Retailers such as Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi are running unified social media strategies out of their head offices. Other retail groups, however, have chosen to recentralise social media, encouraging individual retailers to run their own Facebook pages and Twitter streams.
In this special guest post, social media expert Chris Kirby, head of research at Fifth Quadrant, argues that the unified strategy is superior.
In our experience, we have found that a decentralised social media model can lead to significant issues that impact the customer experience.
These issues range from inconsistent messaging; customer confusion, as there are too many sites to potentially engage through; and the duplication of roles leading to increased operational costs.
Managing social media is a significant business risk and, therefore, having a single-minded organisation-wide strategy should be considered.
This does not mean that each store can’t contribute, however, it is imperative that social media is managed through a central team. Strict governance, policies and processes should be established to minimise risk and ensure that a consistent experience for customers is delivered.
We have found that as organisations have evolved their social media capabilities it has done so organically and without due consideration. This has sometimes led to a very fragmented social media presence. These leading social media organisations are now focused on consolidating their social media footprint and establishing centralised teams to ensure the channel is very carefully controlled and managed.
Our advice would be to establish and enterprise-wide social media strategy. Within this strategy, consideration should be given to human resource issues such as capacity, skills and organisational structure.
In addition, the strategy should include strong governance frameworks. Further consideration should be given to the technology requirements that need to be in place to support the strategy.
Finally, it is imperative that risk management strategies and processes are identified and established to ensure the organisation is prepared for adverse situations.
According to its company profile, Fifth Quadrant provides management consulting; customer experience research; customer experience co-creation and design; multi-country market analysis; advanced data analytics, including Big Data consulting; diagnostic assessment of operations and technology; customer experience strategy development; and execution and improvement of operations.
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