Invest Wisely in Social Media
Once you have laid down the basics, there are four points to keep track of as you scale:
•Think use cases, not social media analytics tools: Think through the problem you are trying to solve first before building or buying tools. Make sure you tie whatever you do to business outcomes as I mentioned earlier and don’t treat social as something on top.
•Don’t be afraid to experiment: This is tightly linked to the point above, and you have to try relentlessly. You will fail, but the point is to fail fast and forward, and learn from your mistakes before trying to automate anything. Key here is to start small first, learn from your experiments and grow from there.
•Pick partners wisely: Although many social media analytics vendors claim they can do everything today, don’t believe them. This space is still in its infancy and although consolidation has already started, it will take a few more years for the space to mature.
•It’s OK to outsource, but build plan to in-source: It is very natural (and even advisable) to recruit consultants and agencies as you embark on your social media efforts, since you will likely not have the right skills and resources in house.
However, you need to both think hard about what to outsource (you can read my point-of-view here), and prepare to in-source or automate tasks as soon as you start to build scale – what is the point of hiring agencies to compile data or perform basic business intelligence tasks when there are many tools that can do this today?
Once you have laid down the basics, there are four points to keep track of as you scale:
•Think use cases, not social media analytics tools: Think through the problem you are trying to solve first before building or buying tools. Make sure you tie whatever you do to business outcomes as I mentioned earlier and don’t treat social as something on top.
•Don’t be afraid to experiment: This is tightly linked to the point above, and you have to try relentlessly. You will fail, but the point is to fail fast and forward, and learn from your mistakes before trying to automate anything. Key here is to start small first, learn from your experiments and grow from there.
•Pick partners wisely: Although many social media analytics vendors claim they can do everything today, don’t believe them. This space is still in its infancy and although consolidation has already started, it will take a few more years for the space to mature.
•It’s OK to outsource, but build plan to in-source: It is very natural (and even advisable) to recruit consultants and agencies as you embark on your social media efforts, since you will likely not have the right skills and resources in house.
However, you need to both think hard about what to outsource (you can read my point-of-view here), and prepare to in-source or automate tasks as soon as you start to build scale – what is the point of hiring agencies to compile data or perform basic business intelligence tasks when there are many tools that can do this today?