Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst, recently spoke with Kathleen Malone, Senior Manager and Social Media Strategist of Intel. During the interview, Ms. Malone shared key insights about investments Intel is making in social media marketing. The interview included Intel's social media budgeting process, how the Social Media Center of Excellence operates, and the challenge allocating staff resources.
The Challenge of Managing Stakeholder Expectations: Social Media is not Free
Social Media Initiatives Requires Budgetary Funding. Here are some direct quotes supporting the fact that social media requires financial investment (even in a large organization like Intel).
* "We like to remind management and stakeholders that social media is not free."
* "Intel has been an early adopter in social media, but we haven't funded it as well as many of us would like."
* "We anticipate funding in three areas: expanding tools, infrastructure and analytics, because we need to expand our ability to measure and drive insight; social network site development; and campaign activation."
* "We'd like to scale social media [globally] in 2011. We're hoping that we secure budget to move funding into this area."
When Williamson asked Malone about budgets expanding at Intel to support social media marketing, she replied: "Yes, it would be an expansion and a more defined social media budget to support scaling, more interesting and dynamic social content and our enablement goals.
Processes, Infrastructure, and Marketing Integration Supporting Social Media
Intel's Social Media Center of Excellence Manages Social Media Guidelines, Training / Education. Intel established The Social Media Center of Excellence as part of the marketing strategy and campaigns team. This team reports to sales and marketing and ultimately to Intel's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The Social Media Center of Excellence manages social media guidelines and governance which is important because this team's role is to drive strategy, enablement, use of social media, and social media training and education within Intel.
Centralized Social Media Training and Guidelines. At Intel, the Social Media Center of Excellence makes sure that Intel's employees using social media (corporate marketing group and other business units) understand and know the latest guidelines. These guidelines include employees disclosing they are Intel employees in their Twitter "names or handles" and blogs.
Social Media Integration with Overall Marketing Requires Infrastructure. Social media started off at Intel organically, unstructured, and was led by early adopters. According to Malone, 2009 and 2010 have been about operationalizing social media and putting in an infrastructure. The goal in 2011 is to scale up social media use but ensure Intel does so strategically.
Successful Audience Engagement Requires A Social Media Team
2011's Biggest Challenges for Successful Social Media Engagement. Williamson asked Malone what will be the biggest challenges she faces in making social media engagement successful in 2011 and beyond. Malone makes two key statements:
"The resource issue is a big obstacle, because social media can be time-consuming. To be successful you need to fully engage in a two-way dialogue."
"And so I think the challenges are around having enough resources to get social media to scale."
You Need an In-House Social Media Staff Participating in Conversations. Malone points out how successful social media engagement must come from within the organization. In her view, the organizations successfully leveraging social media are participating and engaging with their own teams or as she says: "We believe it's important to stay engaged firsthand."
You Can't Outsource Genuine Social Media Engagement. Furthermore, Malone implies that "handing off social media execution to an agency" is a mistake. I agree with this point. I think her direct quote says it all:
"It's not the same a putting a media plan together, where you are briefing an agency to complete the plan. You can do some of that in social media, but I don't think the companies that are most successful in social media are handing off a whole lot."
Conclusion
The Intel case study demonstrates how successful social media marketing is neither free nor easy. Even for a technology-savvy organization like Intel, successful social media strategy execution requires time, financial investment, people, guidelines, processes, and infrastructure.
Most importantly, Ms. Malone's viewpoint that genuine social media engagement requires significant resources in time and people (e.g., a dedicated team) bears repeating. The guidelines, the processes, and the team members required to enable Intel in "scaling up" its social media strategy will require major investments in time and people.
Social Media Engagement Requires Time + Commitment. This is "the commitment investment" that many organizations fail to honor. Social media engagement isn't about the technological tools (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Facebook, etc.). Social media engagement is about interacting with another human being who enjoys participating in the online conversation by sending out tweets and updating their personal status.
And it takes a lot of time, hard work, and commitment to genuinely and consistently engage those folks if you want to earn their trust over the long haul …