Content to Commerce: Engaging Consumers Across Paid, Owned and Earned Channels

Chapter 9

Operations

A growing number of companies now recognize that social media has, or will soon become, a vital part of their business operations. Fewer, though, yet realize just how important efficient operations are to social media.

Operations, as a practice, serves as a combined skeletal and nervous system of a brand network, ensuring that channel architecture is set up properly and that all the dynamic aspects of the brand strategy work together to produce optimum results. At the heart of operations are the separate but interconnected processes that govern both the day-to-day activities that keep a network running as well as the strategies and campaigns that must be consistently achieved over the span of weeks, months, and even years. The most essential of these operations will be detailed throughout much of the rest of this book. Two other central components—technology and talent—are also key to the success of every social brand network.

Technology

“Social media runs on technology,” says Michoel Ogince, Big Fuel's director of platform and product strategy. “It is the DNA of social media marketing.” Unlike the biological genetic molecule that slowly evolves over millennia, however, social technologies can change seemingly overnight, forcing organizations to perpetually think both short and long term about investing in appropriate applications.

Ogince oversees Social Labs, Big Fuel's innovation division, which was first established in response to the ongoing proliferation ...