Last week I wrote about what I learned from talking to 25 companies on how social media was being used by them individually, as well as how they used it to enhance their business alliances and partnerships. Mostly I discussed the partnering aspects.

I thought that this week I would back up a little and discuss 5 points to consider when building out a social media program for your business.

• First, with any business initiative, start with a vision, plan, and mission. Sounds like a lot, but this could be a few paragraphs or one-pager. You already have a business plan (I assume), so this is just meant to complement it Not complicate it. Try to answer – “What is my prime purpose in using social media?” Influence customers to buy, provide better customer service and experience, build a new lead channel, etc. Then build your one-pager. Your prime purpose may change or expand in a year, so understand that this is dynamic.
• Second, if you’re not top management, then the above will not be very credible until the owners or senior management buy into it. Social media has the ability to touch and influence almost every area of your business operation, as sales, marketing, HR will all be affected by your strategy. You will need multiple layers of support to get this started – but not necessarily everyone.
• Third, think about how your vision will be turned into policy and action. You will need to establish some policies and guidelines about what’s inbounds and what’s out of bounds in your social media strategy. For instance, what guidelines do you need to establish around talking about new products or internal affairs or finances. These are important areas that can affect you legally, financially, and in your ability to compete.
• Fourth, can you track who’s saying or writing what? And what help or guidance are you providing them? What tools, training and programs might help them help your customers or clients better, or do their job better? There’s a lot of territory to cover on this fourth bullet and my next blog will talk about how to help you get connected to the right resources.
• Fifth, and this is the one I like least, but is necessary. What are the consequences for breaking policy? Even in LinkedIn, some groups have policies that do not allow links in their discussions. Most groups don’t, but those that do will or can expel you from the group. LinkedIn itself has certain policies that will be cause for your expulsion. If you plan to have consequences, then make sure they’re communicated well and backed up with adequate training. This topic alone is worthy of another blog and I would appreciate other thoughts on the subject.

As examples of how to get started or just start your thinking along these lines, take a look at IBM’s guidelines. Or check out Sun Microsystem’s guidelines – one of my former employers – where the CEO has (or had) a highly readable and followable blog. Since Sun is in the midst of being purchased by Oracle, I’m not sure where his future writings will go, but it might be worthy to check out his past material at http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ as an example of an executive communication blog.

Look forward to your comments and thoughts.

To start this out (and to be totally above board), I’ve had the opportunity to work for Sun from 1995 – 1999 in New York City. And until very recently owned shares in the company. I still own shares of Oracle and my advisor just suggested I purchase some more a couple of weeks ago. So I hope this bodes well for both companies, their employees and customers. Here’s my analysis:

Culture: this should be one of the great cultural fits. Oracle and Sun were always linked tightly together and the employees were always encouraged to work closely together. Sun’s and Oracle’s sales forces both took the gun slinger approach, and their R&D plant was based on UNIX/Solaris, C/C++ and Java, not (dot)Net for instance. Both tended to be thin on marketing (perhaps not so much for Oracle – but similar). I think the entire marketing plan for Sun when I was first there was about 5 pages. So they tend to be less bureaucratic – although that has changed over the years. All in all looks like a natural marriage.

Products: for the most part their product suites are highly complimentary, except for Sun’s acquisition of MySQL, an open source database software, which put Larry Ellison slightly on edge. However, that hiccup should be so minor that it isn’t worth talking about. Oracle uses Java oriented software and Oracle has no hardware company, so Sun can continue to sell its wares. Oracle’s high end database software needs the compute cycles that a Sun server delivers. Again potentially all good stuff.

Leadership: Larry and Scott McNealy have typically been on the same side and are neighbors in Silcon Valley so to speak, but the top leadership will rest in Larry’s hands ( I would assume). Since the product sets are complimentary, most of the mid-senior level managers may have already been purged by Sun in their recent round of layoffs. As a result, it appears that a lot of the downsizing has already been captured pre-deal, although it’s likely that some expensive and redundant mid-layers may be further shedded.

Market: while it’s a tough market, Oracle got Sun for a decent price. It’s doing $10+B in business and with the recent cuts it could be a win-win for the customer long term. More stability for the customer, better integrated product sets and a re-focus on innovation and R&D could be forthcoming.

Cons: it doesn’t address the soft side of the business for Oracle (professional services) which is the big cash generator in today’s IT market. The EDS acquisition by HP for example. The acquisition also throws a wrench into the recently extolled relationship with HP that Oracle has been talking about (as a result of Sun’s MySQL foray mostly). But nevertheless both HP and IBM compete head to head against Sun on the hardware side, so this will not make either ecstatic. Ditto EMC, who has been an arch enemy of Sun for years. So let’s hope Oracle, while buying a great company, didn’t paint itself into a corner with its other alliance partners.

Personally, I feel that the IBM acquisition would have benefitted both companies more, vis-a-vis the entire market landscape in general, especially as IBM could have reaped some economies of scale from its own server sales units as well as having a full armament of professional services to back it up (Oracle doesn’t). This is beginning to sound like I’m about to short Oracle, but Larry’s a tough and savvy guy. I think I’ll sit tight – maybe he has another move up his sleeve to buy a services firm.