At
Strategic Communications Group (Strategic), we know we’re on a good path if 90
days into a social media campaign the client is happily frustrated.

The
giddiness comes from the traction that program has gained with our target
audiences.  We’ve established an
editorial strategy, our readership and engagement is expanding, search engine
optimization (SEO) is enhanced, and a lead generation initiative is in the
works.

Why the
despair?

Internal
audiences typically take note as momentum builds with a corporate social media
program.  It generates excitement for the
potential of Web 2.0 tools and technologies, which then leads to a wave of
unsupervised adoption across the organization. 
LinkedIn and Facebook profiles are updated.  Twitter accounts spring up.  Personal blogs take shape.

In a recent
post entitled “Three Phases of Social Media Maturation” (http://strategicguy.blogspot.com/2009/04/three-phases-of-social-media-maturation.html)
I refer to this period as “Bridging to Pervasive.”  It is very much a positive as an understanding
of the value of social media becomes ingrained in an organization’s
psyche.  Yet, it does present challenges
for the corporate marketer.

For
starters, there is the issue of consistency in messaging.  This is a basic tenet of effective branding –
every touch a key stakeholder has with the company should be in-step with an
overall positioning strategy.  The more
tweets, updates, blog posts and comments in social networks from a diverse set
of employees across the company the greater the chance for fragmentation of the
brand.

A second
challenge for the corporate marketer is policing the inadvertent disclosure of
company sensitive information to participants in online communities.  This is of particular concern for
publicly-traded companies, as well as organizations in highly regulated
industries, such as healthcare or financial services.

One
approach to address these challenges without stunting Web 2.0 enthusiasm is for
corporate marketing to create a social media portal to serve an entry point to
a company’s online engagement.  Employees
retain a certain amount of freedom about how they participate in social
networks and they realize increased readership from the cross-promotion of
content with their colleagues.

For
corporate marketers, a social media portal brings structure and consistency to
the program, while helping them establish and maintain content parameters.

Regional
accounting firm Cherry Bekaert & Holland has followed this path with its “Economic Recovery Resource
Center” (http://economy.cbh.com/).  Developed for wealthy individuals and
companies of all sizes, this social media portal combines third party content
with a mix of blogs from the accounting firm’s subject matter experts.  The content is timely and relevant, and, I
suspect, aligned with a SEO strategy.

Kudos to
the folks at Cherry Bekaert.  They are
fully engaged in social media while marketing maintains an appropriate level of
management and control.

Marc Hausman is president/CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a public relations consultancy based in Silver Spring, Maryland.  Read more at http://www.strategicguy.blogspot.com.