Attaining Social Maturity With the Groundswell

By now, it is safe to say that we as consumers have all embraced social media in its various forms. Whether we're browsing through Twitter or watching YouTube videos, we all accept our favorite social media platforms as part of our daily lives. Just like us, organizations around the world are striving to truly embrace social media, but this is not a simple task. According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, companies don't go directly from thinking about social media to embracing it. Organizations must take creative action before they can reach "social maturity."

Photo: Google Play

Take The Home Depot as an example. The company decided to start its own home-improvement community back in 2010. The company already successfully embraced various social applications including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, so it was prepared to take the next step in further talking and listening to the groundswell. A large part of the community is made up of its existing employees, which allows them to engage consumers while continuing to do their jobs in the stores and corporate offices. The staffers enhance the communities through the use of Flip video cameras to make videos about Home Depot as well as provide home improvement advice (see the video below). To go along with this, the community is managed by two social media staff members at the company. This is typical of a socially mature organization, as it allows for the community to come from all across the organization, rather than from a single specialized department. So, while organizations can have Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, they have not achieved social maturity until they have used technologies to enable better connections and relationships with empowered customers and employees like Home Depot has done. 

However, adopting and embracing social technologies doesn't come without overcoming the following challenges.

Cultural Issues: Customers can be rude and unruly and trusting employees can be difficult for them to do. Meanwhile, social applications tend to reveal various flaws of a company, which senior marketers and managers are not likely to embrace. Creating a culture where everyone's views about a brand may differ can be quite challenging as it oftentimes involves exposing the flaws of the brand. 

The Problem of Perspective: Social applications do not necessarily replace traditional marketing, along with internal meetings, emails, or management reviews. Companies must start small and set reasonable expectations. This presents the challenge of reviewing social needs in the context of other marketing frameworks.

The Organizational Issue: Home Depot chooses to centralize the social applications under their expert group of staff while farming various related tasks into different departments like marketing, PR, human resources, customer care, and IT. This model can speed up production but sometimes sets the social experts up in opposition to other parts of the company. Meanwhile, a more distributed model requires patience and training and moves slowly with more permanent gains. 

The Risks of Social Applications: The obvious problems of people freely expressing their opinions are often related to dissing staff members or the brand itself. IT departments are particularly concerned about the risks of employees interacting in environments like Facebook and YouTube that they don't control. Therefore, the fear of these risks, along with the inability to clearly define them, can slow down many social technological efforts. 

Photo: Forbes

Once you overcome these challenges, your organization will be in a position to become what Li and Bernoff call "empowered." This will be particularly important for companies to consider as we all head into the future of corporate social networks. Large social media departments and chief social offers are going to be nonexistent with socially mature companies having ideas coming from various departments. Social technology will become part of how a brand runs, whether it is in sales or marketing, so the ideas start to come from all around the company. Ultimately, when a company reaches the empowered ideal, its employees truly embrace their customers as a valuable channel that needs to be energized.  Additionally, internal and external applications must link up, creating an even stronger connection between employees and customers. Basically, in empowered companies, social is part of everything workers do. 

Keeping these ideas in mind, what do you think of the potential future structure of social networks in organizations? Do you know of any other socially mature companies present in today's society? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!