Image by Ludwig Gatzke via Flickr

Do you have social network profiles that you just can’t seem to keep up with? If so, I’ve got a little story to tell you. A recent client of mine, a small corporation, once had an employee who created social network profiles all over the internet. This employee finally moved on to other things after 2 years, but left the CEO with no idea exactly where the company’s social network profiles were registered, or how to manage them.

Here’s how it all started. This corporation is very humanistic and communicative, but since it’s also a startup, funds are tight and they hired interns to take care of the ‘non-critical’ social media marketing. They definitely had a lot on their plate and didn’t really know where to start, so they took the scattergraph approach and created profiles at as many social networks as they could find. I know some of you are already starting to feel the pain…

After a couple of years of this, they were seeing no results and brought me in to work with their team. I started by looking at all of their social network profiles. I used a social media monitoring and analysis tool to find out exactly what was happening with their brand, and the kind of communiques their employee had put on social networks.

What I found is that in almost 2 years, most of their social network profiles were abandoned. There was some spotty engagement in Facebook and a business community, but for the most part, as far as these social networks could tell, the company might as well be out of business for all the interaction it had with the communities it was a member of.

But what’s the real cost to a company of keeping these social profiles active? Or more specifically, what’s the cost of allowing them to go dormant?

In working with this client, we identified 3 specific difficulties abandoned social network profiles caused for this company:

1. Missed Opportunities: This company was proactive in their marketing materials, and included their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles on their business cards. But they didn’t include social media in their communications strategy, and therefore lost business due to their lack of engagement. In a very uncomfortable meeting one day, we read the comments customers left for them in various social networks when they first registered. When these questions went unanswered, there was a quick drop in interest, and as expected, no additional customer communication.
2. Sullied Reputation: As much as the CEO thought the company was doing business the Web 2.0 way, the employee in charge of social media was really unclear about his role. Corporate social media is more about customer service and communication than it is about sharing news articles in Digg and Reddit.  2 years after the initial social network profile creation, we found that this employee thought social media marketing meant that he should spend his time favoriting funny articles in Reddit and Digg than providing solid customer service in social networks and community building through the blog.
3. Expense: This small corporation couldn’t handle their social media management in-house because they weren’t sure if all of the company-branded profiles out there were really theirs or not. They had a lot of cleanup to do and realized that hiring a pro to work with their team was the only way to fix it. As we worked through the mess, we found even more issues that were a bit easier to deal with, but their loss in productivity and money was significant.

In my experience of working with companies ready to develop and implement social media, social media literacy is critical to success. This list defines the ABCs of social media literacy:

• Assessment: Always start with an assessment of your company’s social media readiness before you jump in. An assessment should build on the foundation of your business objectives and company culture. You’ll want to assess your strengths and weaknesses in Leadership, Innovation, Engagement. You’ll need to ascertain the competitive landscape and learn if other companies in your industry are successfully using social media in their corporate communications and marketing.
• Buzz: Do your research. Find out what people are saying about your business or products, and find out what they’re also saying about your competitors. It’s easy to let this project engulf you, so break it down with tools. Some popular ones are Google Alerts, Techrigy, and Radian6.
• Communication: The real value in social media for business lies in how it’s broken down communication barriers between customers and companies. The latest tools and trends, the latest apps, and everything that people are talking about indicates how people’s preferences for how they want to communicate is shifting. It’s your job to stay fairly updated on these things. You’ll notice that a “social media campaign” is not at all similar to a traditional media campaign. You can’t just give it to the agency and forget about it. Don’t stay current, stay ahead.

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