My Point: If you want to increase your team’s ability to achieve measurable business results through social media, then add someone who possesses strong online product management experience.
Social Media teams should add online product management skills for the following three reasons:
- You can not operate social media by campaigns. Instead, you must establish an enduring presence that evolves through sustained effort over time in the same ways that you would iteratively build, test, deploy and refine an online product or service.
- Social media tools, best practices and competitive dynamics evolve very quickly, and online product managers thrive in such an environment. If you want to learn how to thrive in a continually evolving environment filled with workaholic brainiacs, ask a great online product manager.
- As your social media capabilities mature, you should explore opportunities to evolve social application features beyond lead generation and customer response, into the core of your product or service experience. Such evolution requires leadership from product management.
If you staff someone to coordinate social media efforts across your organization (as David Meerman Scott recently suggested) ensure that they possess online product management experience with your buyer type (B2B or B2C).
If you would like to discuss smart ways to enhance your social media efforts by incorporating product management expertise, email me.
Chris Boudreaux leads social media strategy and measurement efforts for large B2C and B2B brands. Follow Chris on Twitter, or email Chris to continue the conversation.
