The current Canadian Business issue has a short article called Flickr of the wrist in which they talk about how some corporations are kinda making a presence online in the social media space. It is more of a cautionary tale though as these things need to be supported and nurtured. It is not enough to just fire-and-forget these things.

This is one of those whole-product-quality topics that pure-play testers don’t get muddled with (usually).

Web 2.0 with all its glory (user generated content, twitter, etc.) is finally being picked up by sales departments and even those that have ‘Executive’ in their titles so you will have to get involved at some point.

Here is a quick list of things to ask when they spring one of these initiative on your project / product / iteration:

  • Why are they doing it?
  • What do they hope to achieve from it?
  • What is the time frame for this? Both in terms of launch and support?
  • How is Quality going to be determined?
  • Who is responsible for gardening? Do they know this yet? Do they know how?
  • What is the failure criteria and exit strategy?

I can think of at least two such projects that don’t have answers to these and if they did would not make people in the company very happy I don’t think.

The final two paragraphs sum the problem, or more accurately the lack of understanding of the problem which causes problems nicely:

*Once you’ve engaged people, you must have a plan to keep them and use any feedback in the ensuing dialogue, says Jen Evans, founder of Toronto-based social-media consultant Sequentia Environics. In other words, if you’re going to use social media for professional purposes, you need to act like a professional media organization: plan what information you want to provide your audience, make it compelling and deliver it regularly.

Low-cost social media may be easy to use, but they still require acommitment in time, planning and people that many organizations — even experimental accounting firms — haven’t fully grasped.*