The Collaboration Marketing Investment – Risky or Wise?

Social networks, blogs and other communication technologies make it possible for almost anyone to influence how other people perceive your brand and products. Some companies have already begun to use these technologies – the practice we call collaboration marketing – while others are actively debating the wisdom of jumping into the fray. How much should you invest? What are the risks?

As Cutten explains, the collaboration landscape seems to change every day, and the playbook is still being written. That said, here is some practical advice to consider as you approach the opportunities ahead:

o Proactively manage your collaboration strategy. To be effective, you’ll need dedicated resources responsible for managing your collaboration strategy and keeping up with the important trends. For example, it’s smart to take control of potential brand assets, such as login names, email addresses and site names. Beyond that, you’ll need to make careful choices about where to engage. Keep an eye on where trading partners, competitors and even analysts are joining the conversations. As a general rule, invest in building a presence wherever high-impact discussions are happening and focus on interactions that are consistent with your brand image.

o Get serious about risk management. There are some critical investments you can’t ignore. For example, understandable policies, effective training and continuous monitoring are essential, which means you’ll need to set aside sufficient funds to put those risk-management tools in place. Doing things on the fly without sufficient resources can do more harm than good.

o Be authentic – but discreet – in engagement. Establish clear engagement policies to drive consistency and mitigate your own risk. For example, when you join a discussion, be honest about who you are. Work to provide information that is genuinely helpful. Company insiders have valuable insight and can generate goodwill and credibility by offering an occasional inside scoop. And if the conversations reveal a real problem, own up to it, and have clearly defined internal resolution path. Representatives seen as a good way to get problems solved will be welcomed in future discussions.

o Align internal processes. You can’t provide fixes to problems if your marketing and engineering departments don’t see eye-to-eye on what the problems are, or how to solve them. Sync up internal processes with virtual teams. Using internal forums – such as regular customer feedback reviews across marketing, development, customer service and sales – can help a lot.

o Build and evolve capabilities. Companies often mistake their current IT department as the answer for all things internet: an approach that often comes up short. Roles such as web master, forum monitor, bloggers, web designers and widgets developers may be necessary. Begin now to establish a comprehensive set of strategic, technical and functional capabilities. Use third parties if you can’t build them internally.

o Measure interactions. Someday, performance metrics will emerge that demonstrate the full value of collaboration marketing. But until then, it makes sense to start with basics such as site usage, page hits and the overall tenor of the discussion. These simple metrics will give you some indication of the impact you’re having.

For more information at http://www.deloitte.com