How do you structure your business for social media?

So think back 10 years when the internet came out and suddenly every company got a brochure-ware website or e-commerce site. Companies had to adapt their existing business structure to ensure that their online strategy dove tailed into their organisation structure.

Some companies were more agile, effective and strategic than others. Good examples 0f companies who evolved well are the leading internet based businesses now. From experience in working in the digital sector for the past 12 years, there are definately synergies between this step change and how companies adopted early internet technology.

Next wave of change
If you read some of my other blog posts you’ll see that I am passionate around the fact that companies need to innovate and take on board the tidal wave of change around social media or they will lose their competitive advantage.

Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Research, has a great post on his blog about the different organisational structures emerging on how companies are adapting to the new world of social media.

The Tire
The main challenge in managing this strategy is managing the brand reputation online. Each business unit can manage it’s own social media strategy without any central management. This would lead to mutliple brand messages and values on the internet – all from the same company. This could lead to conflicting brand messages to consumers and different online customer services or communication – how confusing would that be?

The Tower
I have seen this multiple times – and have refered to it as ‘The Silo’ where everyone works within their discipline towards the common goals in the company, but not leading beyond boundaries and working cross discipline to improve efficiency. The challenge here is that it is stiffling any creativity and ideas that other business units might have. Tight brand guidelines, sign off procedures and long time scales tend to be representitive of this way of working.

The Hub and Spoke
I agree with the conclusion that this is definately the most efficient way to structure how a company should approach social media. This pulls on many strengths within the company – IT, marketing, PR and the product / services team. So this strategy combines their strengths and gives enough room for creativity and innovation. Getting the balance between control and inclusion is essential for this to be a success. Working cross business unit and teams leads to a more involved, motivated team. Letting the people blogging write the corporate blogging guidelines would be an example of how this strategy might work. This is the most efficient model to ensure that a company maximises their competitive advantage.

What’s the impact for SMEs?
That’s all well for the large corporates who have these multi-disciplined teams, but how does this work for the SME? It’s about working with experience companies who can help you where all those hats – and guide you in the right strategy.

Chances are that there would be someone within the company who has shown an interest in social media. Pick up on this and formalise this interest in their training and coaching – and get them invovled in assessing and implementing your social media strategy.

Let me know how you have implemented social media in your businesses – and the successes you have had