An interesting thing occurred recently while after a rather long and energetic discussion with a potential future SociaLens client. The client asked “So what would a typical engagement with SociaLens look like?” My answer was that it depended on the organization’s need.
It occurred to me in that moment that the SociaLens team feels like a big, versatile hammer trying to choose from thousands of potential nails. While i know this is a very strained analogy, i haven’t come up with a better one, so i will use it as-is for now. In other words, our team’s broad and broadly applicable knowledge and set of skills mean that we can step into just about any client situation and provide a significant amount of value. As an example, i have seen members of our team, in a short, informal conversation, bring a business owner from virtually zero knowledge of social media to a fairly deep understanding. As another example, i have been told by a CEO, after a workshop, that the SociaLens approach is the type that will finally get C-Level baby boomer organizational leaders to be able to effectively understand the changing business environment with respect to social media.
Our current challenge, though, is to package up this value into something which is easy for us to explain and for potential clients to understand. It is a very interesting challenge. A first step will be to get some of our past clients together to express the value we’ve provided to them.
This feels really analogus to UX for me. In that you can’t design something unless you really know the constraints: the tech platform, the audience, etc. Maybe there’s a “process” you guys can describe through in the same way that UX teams have a process that can fit any project — just a thought.
Great point, Ross!
Right now, i’d say that the common organizational understanding of social media is at the stage that UX might have been a decade or so ago – where people really didn’t understand it very well, nor its value.
With that being said, perhaps we should be looking back at older UX, Design, etc. processes that started by assessing the organizational culture and its ability to adopt a true UX mentality and continued on with education. Both UX and social media efforts will tend to die on any organizational vine if the organization isn’t ready for it. UX has begun to gain enough awareness culturally that these two initial steps are probably less necessary than in the past. Not so with social media, especially given what our research is beginning to show about the very strong correlation between substantial organizational buy-in and social media success.
Thanks for the input, and i hope you are doing well!