Social media change needs to come from within

If you read this blog regularly or have heard me speak at conferences you probably know I believe that before any company trips over their own feet to market to consumers through social media, they should be using the same tools, technologies, principles and philosophies to transform their businesses from within.

I blogged about this very topic a couple of weeks ago (unwittingly inspiring Barrack Obama to use the phrase "lipstick on a pig") and it is a key point in the r u ready speech that I've been delivering at conferences.

Today, in his OnlineSpin column for MediaPost, Max Kalehoff sounds off on the same subject, reflecting on five key ways companies can, should and must embrace social media change -- and not a single one of them is rooted in the marketing department.  As you'll see from the direct lift below, Max is keenly focused on deep, meaningful transformation of the business rather than surface-level marketing campaigns and tactics.  (The following is lifted directly from MediaPost and good enough that I thought it was worth reblogging in full - for the complete article, visit the MediaPost Blog and sign up for free access to the site.)

Customer Experience - What is the quality of experience among our customers and prospects? As we're frequently reminded, customer experience frequently manifests as media. We see customers try us out, then review us on their blogs, in infinite columns, and in semi-private groups and community forums. Customer experience is the new media department, the determinant of customer love or detraction. So we must shape experience accordingly.

Company Values - You can't talk about customer experience without talking about values. While no product or company is perfect, the values of a company directly impact the good will our customers grant us. Do we set realistic promises and execute against them? Do we acknowledge imperfection, but compensate with relentless drive for improvement? Are we a culture focused on solutions, because that is what we want our customers to associate with us? Company values have wide-ranging consequences - among them, a huge impact on customer experience and your credibility with customers in social media venues.

Listening - Do we actively listen not only to what our customers say, but what they really mean?  The act of listening is one of the biggest ways to demonstrate that we care and engage with costumers. But no company should be exclusively concerned with listening to customers in social media venues, if it isn't prepared to master customer listening overall.

Humanizing Voice & Confidence - With so many corporate barriers separating companies from their customers, it's actually a very big deal for a company to find its voice (or voices). On one hand, it's not always easy for company managers to stop speaking in corporate-speak, and, instead, communicate like real humans. On the other, it often takes a lot of work for controlling managers to let go and empower employees, and get used to the idea of more personal and highly exposed communications and interactions. It takes confidence, trust, patience and diligence. Social media venues are often where this tension comes to a head.

Organizational Silos - If social technologies have done anything, they've exposed outdated organizational silos. Social media represent open customer expression and interaction, and impact all sorts of different company departments. Consider customer service, product development, quality and testing, legal, HR, sales and marketing. Are disparate company operations coordinating and effectively managing social media interactions? Are they allocating line responsibilities and centralizing intelligence in CRM databases to optimize relationships — and then actually acting?

Bear in mind that Max is not only a social media insider (his blog) and a seasoned social media professional (he was a senior executive at Nielsen BuzzMetrics), but also a two-time VP of Marketing (presently employed by Clickable.)  It is notable that he is most concerned with issues that reach far beyond the typical marketing department domain, extending into everything from education to customer service to organizational structure to corporate culture.

He gets that social media done right is much more than a series of blogs, widgets, social network apps, podcast sponsorships and social media news releases.  In fact, these things are often little more than icing -- and most organizations should start by baking up an entirely new recipe for the cake (try to steal that one Obama!)