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A recent piece I read in Forbes Magazine brought a smile to my face. In saying a smile, well a sort of smirk really, in acknowledgement of the impact of social media on big business and the increasing profile of said medium around the boardroom table.
Put simply, most companies think about social media as a way to project their message, brand and products/services out into the world. But social media can work in the other direction, too enabling you to gather real time intel about how your company is perceived, who your customers are and what they are thinking about you and their own lives on a daily basis.
Capitalising on this ‘opportunity’ two global corporate giants – Dell and Kodak – have recently created a new position for social media intelligence gathering: the Chief Listening Officer. A new C-level exec position to ‘listen to’ social media commentary and coverage, engage with senior stakeholders, and report back on findings to the Board. Yes, Social Media is now a boardroom hot topic, no longer perceived as the emperor’s new clothes by sceptical seniors more obsessed by figures than followers.
Apparently, each month, Eastman Kodak CLO Beth LaPierre (30 – yes thirty!) monitors 300,000 mentions of Kodak on Facebook, Twitter, message forums, YouTube, blogs, and elsewhere on the Web, using software from Radian6 and PeopleBrowsr. She decides which department needs the information and distributes it accordingly! Beth if you pick this up – hello ;0)
If like me you are probably thinking, come on, what an excuse of a job, then read on as Beth has already had genuine impact apparently, simply through her listening, absorbing and most significantly her intelligent interpretation and distribution of the information she picks up.
For example, when vloggers (videobloggers to the uninitiated) complained that the company’s latest digital video camera needed a mic jack for crowded rooms, she let the product development team know and it was added to the next model. When fans of a popular Nickelodeon children’s program started complaining on TV blogs about Kodak pulling ads due to a transgendered character, Beth contacted PR and then swooped in to correct the false report.
As Beth herself stated in the article, “With a Chief Listening Officer you can ensure an immediate reaction before things spiral out of control.” Which got me thinking; yes she’s got a valid point. The role isn’t as daft, or ‘made up’ as I for one at first considered it to be. It takes intelligence, knowledge and seniority to be able to interpret communications strategy at the bird’s eye level. And more so, to be able to quickly filter what matters and what doesn’t; what’s on strategy and what isn’t; what could become move from an issue quickly into a problem.
As marketers, we tend to be more so focused on spreading the message, than listening to messages being relayed back to us through social media. But I think this is just a glimpse of the future, a beacon showing a social media expert’s fast track career ladder, from young enthusiast to senior boardroom adviser in the space of light years. Marketing Directors beware! Get social savvy and look for new ways to listen, or risk getting usurped by someone with social media ears the size of an elephant – I predict we’ll be seeing more CLOs or LMs (Listening Managers) within the next few years emerging in corporates eager to mitigate risk and optimise opportunity.
Not as daft a job as I first thought…off to rethink my CV!
