While working on a community strategy presentation last week, I created a slide titled, “2010 — the ‘tion year.” You know — as in…organizaTION, integraTION and proliferaTION. It was my attempt to tie together and simplify the disparate activities that are going to clutter social media and community strategies in 2010.
2010 is a pivotal year from my perspective — a year where there will be more scrutiny of social media and community programs, a tightening of the money belts that have funded the initiatives to-date, and higher expectations for the successful communities. It will be the year companies focus on making their customers truly happy with their products and services, and they will shelve talking about prospects for the time being. Those that make the cut will become “assimilated” into the enterprise environment, will be integrated with back office data and applications, and will face a new challenge — how to remain nimble and what’s next? Community and social media content held value for enterprises in 2009, but in 2011 what will your enterprise do with content that has become a commodity? That is right – a blog is a blog, and customer feedback will be customer feedback. Everyone will have it and it will not be a competitive advantage unless you are lucky enough to handpick your brilliant customers who reinvent your products or services for you. Enterprises are scrambling to address the ‘tion areas below so they are positioned to leverage their content commodities differently in 2011.
Organization
- Understanding that it is no longer about what a single organization within your enterprise is doing with social media or community; or, how a particular social media or community program performs
- All community and social media efforts must align with overall company strategy
Integration
- Smart use of technology
- Don’t ask your core business systems to do something they can’t!
- Ask your social content to be destination agnostic
- Do not try to “own” a single destination
- Build social widgets to embed in traditional customer destinations(in-product, on your corporate websites, in your portals, in your various community elements)
- 2010 will be the year your competitors make their products social
Proliferation
- Roll feedback from social media and community efforts back into the business
- Internalize and make adjustments to improve the business
And — it is a long way away, but if companies focus on these areas in 2010, then 2011 might well become the year of the prospect. Finally.
