Tech Rants

Bob Pearson has a good post on debunking some of the social media myths in B2B scenarios. In his own style, Pearson sets the stage well.

I’ve heard most of the myths that have been created to avoid change.When you work in a field that is innovative and transformative, like social media, it’s life.

The first one, innovation and idea management, is being echoed inside and outside firewalls everywhere.

#3 – The Employees Don’t Know Much Myth– I hear “if we ask employees for ideas, who knows what we’ll get” – After all, mythmakers know most of the answers, so you don’t really need to ask employees how to improve the company.  They just work there, right?

Reality Check:  Wrong.  When I was at Dell, we asked employees for ideas via “EmployeeStorm”.  We had over 4500 ideas and implemented over 165 of them.  And it turns out that employees are pretty smart….they know how to improve products and services….and they care about their company.  Ask away.

And my favorite:

#4 — The ROI Myth – “We can’t determine the ROI of social media yet” is one of my favorites. Traditional marketing is famous for the quote “I know that half of my marketing budget is effective, I just don’t know which half”. Yet, when new ways to reach customers emerge, the “mythmakers”…I often call them antibodies (more later)….decide that new, higher standards must be met before investment occurs.

Reality Check: Social media is very quantitative. It is easy to generate data. It is easy to correlate to actual purchase with single sign on capabilities. The art of the science will be in determining what the data is telling us about our customers and how we need to modify or change our approach, as a result. The best marketers intuitively grasp this and move forward, since they can build an advantage by learning how to improve ROI via social media."

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