10 Red Flags For Social Media Innovation

0 Comment(s) | Posted Apr 7, 2010 by Pat Morrell

Patrick Morrell

Stefan Lindegaard - Copenhagen-based speaker, open innovation guru, and author of the upcoming book, The Open Innovation Revolution - revealed phenomenal insight and best practices in his recent BusinessWeek essay, "Ten Red Flags for Innovation."

An article that offers suggestions for avoiding the common pitfalls that can occur when pursuing innovation strategy, Lindegaard's advice is also wisely applicable to those companies considering a social media marketing investment.  Point by point, his innovation expertise is useful to those CMOs trying to make sense of Web 2.0 engagement and institutionalize a new strategy across their marketing team.

Here's a list of Lindegaard's "red flags to look for," where "innovation" has been replaced by "social media marketing" (or some variation, thereof):

(NOTE: if your company is wading through the innovation waters, I highly recommend reading Lindegaard's article in its entirety.  Terrific perspective.)

1.  The lack of a social media marketing strategy.  Without a clearly defined concept of your goals and priorities - be they thought leadership, community building, lead generation, current customer engagement, etc. - and without a well-planned approach to building infrastructure, setting measurement metrics, and ramping up activity, companies run a serious risk of doing more harm than good. 

2.  No definition of social media marketing.  Is it Facebook?  Twitter?  A blog?  What purpose will it serve in the greater marketing strategy?  Is it a press release portal?  A customer service tool?  It's important to have a shared internal concept of what it is you precisely mean when you say "social media."

3.  Too much focus on internal marketing strategies and messages.  Word-of-mouth is one of the best methods for developing a sustainable presence and customer base.  So is ceding some control to your online audience, allowing them to help define your brand and how you can be best utilized in the marketplace. 

4. Too much focus on external messaging.  That being said, you do not want to drop the reins entirely.  Engage the audience, promote what's appropriate, but let your reputation and offering evolve organically.  And when your audience members say somthing that is outright innaccurate, correct them.

5.  Internal silos are too firmly ingrained.  Your Operations team, Sales people, C-suite, and lower level managers and customers service don't need to be gung-ho evangelists, but achieving moderate buy-in is important.  Many are bound to be skeptical, but clarifying the long-term value proposition of social media for everyone in the company will pay dividends.  Here are some thoughts about getting that buy-in.

6. Too much focus on ideas, and too little focus on people.  Social media marketing is about learning from, engaging with, and delivering for your audience.  Ideas are nothing if there isn't flesh-and-blood engagement driving them forward.

7.  Lack of a strong networking culture.  Without the ability to borrow ideas from competitors and other organizations, or to pick the brains of other Marketing heads in your space, it will be difficult to propel your company forward.

8.  Social media efforts focus predominantly on technology or products.  It's not about Facebook, YouTube, Hootsuite, or iPads. It's about valuable interaction, and building the right audience, wherever they may be and with whatever tool makes the most sense. 

9.  It's all about the usual suspects.  Keeping existing customers happy is crucial to maintaining company size.  Finding new customers to keep happy is crucial to growing company size.  Use social media outlets to find new customers.  They are waiting.

10.  Executives and marketing leaders underestimate the speed of change.  If there is one universal trend in marketing across the past  years, it's "velocity."  Keep up, because you're already behind.

Filed under: Old World Changing