about social media also know how to pick up the phone or accept feedback or direct participation with the ease and friendliness of the Obama campaign — we lose credibility. Again, if we want to make sure this great movement doesn’t implode, we need to “get back to basics.” Let’s define what that means.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:31 am
One question about scalability and social media based customer service/support/communications has to do with cost. Companies already spend time and money on traditional forms of customer service. With the addition of social media based methods does this mean they are shifting costs from one form to another or are they having to add staff as they hire “community managers” to oversee and manage social media based communications?
Are the customers reached through traditional support methods really the same as those more likely to be reached via social media?
I’ve addressed this on my own web site (http://www.ddmcd.com/everyone.html) and would be interested in hearing from folks who have figured out how to efficiently manage both traditional and social media based techniques.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Great post! I’m not a marketing expert or even a SM expert but i think you have hit a point that is great to add to the ongoing conversations about “scalability.”
First off, what IS scalability? Thanks for trying to define that. Second…I think that saying it has to have business results intrinsically requires that the SM approach for each business is truly different. There isn’t a cookie cutter approach. So going into the scalability discussion requires the thought “what value is this going to add to a company”? If that question can be answered, then a scalable SM approach is appropriate, if not, then there’s no reason to beat down all the doors saying that SM is a must-have marketing tool. So, business issue, yes. If the cost-benefit (see comment from Dennis about spending) allows the benefit to override the cost, then of course you add to the budget. But if it’s a shared cost, then you have to assume that the cost-benefit analysis has already been done with the current customer service and marketing structures to allow for a pruning of those areas of business.
(thoughts in progress here…)
December 7th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Hi Francois,
first of all it was great meeting you a few weeks ago with Robin from social media today, unfortunately we were only able to chat for a few mins.
i think you make a great point with this post. at the end of the day scalability means making sure you are continuously able to achieve results across your departments. I think dennis make a few good points above when bringing cost into the equation. companies want to know how i continue to deliver results across business units, and how much is going to cost me to do so.
J