By Pamela Babcock 
13/8/2010

Build a social media presence and they might come.

Build it and let it go stagnant, or blunder the approach, and face damaging the company’s reputation and squandering employee engagement, experts say.

Social media require a long-term corporate commitment, so it pays to shape a plan “so you don’t end up being disappointed in the tools when they fail,” according to Sherrie A. Madia, co-author of The Social Media Survival Guide (Full Court Press, 2010).

“Most people are under the false assumption that jumping into the social media space is as easy as signing up for an account and off you go,” said Madia, who teaches social media and communication strategies at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is director of communications.

Companies with no social media plan or those that start too fast often end up with “social media graffiti” when they create an online presence and then walk away. “The result is akin to spray painting across their … brand,” said Madia.

Paul Peterson, national talent resource manager in the HR department of Grant Thornton in Toronto, concedes that “social media is a hot topic in HR right now” and “a fantastic tool.” But he said the audit, tax and advisory service firm is deliberately “watching what’s going on,” in part because so much is changing.

“We’re not asleep at the wheel but are actually very consciously awake on the sidelines,” Peterson explained.

In 2008, for example, potential job candidates didn’t want to be contacted through Facebook because it was viewed as “personal” space, but that’s changed.

“In Canada, the U.S., U.K. and South Africa, we have noticed an increased willingness to use it for job seeking,” Peterson said.

“You’ve got to have a strategy around it. And, for HR, one of the challenges I see is this falls under employment branding. So the question that often comes up is ‘who is going to do it, and who is capable of doing it?’ ” Peterson noted.

You’re Not Alone

Suffer from “Twitter neglect” or have an anemic or downright dormant Facebook page? You’re not alone.
A November 2009 study by Weber Shandwick found that while three-quarters or 73 percent of the Fortune 100 have opened 540 Twitter accounts, more than half (52 percent) are stagnant. Many aren’t actively using the accounts as measured by links, hashtags, references and retweets. And a 2009 Burson-Marsteller and Proof Digital study found that 28 percent of Fortune 100 Facebook pages had generated few or no comments.

Mistakes to Avoid

Social media missteps go beyond failing to stay current.
Wal-Mart’s failed “Wal-Marting Across America” campaign was “outed” in 2006 after the retailer admitted that purported typical citizen-shopper bloggers were paid to write positive prose, Madia said. She cited BP’s apparent lack of a social media strategy; having a strategy could have helped “enormously” during the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“We see these blunders happen again and again,” said Madia.

Here, according to Madia, are five mistakes companies make:

 Diving in without a strategic plan: Don't podcast, blog, tweet, “friend” or post YouTube videos until you know what message you want to communicate, who’ll manage them, who’s your audience and how they and you will benefit.
 Lacking a social media policy to outline how employees should behave online. Educate employees on style preferences and confidentiality and try to ensure that messaging is aligned with the company’s values and brand.
 Failing to tailor the plan to the target audience and to understand sites, tools and applications the audience is using.
 Producing weak, unfocused or unhelpful content. Avoid self-serving promos. Give consumers “something they can use—tips, incentives, product information, new ideas, fun and inspiration,” Madia said.
 Allowing efforts to stagnate. Start small because “it’s an evolution and a process,” Madia said. Add RSS-share-save-post-to links. Answer blog, Flickr, and podcast posts, and be sure to respond to tweets and to engage “friends.”

A Week-Long Experiment

One organization plans to examine its reliance on social media by taking a bold step. For a week beginning Sept. 13, 2010, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania will block IP addresses and shut down access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and IM. The goal: To get students, staff and faculty to think about social media when they are not available.

“We want to challenge people to think about how they came to rely on it,” noted Eric Darr, the university’s executive vice president and provost. “We too have used lots of social media, some successfully, some of it not so successfully.”

University faculty, in particular, use social media to communicate with colleagues about curriculum ideas, but what if they had to rely on face-to-face meetings? “Would the process take longer, or would the outcomes be any different?” Darr asked.

HR Implications

Social media not only enhance brands, they can boost employee engagement, experts say. Even so, not all organizations tap their full potential.

A 2009 Beeline Labs study titled Social Media Monitoring, Engagement & Measurement: Emerging Best Practices found that while most companies acknowledge that social media monitoring and engagement are a “must,” most are in the early stages of adopting the tools to monitor and listen.

The study—based on interviews with Best Buy, Cisco, GE, IBM, Intuit and UPS—found that many companies have created strategies, policies and processes to respond and participate in social media on behalf of the company and that “almost all are wrestling with how to most effectively staff, scale, measure, fund and demonstrate business value,” the study states.

In the End

Madia said a successful social media program should draw expertise from across the company—public relations, HR, legal, marketing and IT.

From an HR perspective, “it’s one of the most exciting and unnerving areas because it has to do with our personal brand and our professional life and how the two are merging,” she said.

“It’s about authenticity and alignment in terms of the corporate persona,” Madia said. “It’s about thinking things through and planning. … Because once it’s out there, it’s a sticky space and it’s hard to pull it back.”

Pamela Babcock is a freelance writer based in the New York City area.