I just finished a great article on Social Media Today by a fella named Ben Stroud. He talks about how very large companies, with 300k members in their social network cannot really engage people if they don't start to think of ways to diversify their message.
I'd like to take Ben's concept a step further and suggest that large, well-established companies with a massive offline following can not only be super successful on social media, they can open up their, previously face-less company to it's customers.
One of the greatest things about Facebook is that it humanizes the brand. While that statement smacks of corporate rhetoric it's actually valid in that people who engage with the brand on Facebook are much more likely to build a lasting relationship with the company.
The same goes for employees of the company. If the employees are engaged and encouraged to promote the products and services through social media they, in turn, become the company's biggest proponents. After all, what company doesn't want their work force engaged and interested in what they're doing?
I used to work for a great company. The owner and day-to-day operations manager was almost god-like in the way he conducted his business. He was unapproachable and distant but he did some wonderful things for the community. He donated millions to build parks and hospitals but no one knew anything about that. His rep was not very...human.
Enter Social Media Canada. We set up a social media strategy for the company but the first, and most important, step involved exposing all of his good works and putting a human face to the company. We then took small projects and created social media campaigns around them, one at a time. By doing so the company was able to engage with people who were interested in that project and give them something they wanted to see.
Massive corporations have long hidden behind the wall of anonymity but the advent of social media has changed all that. No longer can a company like Ford afford to ignore the massive impact and traffic of the internet.
But handling that traffic is another issue in itself. Just putting up accounts and pages, as Ben mentions, isn't going to be enough. Engagement is the key.
If big business wants to engage people, have them talk about the company, improve customer service and generally represent the brand in an authentic way, they'll need a strategy that envelops the big picture but also breaks down barriers to the customers by giving them something of value.
So, to recap: Big picture strategy + small project implementation = personalized/human engagement.
That was easy :)