As I recently discussed, Tom Foremski, Vanessa DiMauro and I have started a great collaboration – extending from of our work together at the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR).
The three of us meet regularly to discuss industry trends and share experiences from our respective work in media, business and technology. Our discussions have sharpened our individual and collective views on social media and social business that have helped us (or at least me, anyway) become more effective in our 'day jobs.'
Through our collaboration, we have also identified a great opportunity to share our experiences and ideas through a new blog, intended to help business leaders and practitioners understand how to incorporate social strategies and social thinking into the heart of their business operations (beyond marketing and communications) - strengthening the competitive position and market leadership of their companies.
Today we launched the blog Every Company is a Media Company. This blog is intended to support rich discussion between marketing and communications practitioners, business and IT professionals, academics, consultant, etc.
Here are a few excerpts from the welcome post authored by Tom:
Every company is affected...
Every Company is a Media Company (EC=MC) is the most important business transformation of our times because every company is affected.
It is also a massive business opportunity for so many businesses.
Every company is a media company becomes the point of the spear for new business for many companies across many sectors.
- Companies need help in mastering the best practices of being a media company.
- Management needs help in implementing the new business processes and in measuring progress.
- Companies will need new IT equipment, new software, new types of services, and more...
There will be opportunities for vendors of all types, armies of consultants, experts of all stripes, media professionals, teachers, authors...Beyond social media...
Every company is a media company moves beyond the current focus on social media. Social media is just one aspect of a company's media strategy.
Social media is not enough, companies have to focus on their entire media strategy, it becomes integral to their core business strategy.
You have to be involved...
The challenge for a company's leadership is that many of these media trends cannot be fully understood unless you are immersed within them.
You can't 'get it' unless you are in it.
Clearly, that's difficult because senior executives have so many duties, they have to achieve an understanding of EC=MC and have the right staff to help in the transformation.
A key objective of this site will be to convince senior executives that there really is a major business transformation taking place, through examples and other information.
The second objective is to:
- Provide roadmaps and checklists so that senior management know what needs to be done.
- What types of people/skills are needed in-house.
- What can be contracted out.
- What to look for, the metrics that track progress, and what success looks like.
Every company is a media company ... but every company is in a different industry sector, different geography, a different culture.
There are some aspects of this transformation that apply to all but there is so much more that is very specific.
This site will try to collect those things that are held common, and also ones that are specific to an industry, a sector, a geography.
This site will also pull together a directory of resources, of services, and consultants/experts in their fields.
Comments are welcome and open to all who wish to contribute. If you have an idea for a guest post that fits the spirit of the blog – please feel free to reach out to me (@dbulmer) Tom (@tomforemski) or Vanessa (@vdimauro) and will work to make it happen. We hope to have MANY contributors and co-authors on this blog to advance the 'conversation.'
Don:
Nice post and vision, I think a great example of a company becoming a media company is Starbucks and they were way ahead of their time. I had the chance to work with them in Seattle while with Gartner and the first person that I met was their director of entertainment, figure that. They were and are well ahead of their time and the internal culture in Starbucks made this happen. Many companies will find it difficult to embrace this major movement in communications because of one single thing, their internal culture. Combine conservative culture with change and market disruption and you get the deer in the headlights look. Make sense, keep up the good thinking.
Posted by: Peter Auditore | April 01, 2010 at 01:42 PM
I'm looking forward to reading more. At the moment I can't quite get my head around the idea that media strategy is integral to the core business strategy of every company. I mean I know that it should be aligned, but it's not the core business of most companies so not sure why they should be media companies. But anyway nice tagline and it got me here, and I'll read more at the blog.
Walter Adamson @g2m
http://xeesm.com/walter
Posted by: Walter Adamson | June 06, 2010 at 04:02 AM