Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Can companies be part of the social world?

There is some debate going on at the moment about whether companies are able to engage in social media. The crux of the issue is whether a company, in essence a body made up of a number of individuals can communicate as a single entity.

One opinion says that humans connect to humans and its not the domain of brands:
Shel Israel makes this point clearly here:
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2007/12/can-brands-be-s.html

However the alternative view is that companies need to be able to exist in the social media space and engage in dialogue and interactions with their customers/users/influencers
Forrester have been advocating this approach for almost a year now and their 'Groundswell' book and their article that covers 5 main reasons for companies to get involved:
Listening
Speaking
Energizing
Supporting
Embracing

Their more recent blog posting about this subject goes into more depths.

Where are you on the Purist - Corporatist scale?

2 comments:

Michael Myers said...

I think it has to do with the nature of the company/brand and whether the organization is perceived as a peoples company. United used to tout being owned by their employees. If that is the case then it has already been established as being apart of the brand. If it's Apple, it is Steve Jobs company. They have a loyal fan base and it is not a peoples company (at least internally). I have to say that the new online world in my opinion will force companies to either join the conversation or avoid it at all costs. (The second is not really an option as their employees will be participating whether they approve or not.)

I think that companies have to get away from the storefront mentality or channel mentality: http://youtube.com/user/lineofscrimmage when it comes to participating in an online community. I also doubt it is possible until social networks become so niche focused that it is natural for members to see businesses who facilitate the experiences on which the network is based, as individuals.

(Yes that sentence was too long.)

To summarize
Storefront = Bad
"Peer provider" = good

Hayden Sutherland said...

Michael

Its really good to hear from you again.

I've recently been discussing this issue with another like-minded person and have my own perspective on this (thanks Lyndon)

I think that different companies will be at different point along a sliding scale of openness (with perhaps your 'Openness' and 'storefront' at opposite ends.

I'm beginning to think of the company's barrier between it and its customers as a semi-permeable ‘membrane’ (as my old biology teacher use to say). Across this membrane different information flows. However I don’t think that the membrane will become entirely ‘permeable’, if only because you need to maintain some consistency and substance to a company & brand.

However, it is the flexibility of this barrier that will potentially see the most change going forward.

It has already started for a lot of companies / brands, but there is also a significantly long way to go.

Hayden