Use range of in-house personalities to make the most of online opportunities

IN THE Quarter 3 issue of Market Leader (p55), Julian Saunders signs off with the comment that ‘maybe HR needs to hire not just the brainy types but also those who love to party’. He raises an exciting question as to whether effective social media participation requires a particular breed or personality to manage online social engagement.

In my experience any company that conducts a thorough online audit, identifying relevant online communities and the key commentators, quickly realises that there are many different and relevant audiences, all with very different interests.

Undoubtedly, it is a challenge for one single person or even one single department to effectively manage and engage this online space. This is not a scale issue but a voice and knowledge issue. That said, HR doesn’t need to hire anybody. Most companies already have the necessary spectrum of personalities and voices.

Within a company there already resides the ‘neighbourhood bore’, the ‘introverted expert’, the ‘storyteller’ and they all potentially play a vital role in a company’s online engagement.

Smart companies are already letting their entire workforce loose online because they appreciate that different employees have different roles to play in this dialogue. BestBuy has had huge success deploying its shop-floor staff online with ‘Geek-Squad’. Most major car companies now allow their designers to engage with relevant online auto fan communities and Microsoft now has too many in-house bloggers to count.

With many companies still understandably reluctant to fully unleash their employees in online engagement, a useful starting point is to identify and break down key online communities and stakeholders. From here specific personnel and departments can be empowered (with clear guidelines) to engage with relevant online communities. So you might have the ‘white coats’ in the product development team engaging (as Julian calls them) the ‘introverted experts’ out there, as Canon did so effectively with extreme photocopying technology communities – yes, they do exist.

Going social is not a technological challenge. It is not about having an app strategy, a twitter, blog or foursquare strategy or even social media monitoring.

Without a human voice you cannot get a seat at this table.

Businesses wanted, and real personality required. Here is a trick question: how many marketing-communications professionals does it take to recreate a genuine human voice for online engagement?

Answer: social media success comes from passionate individuals and champions not committees.

Find the existing voices within the company and empower them.

orlando.plunketgreene@ itoiresearch.com