In my travels and conversations with clients, I’m often excited about the high levels of interest I see in all things Web2.0 and Social Commerce. Corporate executives find themselves taking cues from their teenage offspring about what’s hot in this space, chatting to friends about these weird and wonderful behavioral creatures called Social Networks, and engaging on the web in ways they never have before just to keep up with the fast pace of industry developments.
Having said that, I’m struck by the fact that, despite all their excitement, very few people and companies actually have a meaningful strategy to employ the many powerful concepts these topics embody. As a result, they’re forced to give cagey responses to questions from superiors about how much to budget for Web2.0 and Social Commerce in the next year. It’s almost as though there’s a reluctance to experiment with the ideas because there’s no clear answer to where they should begin. Is a company blog the right place to start? Perhaps ratings & reviews are the way to go? Or maybe we should build a widget for Facebook? You get the point… lots of action but not a whole lot of strategy. Kinda like a goat rodeo…
Recently, I heard the folks from Forrester allude to this phenomenon as “approach avoidance” syndrome. You know, the “I should probably be doing something about this, but I’m not quite sure what, so I’ll just continue to dabble and perhaps one day I’ll wake up and it’ll all be crystal clear to me” approach. This isn’t a challenge unique to web2.0/social commerce, and I’m sure we can borrow countless examples from the history of emerging technologies to illustrate how disruptive technologies can put you into a strategic tailspin. But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address it.
So then, the question remains, isn’t it time for a simple, easy-to-apply framework for understanding the social commerce possibilities and defining the right strategy for your company? I think it is….
Stay tuned for my next blog, when I’ll break social commerce down into the handful of business models it supports, and discuss a simple approach to creating a meaningful social commerce strategy.
