When Does Social Media Become Too Risky for Corporate Use?
So you could argue that the Achilles heel of most social media programs is that we’re all, in some way, increasingly relying on a variety of third party services and tools to augment our efforts online — and with that reliance comes an assumed risk that these services will remain accessible and dependable all the time, especially when we need them most.
But what if they aren’t? What if they break? What if the ‘new fantastic tool’ turns into more of a liability than an asset?
At what point do certain social media services become, well, too risky for corporate use?
Take Twitter for example, a service I personally dig and use regularly, and one that’s already been examined and adopted as a comms tool inside some very large organizations. Twitter has become, sadly, the poster child for inconsistency, poor performance and frustration among many, at least lately. I don’t doubt that Twitter’s technical woes will get figured out, but it’s all coming at a cost to others, and if you’re Dell, Southwest, Red Cross, and the like, you have to wonder:
Do the advantages (and potential) of Twitter still outweigh the risks and headaches that come with relying on it right now?
Yeah, it’s easy to pick on Twitter here, but frankly, this bigger point of social media “risk assessment” is not unique to Twitter at all and can — and should — be applied to any third party service that sits in a broader social media program.
The truth is, almost every service out there has its shortcomings and fail points. YouTube constantly hiccups with its flash conversions. Del.icio.us has a wonderful way of stalling out with multiple API calls. Feedburner freaks out with certain media enclosures. WordPress WYSIWG, well, any WYSIWG really, just never quite works, and the list goes on….
It doesn’t mean these problems outweigh the potential and return of these services, but it’s safe to say, as companies rely more heavily and frequently on these tools — and micro collections of ’subscribers,’ ‘followers’ and ‘friends’ develop around them — there’s an inherent responsibility as both a consultant and as a company to commit to the tools that will last, and to at least consider some sort of exit plan if they don’t.
Ultimately, it’s still about picking the right tool for the job, a choice that just increasingly requires all of us to first ask:
Will this tool work all the time, most of the time or just, you know, some of the time?
The answer we’re each content with is our choice to bear and perhaps over time, a reflection on our abilities to discern between what’s popular verse what’s functional, what’s an okay free tool verse what’s a great paid service, etc., etc., you get the gist, good luck.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Jeremiah Staes
I think there a couple places of weakness - but this post mostly talks about the technical reliability of such services.
And to that there is a simple answer - if you are using a free service, you can’t truly expect reliability or consistency.
This is one of the litany of reasons why I advise folks not to the use Youtube version for their embedded corporate video in their own site, or to launch a corporate blog on Blogger, for instance.
Twitter, however, can be great as an outreach tool if your target market uses it. You should still have a backup in place, though. The Fail Whale will inevitably return.
Now, some implementations like Wordpress on a self-hosted site with some upgrades can actually be pretty good… I’ve met $50,000+ CMS solutions which their WYSIWYG has the same issues or worse as WP, which can be mostly handled if you throw in the right plugins.
Jul 9th, 2008
Rich Reader
A a good social media strategy necessarily dictates that corporate social media participation programs set the right scale/level-of-effort/budget of tracking, research, content creation, discussions, relationship development, and continuous follow-through in multiple external sites, tools, and offline face-to-face events. Reliance on only one or two such avenues of social media engagement is certainly an unwise lightweight position, as well as a guaranteed plan for program failure.
Furthermore, it’s necessary to backup your external content and interactions in a safe, reliable, & secure system for archive and retrieval.
How well do your social media objectives and programs align to this guidance?
Jul 9th, 2008
John Stauffer
It’s great series of questions and important ones to ask when assesing the potential use on behalf of a client.
Ultimately, I think the answer hinges on the needs of the client. If an organization is on twitter primarily to be a resource for consumers (e.g. southwest) then I think it’s OK that, every now and then, the service is interrupted and conversation falls silent. I don’t blame southwest or zappos or dell when twitter goes down.
Though, if micro blogging is used as a client’s one and only form of communication during, say, a crisis, then it’s worth assessing the reliability of the service.
Using twitter in concert with a menu of social media tools probably makes the most sense for those worried about reliability.
It’s hard to answer without a well defined communications objective in mind. Though, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking ourselves these questions.
Great post.
Jul 9th, 2008
Mike Manuel
@Rich, data lock or I guess, data portability, is something we probably need to talk more about. It’s a legitimate concern the longer we rely on third parties for comms, marketing, etc.
@John, I agree, although choosing a service provider that, well, sucks will begin to reflect badly on the company at some point, right? I mean, is it that different to think our standards and expectations for, say, a corporate website and the uptime we just expect of it, should be that different when you bring corporate social media into the mix?
Jul 9th, 2008
Rich Reader
We’re all falling short of where we should be in our target segment business intelligence and action because we lack the lock, portability, mining, and analysis capability. Who is taking the lead in this direction?
Perhaps we can find a genuine subject matter expert and practitioner in this quest to tap into, engage with, and activate the groundswell.
http://richreader.blogspot.com/
Jul 10th, 2008
leo rayman
Strikes me, as a PR outsider, that the whole edifice is built upon unreliable third parties no?
Jul 17th, 2008
Scott Sigler
You also have to look at a cost/benefit analysis and the popular acceptance of a tool. As for cost/benefit, Twitter is free for now, so the cost is the time of employees to utilize it, create interaction and monitor the results. When you combine a free tool with the ease of use for the people you’re trying to reach, as well as and the large number of users, I think it far outweighs the various service outages. Finally, when Twitter goes down, the community blames Twitter - not Southwest or Dell. Twitter has an insanely loyal following that seems to take regular service outages in stride. The users know these are growing pains, and a company being a part of those growing pains will increase that company’s cache as the service becomes more stable and accepted.
Aug 2nd, 2008
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