What is the Value of Social Media to Business?
Value | No comments | February 19th, 2009
I see this question come up a lot, and everyone comments that it is a hard question to answer. Of course it is hard to answer, because the question is pointless. To try and define the universal value of a tool makes no sense. A tool only has value when it is used in solving a specific problem. The problem statement must precede any consideration of tool use. And then the tool is only a component of the total solution. Would you ask, “What is the value of a hammer to the construction industry?”
Here is the post that prompted my reaction.
The right approach is to first determine the problem you are trying to solve. The implied problem in the post above is how do you capture, codify and get value from unstructured customer insight. Yes, understanding and engaging with social media will likely be part of the solution, but there are other significant questions to be answered as well.
- Who are the customers you want to listen to?
- How are you currently listening to them?
- How do you currently deal with customer insight?
- Who controls and has access to the existing structured data?
- etc.
I hope that people will stop looking at social media as some sort of silver bullet and start looking at objectives and the core problems that need to be overcome.