The Lone Ranger in Social Media

Posted on November 2nd, 2011 by tim bursch. Filed under business, marketing, social media.

I met with two colleagues managing social media marketing at large companies. They were the only person responsible for the strategy, content, engagement, measurement, and more. Both have a huge task of proving a new marketing (and sometimes customer service) channel, all by themselves.

They are Lone Rangers in the wild marketplace of business trying to make an impact with little resources and understanding from their leadership. How will they survive?

Here are a few ideas that might help my friends:

Build a network for Lone Ranger practitioners. Think Social Media Council for mid-sized businesses.
Create bite-sized education for leadership and staff. The format could be one page handouts on some of the major concepts or lunch-and-learn sessions. Help increase the social IQ across the organization.
Talk in more traditional business language. Instead of a buzzword like engagement, talk about the CRM aspects of Facebook.

How would you help a Social Media Lone Ranger? What tools would you share?

Kristen Albrecht

Honestly, the thing that helps me the most is discussion groups like your 3rd Thursday or lunches/happy hours with other social media professionals. We get to share ideas, stay current and learn what's new there, while being able to focus more of our attention on the company and industry we work in while we are at the office.

timbursch

I'm glad those groups are helpful Kristen! We'll keep the momentum.

Jenny Twa

While there are a number of different people managing their department's social media strategy, I often feel like a Lone Ranger too as we all operate in a bit of a vacuum. I like the suggestions you made on bite-sized education and using traditional language, it's helpful and timely as I'm trying to report out to our department on our social media efforts.

Thanks for the post!

timbursch

Jenny - Silos and Lone Rangers are similar. The overused case studies like Dell and a center of excellence would be an ideal situation, but that requires buy-in at the top. : ) Another idea from David Armano: (http://darmano.typepad.com/log... - "Create a Coalition of the Willing."