October 20th, 2008

Social media consultants: snake oil or value add?

Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 7:51 am

Categories: Branding, Corporate Social Networking, Marketing, Reputation and Privacy, Snake Oil, Social Business Analysis, Social Media, Social Media Best Practices, Social Networks

Tags: Consultant, Social Media, Jennifer Leggio, Zappos.com

It’s a shaky economic world out there. You’ve been asked to create business cases to justify already budgeted 2009 expenses because your company is tightening its belt. At the same time, you’re being pushed hard to find creative ways increase your company’s brand and improve customer engagement. You have a social media consultant beating down your door, saying that he or she could satisfy this need for about $150-$500 per hour. And you’re trying to weigh whether or not you’re being fed a line.

Perhaps you are.

Social media consultancy, for the most part, has gone the way of the snake oil salesman. While there are many qualified business consultants who can help a company leverage social networking as part of its overall strategy, there are far too many who are selling their services based on the ability to help establish a company’s presence on specific social networks. Many of these consultants have been successful building their own personal brand, however, prowess for personal brand building does not prove an understanding of enterprise business needs.

Companies need to stop believing the hype that social media is an “everything drug.” It’s not. It’s a strategy that needs to be considered and tailored to fit specific business needs.

“Social media consultants can be a worthwhile investment, but not if they are merely telling you how to use social networking tools,” said Jeffrey Mann, vice president of research in Gartner’s collaboration and social software group. “These consultants can be valuable if they have an overall understanding of your market and your business, and can help you connect social media to your strategies.”

That’s the key. A business strategy should not be altered to fit social media; the social media approach needs to be altered to fit the business strategy. Not every company needs to be on Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed. Companies need to, above all else, consider where their customers and competitors are before making a decision as to where their social media presences should be. And if a consultant says, “You need to be on Twitter; everyone is on Twitter” then it’s time to run. Fast. In the opposite direction.

Company decision makers also need to recognize the place of social media. If wielded in the right way, it can be an effective branding and customer engagement tool. However, it is not necessarily a tool that is going to show immediate value when it comes to lead conversion or even desired revenue growth.

“If you have 10,000 subscribers on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean something will convert to a sale. Social media is about branding, not about fulfillment,” said Sarah Lacy, journalist and author of “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0″. “No one is going to Twitter or Facebook to transact. Social media is about bringing down the wall and being more communicative with customers.

“This is sort of a mass area of exploration and a very small percentage of companies do it right,” Lacy continued. “Strategists say ‘have a Facebook profile’ and what they mean is ‘you need a social media strategy’ to fundamentally re-approach how companies face their constituents, whether they be employees or customers or in the industry. Zappos.com is an example of one of the most amazing companies in terms of finding a way to leverage social media in a way that their customers love.”

Here are some very important questions that successful companies, such as Zappos.com, ask themselves when considering hiring a social media consultant or instituting a social media strategy.

Next: The right way to use social media –>

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