Failure #1: Not Establishing a Sense of Urgency Around Social Media (Marketing)

This is easily the most significant step in bringing an enterprise social media strategy to life in your organization. Why? Well, if you can’t get people to see that there is something better than what they have (that creative tension is the fabric that makes up the sense of urgency you seek to create) then you’re not going anywhere. You need the whole organization (within reason) to have a sense of urgency on this.  It’s not enough to convince your boss or the CEO alone, as social media affects the entire enterprise.

Creating a sense of urgency requires robust leadership. Notice, I did not say ‘management’. We’re not looking for people to shepherd the existing systems – we need bold leaders to create the social business system that will take the place of the existing business system.

So, how do we go about creating a sense of urgency?  There are many tools that a leader can employ, here are just a few:

1. Facilitate a frank discussion on the realities of the market. Perhaps 90% of your customers are already on Facebook. Maybe all of your competitors have a blog but you. Maybe your entire organization is going to become unsustainable unless you build a loyal community to drastically reduce new business development costs.  You get the picture.
2. Bring in someone else to kick your company in the pants. Lest you be branded a heretic or put out to pasture for bringing all this bad news upon the company (and…we all know the quote about a prophet in his own town). Outside consultants (full disclosure: I am one) can bring a ‘global’ perspective on social media and be a credible ally to help create the sense of urgency you’re seeking.  I can think of several engagements over the past few years where we played this exact role.
3. Ask your customers. Customer feedback, especially if you’re not gathering regularly or if you’ve never explored the social media question, will give you some great insights to share and can really move a company off it’s perch when they hear that their customers say that ‘they’re out of touch and not reaching them in their channels of choice’.  That hurts…and motivates!

According to Kotter, you need upwards of 75% of the management team of a company on board with any change program in order to achieve success.  In the social media projects that we’ve seen, that’s pretty accurate.  Having all of the departments or lines of business on board, at least with the concept of social media, is key to long term success, especially if you endeavor to bring social media to their part of the organization (such as in customer service or HR or operations).