by Ronn Torossian, CEO, 5W Public Relations
After the recent release of a study that concluded that “Fortune 100 CEOs Are Slackers,” professionals at all different levels who are active in social media rekindled a heated, one-sided debate. In today’s culture, current expectations are that CEOs and everyone else, individually and personally, should participate in social media. These expectations call on leaders and managers to participate in what is essentially a rolling, 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week press conference — an ongoing and continuous Instant Messenger chat with anyone interested — all while balancing a business, which of course includes clients, collections, strategy, and all the rest.
Not too long ago, headlines screamed “Pizza Hut Hires a Twitter Intern.” As an owner of a communications company, I read that to mean “we have neither a desire nor a need to pay someone for social media.” And if that’s the attitude at Pizza Hut, it is a safe bet that most big businesses have zero salaried social media employees as well. Social media has attracted tremendous attention in recent months, but it has made few agencies — and only a small handful of people — any money. Why? Because the current rules of social engagement are completely unrealistic for corporate America, and there is no way to track social media participation’s success.
Can Mark Parker of Nike be expected to engage all brand fans or customers in a two-way dialogue, as consumers have come to demand on Twitter, MySpace, and other social media networks? Quite simply, for social media to work, the rules of the game need to change. One cannot expect CEOs to spend the day tweeting, as there are only so many hours in the day. Do CEOs actually write their own quotes in a press release? Do they write their own speeches? No. So why would they be expected to write and post their own tweets all day?
I am proud to be one of the few owners of a public relations agency who is active on Twitter, but I can proclaim firsthand that it is simply not practical for me to have an ongoing dialogue in social media. As the owner of the nation’s 21st largest PR firm, I can’t converse with my 85 employees every day, let alone interact with non-employees on Twitter. Even if that were possible, I can’t engage an employee at another firm via Twitter while telling my own employees I’m too busy to speak with them. Facebook pages, Twitter, and all of the rest are simply additional tools for people to communicate. But the successful (and particularly the ubersuccessful CEOs) don’t have time to communicate with their whole audiences in an ongoing two-way social media dialogue.
When Twitter launched in March of 2006, it made sense for Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, an upstart brand, to devote so much personal time and effort building his following. He effectively positioned himself and his business as trailblazers in the social media space, and he will (at least in the immediate future) be the first name raised when someone asks, “What companies are properly employing social media?” For Hsieh, the business of being social has equaled good business, but for countless other CEOs, the lack of a tangible return on investment and the sheer number of hours required to run a company makes it a non-starter.
So how do CEOs and social media coexist? Through the evolution of current operating standards. When launched, Twitter was hailed as a microblogging site, a way in which individuals and/or thought leaders could share information with their subscribers (a.k.a. followers), as opposed to the way in which it is mainly used today, as an instant-messaging service. But Twitter is not AIM or Gchat. It falls into an undefined realm in between social and broadcast media. And just as some bloggers choose to produce content with little or no interaction with their readership while others reply to every comment posted, two acceptable methods of utilizing social media can exist. It’s conversational engagement versus one-way content sharing, and CEO’s must decide how to strike the proper balance between what is best for their brand and what is best for the bottom line.
By treating social media as a one-way content-sharing resource, CEOs are able to utilize spokespeople as buffers between them and the public, ensuring that messaging is controlled, consistent, and in the best interest of the brand. This calls for a change of today’s popular social media “mores” — but these same authentic social-media leaders have yet to monetize this, as corporations simply aren’t paying for it. Brands have heard the public’s cries for interaction and relationship, but in order to accommodate those requests, the current technology-savvy public will have to compromise their expectations as to how these brands will accomplish that feat and become social organizations.
Managing a company is a nearly impossible task on its own. Asking that people do this while simultaneously maintaining an ongoing dialogue with every individual who sends them a message on every social channel — including, at the very least, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Linkedin — is not only unreasonable, it is completely contrary to the role of CEO.
The rules of interaction between consumer and producer are changing. In order to capitalize on the waiting audience and monetize these platforms, focus will shift from the “etiquette” of social media, to the “business”of social media. Until that happens, brands won’t see significant return from any investment they expend. And when they do, it will be because they are actively changing the rules, not adhering to the standards retroactively set by bloggers and users (who incidentally don’t make money from this great “social media”).
The rules of the game will change…and soon.
A shorter version of this op-ed was published in Mediapost today.
Ronn Torossian
5WPR
