Do you remember playing or singing the children’s game, “The Farmer in the Dell?” You may still be scarred by that game if you were always the cheese. Remember all the kids stood around singing and someone was designated as the farmer. He would take a wife, she would take a child, the child took a dog, the dog took a cat, the cat took a mouse, the mouse took the cheese, but then that sad piece of cheese stood alone. I always wondered why the cheese couldn’t take a bottle of wine and chocolate and pears, and the song could go on until everyone was having a great party! Where was the creativity of the teachers?
In many organizations, social media gets assigned as the cheese. It stands alone in the marketing department. And sometimes with the marketing intern, who is the only one who understands how to load a photo from a phone to the Facebook page, but doesn’t always have the insight or the guts to involve the entire company in the results of her work.
The dangers of isolating social media to the marketing department, is that the rich feedback provided by a social community, and the data collected after posts are analyzed, can benefit every aspect of a business. Perhaps the feedback from the community can help your organization make necessary changes that will set you apart from your competitors even further. Could your sales team be more involved providing target accounts that you want to infiltrate and find as many people as possible to connect with within each? What if you were identifying ideal talent that should work within your organization but no one was telling the human resources team? What about a customer contact member who doesn’t think to remind a customer or guest to join them on Facebook for additional promotions and events, because they are “not in marketing”?
Here are 3 questions to ask at your next team meeting to see if social media marketing can have more friends:
- How can each department be more “socially involved”?
- Does every person in the organization know what social channels your company is on?
- How can “social marketing” be incorporated into the metric by which everyone is measured?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Are there other questions that organizations can ask to get the dialog going and get that poor cheese some friends?
If we can help you grow the social party at your organization, let me know. Of course you can reach me on Twitter or just about any other way listed here on our site