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I often get asked by brands: "How should we organize our company for social media?" or "Which roles do we need", or "Which department is in charge". So for our latest report (clients can access all the details) answers just that, it has data and graphs about spending, brand maturity in the social space, which department 'owns' the program, and how companies are organizing.

Companies organize in three distinct models
For this post, let's focus in on how companies are organizing. There are three basic models that I've observed and surveyed brands:

1. The Tire (Distributed): Where each business unit or group may create its own social media programs without a centralized approach. We call this approach the “tire,” as it originates at the edges of the company.
2. The Tower (Centralized): We refer to this centralization as the “tower” — a standalone group within a company that’s responsible for social media programs, often within corporate marketing or corporate communicaitons.
3. The Hub and Spoke (Cross Functional): Like the hub on a bicycle wheel, a cross-functional group that represents multiple stakeholders across the company assembles in the middle of the organization. The hub facilitates resource sharing and cross-functional communications (via the “spokes” in the wheel) to those at the edge of the organization (or the “tire”)

The above graphic shows how brands we surveyed are organized

Which way should companies organize?
We believe the most sophisticated and effecient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralized resources that can support business units. The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing. Social doesn't impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint.

Remember: 80% is Strategy only 20% is Technology
On a related note, thanks to heavy collaboration with colleague Zach Hofer-Shall we've also published a report for clients on a community launch checklist. This checklist reminds brands that 80% of their success is dependent on understanding their customers, defining an objective, and assembling the right strategy that encompasses: plans, roles, process, budgets, measurement, and training –not a focus on technology.

The faster brands can realize that approaching social marketing and collaboration isn't about technology, but about process and change management the better off they are. You'll find simliar thoughts from David Armano –who's scoping out different models within their framework of social business design.

Love to hear from you: Which way is your brand organized? In a tire? tower? or hub and spoke. In my experience, I often ask stakeholders in companies to vote by raising their hands on which model they think they are –most often, not everyone agrees –but most want to evolve to hub and spoke. Try polling your internal teams to start a lively discussion.

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By Josh Bernoff, from my Marketing News column.

Social technologies take a while to build, but last a long time. Think about the effort it takes to get people reading your blog, following your Twitter feed, viewing your YouTube videos, joining your community, or friending your Facebook page. They all start with zero viewers, but the more they grow, the more powerful they become.

Ad campaigns move at a faster pace. More importantly, they have a beginning and an end. You rent a chance to get some attention for a few months, then you see whether you moved the needle.

Since advertising people often get responsibility for social elements of marketing, this creates a fundamental disconnect. Marketers who tap into these two forms of communication can get whipsawed – the social builds too slowly, and the campaign ends too quickly, to make it easy to synchronize them. Even when they do succeed, there’s huge waste. If you’ve assembled 100,000 customers into a community behind your brand, what happens when you’re done with them? Send them a thank you email and say good bye? That’s a tragic waste.

The answer, as my colleague, Sean Corcoran, discovered in the research behind his report “ Using Social Applications In Ad Campaigns,” means thinking of social fans as an asset that you can build with a campaign and then tap over and over again. To do this, you must also make sure you connect with and feed them between campaigns, to keep them interested.

For example, Starbucks has 1.2 million fans on Facebook. So when it launched its first instant coffee, VIA Ready brew, those brand loyalists got to tag whether they liked it, and to share it with their friends. And H&R Block took its 2008 tax-time promotions on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter and turned them into 1,700 Facebook fans and 2,300 Twitter followers that they regularly check in with as tax season approaches.

Marty Collins, a social marketer at Microsoft, has figured this out. She supported Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign late last year with short-term social tools, so people could contribute their own content to the campaign. But now, Marty spends 75% of her time with continuous online discussions to make sure the company has an engaged audience to tap into for the future.

Here’s how to master the rhythm. First of all, you need a launch plan. Sometimes, this means identifying key fans and tapping into them early, so they can help you build a community, spread buzz, or make the contributions that will attract more people to your offering. It may also mean starting the online portions of your campaign early, so it has time to grow. If you must start your online social campaign concurrent with your other ads, be aware that most of the impact will come weeks or months into the campaign, when the momentum and word-of-mouth has time to build.

Second, during the campaign, pay close attention to customer participation. Social applications need fuel. You may need to plan events over a period of weeks or months to keep people coming back. And don’t be afraid to make mid-course corrections in your social campaign, based on what’s working and what’s not. Most importantly, your company has to participate. Since you’re tapping into brand fans, the feedback from you is the fuel that will keep things going. You can’t spin up an online community and expect it to continue on its own.

Finally, you’ll need an exit strategy. What will you do when the campaign winds down? If you’ve named your Twitter account after your ad campaign, you could have a problem – maybe it’s better to name it after something more permanent, like your brand. And do you have the budget to keep the community going in a maintenance mode? You’d better budget for that, because this community could well generate the ideas for your next campaign.

In the end, companies that have built up fan bases this way will have an advantage. For one thing, as this trend picks up, the socially active consumers will be getting serenaded by every brand in America. In this environment, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Scion are all direct competitors – better to sign them up to your dance card before another brand comes along to romance them.

Of course the real challenge here is for agencies, who tend to get paid on their short-term efforts. Partly because of this short term focus, clients are reaching out to digital agencies like imc² and PR firms like Edelman and Fleishman Hillard to build social applications, often keeping them out of the hands of traditional ad firms. Agencies who wish to play here will have to adapt to these long-term platforms, which means a new set of skills.

They’ll also have to find ways to get paid for efforts that pay off in the long-term. To that end, marketers ought to consider paying by the number and enthusiasm of fans recruited, rather than by the impression. That’s the only way the agency, the campaign, and the social media will ever end up in sync.

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by Josh Bernoff

As a young man I was a science fiction fan. Not just a reader, a fan who went to conventions (“cons”), gathered in weekly or monthly meetings and argued arcana, sought autographs and bought fan art.

Among fans there was a ubiquitous argument. Many believed fervently that Fandom Is A Way Of Life ( FIAWOL). Their lives revolved around their fan activities. Others responded that Fandom Is Just A God Damn Hobby ( FIJAGDH). They loved to be fans, but their lives had other things going on, too.

FIAWOL types had jobs, but often had trouble getting ahead since their attention was elsewhere. Unless, of course, your job was in publishing or bookselling, but those jobs paid poorly. FIJAGDH believers were more likely to get ahead. They were also more likely to drift out of the fannish orbit. As I did.

As I see people immersing themselves in social technology I am reminded of this argument. Are you twittering all the time? Blogging every thought? Keeping up with every discussion about your topic? If this is your full-time job, you're like the fans who landed the jobs in publishing — good for you. If not, your boss, your coworkers, and maybe your customers are wondering why you're not fully there, even when you're with them. If you're working at Facebook maybe social is a way of life (SIAWOL?). Not sure if that applies if you're at Best Buy or Accenture.

I'm not arguing you should give up social media. Staying connected is terrific. I'm blogging, twittering, facebooking and emailing (yes, that too) frequently. But it's not a way of life, it's a useful communications tool. (Would you ever say "email is a way of life?") I love to connect in these social worlds. I also like to take a moment to step back and think once in a while, instead of being caught up in the whirlpool at every moment. And whether it's a client engagement, a briefing, an event, or just a discussion in the hallway, I try to be fully present. People seem to appreciate it, and I learn things from those other interactions, just as I learn them within the groundswell.

Do you have trouble with this balance? How do you sort it out? I'm avidly interested in your answers.

Photo by Time Portal via Flickr