Month: June 2009

If social media is dead, why am I so busy?

Dave

Geoff Livingston wrote a blog post yesterday declaring social media is dead. As you can imagine, it’s generated some comment and debate. Geoff is a public relations strategist with CRT/Tanaka, CEO of Livingstone Communications and a “the?” driving force behind Blog Potomac. I saw him present at the Society for New Communications Research conference, but I didn’t meet him. He has a lot of respect in social media circles, so I’m interested in his opinions. But I don’t have time to consider this particular one.

I’m going to our internal Web Summit in Heidelberg next week, where most of the folks at SAS helping to set our online direction will be gathering. There’s obviously a lot of interest in social media in that group, so I’m presenting in the opening session, leading a 90-minute session focused solely on SAS’ social media strategy, and hosting an informal breakout session where participants can ask questions of one another and discuss what’s working for them. I’m leaving on Saturday, and I still have some preparation to do. “I’m the kind of person who’s never satisfied with his slides. Plus, I have a new netbook that needs filling up.”

I also have a long list of goals and objectives for the year, designed to help integrate social media into SAS’ sales, marketing and external communications. It’s a pretty big list, and there’s always something to do and someone to meet. So as much as I appreciate that folks in the social media field are having a theoretical discussion about whether or not social media is dead, I’m too busy doing it to join in. “Although I did read enough to know that the fact that people like me are engaged in social media is one of the reasons Geoff has declared its demise.”

I understand what it’s like to be a consultant, having done it myself. You need to be 100 percent certain in your opinions, and able to convince potential clients “and reassure existing clients” that you are the only person who can save them. I much prefer where I am now, in a position where I can say, "Let’s try some things and see what works, and see what’s working for other people like us." That was the idea behind my first post in this blog, where I declared I am not an expert.

So, if you folks participating in the debate come to any conclusions that will help SAS build better relationships, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll be getting on with it.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Guiding principles for social media

Dave
  • People are talking about SAS online whether we are there or not. It’s good for SAS employees to participate in those conversations provided we do it in a way that is respectful of the standards of the online community, follows the Social Media Guidelines & Recommendations, the Online Conduct Guidelines, and behavior and computer use policies.
  • We trust SAS employees to represent SAS online in a professional manner, the same way we trust them to do it in the real world.
  • Don’t talk about customers, partners or vendors, reveal private or proprietary information, intellectual property, pricing, details of customer installations or anything else that could harm our business or business relationships. The exception: You can link to content on sas.com that references customers, like success stories, press releases and videos.
  • When you participate in social media, you are speaking for yourself, not on behalf of the company. Be sure to make that clear. And know that you are responsible for your actions.
  • Talk to your manager about your social media activities, what you’re doing, how it relates to your job and how much time you spend doing it.
  • Open communication among employees, customers and the community at large will inevitably lead to some uncomfortable moments, but we can deal with those, and the benefits far outweigh the risk.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog

Marketing to the unborn

Dave

I’ve worked for a lot of different kinds of companies and organizations, run my own business, and been laid off by a big company. I know what it means to be a loyal employee and also to have that loyalty crushed. When I heard SAS’ CEO Jim Goodnight say he would accept lower profits this year so as to avoid layoffs, I thought, "Maybe this really is a company I could stay at the rest of my career."

That got me thinking about the rest of my career. I’m 43 now, so my career might go another 20 years or so.

At SAS we try to reach lots of different audiences – not just C-level execs who make the purchase decisions, but IT managers, programmers, statisticians, recent grads and students.

That means the majority of the people I’ll need to reach and influence in 20 years are somewhere between zero and 30 right now.

Some of my future audience isn’t even born yet.

So does anybody really think those people, in 20 years, will be going to static web sites and entering their email addresses to download white papers? Reading emails? Even sitting in offices looking at monitors?

The people who will determine whether or not I get to retire comfortably or work until I drop are today’s early adopters, the digital natives, the people who most of us in our 40s now find either fascinating or terrifying. If we let them get out of sight, we’ll never see them again.

We spend a lot of time now asking "What’s the ROI?" and "What are our competitors doing?" and "What are the industry best practices?"

The people we’ll be marketing to in the next 20 years are putting pictures of themselves on Facebook that would get us fired and would have gotten our dads arrested.

They’re not thinking of the reasons not to do something. For better or worse, they’re doing it. And as uncomfortable as that might make us, those who are accustomed to cost/benefit analysis and SWOT and 12-month budget cycles, that’s the attitude those people will bring with them to the marketplace our tired old selves will be trying to influence.

It won’t be about figuring out what to do. It’ll be about doing it and seeing what happens. Or trying to figure out where everybody went.

Originally published on Conversations & Connections, my SAS social media blog