BlogWell: Perfection Isn’t a Prerequisite
Friday, January 23, 2009 | 3 Comments
Tags: Blog Council, blogging, BlogWell, Fortune 500, Home Depot, Molson, P&G, radian6, Sharpie, Social Media, social web
Posted in: Events, Social Media
I spent the day at BlogWell yesterday, where Radian6 was a table sponsor. What a cool and interesting way to hear - straight from the doers themselves – how the big brands are embracing social media.
I got to hear half the presentations that took place in the upstairs room where I was: The Home Depot, Sharpie, P&G, and Molson. They all had some interesting insights, but here are a few nuggets I took away from the discussions:
- Most of the companies had a self-appointed champion that saw the potential for social media because it sparked their personal interest. For instance, in Sharpie’s case, @sharpiesusan is a one woman show that believes in this stuff and is building it – brick by brick – within her company.
- It’s okay to swing and miss. Molson launched an early blog that failed because, in their own words, they didn’t have a champion or much of a strategy. So they pulled it down, took a more careful look at their content and strategy, and started again. This time around, they’re enjoying much more success.
- P&G says to look at social media as bring your customers back into the process, simply by listening to them and valuing their opinion. They’ve become particular fans of the review process, letting customers give feedback on their products (and hey, their request for reviews for Dawn dish liquid netted over 500 reviews, so if it works for dish soap…). The critical component, however, is the company responding to the customers so they know they’ve been heard.
- Social Media is “all in” in the sense that once you start the dialogue with your customers, you can’t opt out again. Home Depot recognized that once they started their blog and their Twitter work, customers wanted to hear from them. They didn’t say all the right things at first, but they kept up their end of the bargain and stayed in the discussion until they DID hear and understand what their customers wanted from them in social media. (Incidentally, that something turned out to be lots of information, not sales offers or discounts or even information about how to buy stuff. Education and information was the name of the game).
- It’s not about perfection. Almost every company that spoke said that they understood the value of social media, but the how was still getting figured out, and that’s ok. They’re trying different things, seeing what works for their business. Trial and error is an inherent part of the process, so they’re figuring out the good and bad along the way.
There was also a brief but super interesting discussion about ethics and disclosure in social media for business. The Blog Council has been doing work to this end to try and frame out some guidelines, and you can find them on their site. According to Andy Sernovitz, the ethics guidelines and checklists have been vetted by several handfuls of Fortune 500 laywers, so even your legal department ought to rest a little easier.
The big takeaway for companies was that you don’t have to have all the answers. Some of them you’ll discover as you go. But the important element is that the social web is growing, not shrinking. The best way to learn how social media will work for you is to start small, pick something to try, and see how it works.
I’d love to hear more about what you’re learning as you try these things out in your business, and what questions or issues are keeping you up at night.
3 Responses to “BlogWell: Perfection Isn’t a Prerequisite”
snanlivy on February 19th, 2010 at 4:13 am
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