Who Needs Enterprise SRM?

by Michael Troiano on February 3, 2009

(This post is the third in a series defining “enterprise social relationship management” that starts here.)

Been reflecting on the two Uber-Bowl related Twitter incidents I compared in yesterday’s post – one in which advertisers tracked favorable reactions to their own commercials, another where an attentive non-advertiser closed some deals after spotting a negative reaction to his competitor’s spots. Rather than arguing which was more valuable, I think there’s a generalized insight to be gained from the comparison.

It seems that brands so far are taking one of three approaches to social media, which I’ll call Distillation, Consolidation, and Coordination.

Distillation Depends On Listening Platforms.

Distillation is the approach of brands that focus on the trends rather than the data points. They are qualitatively savvy enough to understand the potential of social media, but quantitatively savvy enough to know that reaching out directly to @LittleMissWhatsHerName isn’t going to move their quarterly share bogie anytime soon.

These folks are Marketers with a capital “M.” My mental image of this archetype (forgive me:) The Ann Taylor-suited Northwestern MBA doing time in Brand Management – or on the agency side of a packaged goods account – in advance of her inevitable assault on the VP title. She drives a Lexus RX Hybrid, married her college boyfriend, and gets all tingly after dropping that crisply-printed 30-page Twitter Sentiment Analysis document on the CMO’s desk. You go girl.

Consolidation is About Brandtending / Community Management

Consolidation is the approach of brands that believe the medium is the message. They are passionate early adopters of social media, even if they’re still in the minority in their organizations. They have enough juice to make things happen in the department, monitor incoming traffic compulsively, and are actively lobbying for the <INSERT NAME OF BIG SOCIAL CAMPAIGN CONCEPT> Big Social Campaign Concept, though all they’ve been able to get budget for so far is a Community Manager hire.

And who is this Community Manager, you ask? Meticulously casual at all times, he is untucked, gellin’, iPhone’d, and DIGGING the new Kings of Leon disc. He drives a Honda Fit, went home only to shower and change last Thursday, and can’t beleive he’s getting PAID to blog, even though he totally should be getting paid more. Fight the power, my man.

Coordination Demands Enterprise SRM

Coordination is the approach of brands that focus on the individual points of contact, and believe the rest will follow. Rooted in a culture (or sub-culture) of empowerment, their approach to social media boils down to more is more: more people involved inside equals more contact with people outside equals more impact on the business. Coordination approaches are led from the center, by people with a balanced view of the value of social media. Teams that take this approach value action over deep thought, and quality of execution over depth of strategy.

It’s hard to pin-down an archetype for these folks, in part because it takes a team, in part because these folks are in the extreme minority so far. I think of these folks as drinking the Kool-Aid types; true believers in both the company and the medium. They wear logo insignia merchandise. They’re still bummed about Pownce.

Their big challenge is how to keep the eagles flying in formation. Right now there aren’t really any tools out there to help them, at least as far as I know.

Of the three, I think this last approach is right for the long run – at least at the companies for which social media will be more than a fad. I think this is the culture it will take to win, that to unlock the broad potential of social media it’s going to be necessary to open the enterprise up to it, even though doing so pushes most marketing types way outside the comfort zone they’ve occupied for the last 50 years.

So what do you think?

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Tagged as: Business, Online Communities, Social Media, Social network, Social Relationship Management, SRM, Twitter

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Tom Cunniff

Mike: a challenging POV, and one I need to think about. Much of the real progress in marketing in the past 100 years has come from learning to differentiate a blip of data from a meaningful trend.

A fairly big blip like "Motrin Moms" was deafening inside the social media echo chamber. "ZOMG, there are armies of Mommy Bloggers attacking Motrin HQ. Surely the National Guard will need to bring tanks there to stop them!"

But, I'll bet a month's pay it didn't make a peep in the weekly Wal-Mart sales data.

How can we tell which Tweets are the start of an important Groundswell? And which ones are the dyspeptic grumblings of a couple of self-righteous basement bloggers who believe having 1,000 readers makes them world leaders?

Perhaps more practically, which feedback should be managed by customer relations? Which ones need to be looked at by marketing? Which need to be kicked over to manufacturing, or R&D? What's the appropriate response level?

Some of this will likely always require human judgment. But maybe some chunk of this is rules-based stuff that can be baked into Enterprise SRM software.

P.S. At my company, I believe our two best sources of customer insight are search (what are people looking for, and why?) and phone calls to our consumer relations department. I look at search data regularly to look for trends, and on my brands we sit with our director of consumer relations once or twice a quarter to hear what real consumers are asking about. We learn a LOT this way.

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Tom Cunniff

Mike: a challenging POV, and one I need to think about. Much of the real progress in marketing in the past 100 years has come from learning to differentiate a blip of data from a meaningful trend.

A fairly big blip like "Motrin Moms" was deafening inside the social media echo chamber. "ZOMG, there are armies of Mommy Bloggers attacking Motrin HQ. Surely the National Guard will need to bring tanks there to stop them!"

But, I'll bet a month's pay it didn't make a peep in the weekly Wal-Mart sales data.

How can we tell which Tweets are the start of an important Groundswell? And which ones are the dyspeptic grumblings of a couple of self-righteous basement bloggers who believe having 1,000 readers makes them world leaders?

Perhaps more practically, which feedback should be managed by customer relations? Which ones need to be looked at by marketing? Which need to be kicked over to manufacturing, or R&D? What's the appropriate response level?

Some of this will likely always require human judgment. But maybe some chunk of this is rules-based stuff that can be baked into Enterprise SRM software.

P.S. At my company, I believe our two best sources of customer insight are search (what are people looking for, and why?) and phone calls to our consumer relations department. I look at search data regularly to look for trends, and on my brands we sit with our director of consumer relations once or twice a quarter to hear what real consumers are asking about. We learn a LOT this way.

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Trackbacks

  1. In the end, it’s about activation. says:
    August 6, 2011 at 6:45 pm

    [...] by Michael Troiano on February 23, 2009 I posted a while back on the important distinctions among Monitoring, Participation, and Activation. Short version: Monitoring social networks is where most brands start. Most will eventually move to Participate – to actually engage in the conversation – through some combination of consolidation under a “Community Manager” type, and coordination of the distributed activity among it’s employees (more on those here). [...]

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