Polymer Studios :: Web Consulting

What follows is a slightly edited transcript of a recent email to a friend who is a marketing manager for a large healthcare organization in Chicago. Like many of us, she is wondering how to begin talking about the potential of social media for her organization.

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First of all, it’s important to be clear with your boss on what social media is. It’s definitely not advertising or something disruptive. It’s not one-way communication, like most corporate web sites. At the core, it’s a participative medium, like a big democratic marketplace. Which means you can’t buy your way in. Just ask the many companies that have tried and failed at creating “viral” videos. (Viral successes don’t count, just as you shouldn’t ask lottery winners for advice on financial planning.)

That’s not to say there isn’t participation inequality. On the social Web, some participants matter more than others. Take the woman who I just started following on Twitter, who, as a guru, has 11,000 followers while she only follows about 2,000 people. That makes her an influencer whose endorsements result in lots of attention. But she had to earn that power. Just as your organization will have to.

Indeed social media marketing is low-cost or no-cost approach, which makes it very tempting in this economic downturn. But it comes with the price of being engaged, accessible and human. Because it is a voluntary medium, people won’t show much interest if they think you’re just working it like an ad channel. People who do that get shut out pretty aggressively.

Instead, people need to feel like you’re offering something of value (inspiration, information, insight, entertainment, humor, etc.) — in other words, you gotta bring something to the party. Otherwise, nobody’s interested.

What excites me is that there are so many ways to create something that will be seen as valuable in the communities you choose participate in. The possibilities are endless.

But rather than start with what you want to say, it’s best to do some homework, find some potential communities and see what kind of participation they would be most likely to appreciate.

Regardless of what you end up doing, I think your efforts will need to reflect (actually, they should be fueled by) your organization’s philosophy of practice. It should come out of your DNA.