Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Social Media Mgrs vs. IT mgrs

We’re all on the same team. We’re all trying to enable interaction, engagement and knowledge transfer.

But why, in the arena of social media, are folks wearing either an IT sticker or a Social Media Guru sticker (read: PR, Marketing, Communications, etc.). Why can’t we be both?

Here’s what we have in common:

1 - We’re solving a problem, not picking a tool.

We are trying to move the focus from the tool-of-day /recent hot trend to creating a behavioral response in our audience. The technology of today will be old by the time it’s implemented; we all should be focusing on the end result we’re hoping to achieve and moving in/out various tech tools to get there.

We’re trying to build infrastructures and governance that will allow us to be current without being trendy; cost effective without being staid or outdated.

2 – We’re trying to see the trends and pick the long-term winners.

Being swayed by what’s ‘hot’ or in the media, isn’t a solution. See #1. By attempting to find the methods and tools by which the majority can interact (simply, effectively), we stand a greater chance of folks continuing to use the method/tool beyond it’s initial ‘cool’ factor. That’s engagement.

3 – We’re trying to make it about the user/audience.

No project, product or tool will be effective if it just lies there. If there is no demand or gap, then we ask why choose this/do this?

We’re also not trying to showcase how cool and knowledgeable we are. We’re hoping to allow our audience to interact and showcase how capable they are.

4 – We test.

We keep each stage defined and we validate each stage at completion.

5 – We believe that knowledge transfer is the greatest result, enabling everything else.

We may not always agree on what knowledge should be transferred (lol) but that’s another story.

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