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There’s been no greater use of social media during a crisis moment than GM”s use of these tools during the past week. GM’s head of social media Chris Barger took some time out of his incredibly busy week to answer some questions on GM’s efforts this week, and moving forward. Part I of this interview ran on Geoff Livingston’s Buzz Bin blog. We’re proud to run Part II where Chris answers questions on whether detractors were correct, which social tools were best used in the crisis, and what’s next for GM on the social web.
GL: Certainly there were detractors. Top ranked marketing blogger B.L. Ochman was quoted in the USA Today saying it was too late for GM to embrace social voices. How do you think it worked out?
CB: I was disappointed in B.L.’s response, honestly (though I fully acknowledge that it’s very easy to be taken out of context by a reporter; my own quote was half a line from a 15 minute conversation and didn’t fully reflect what I’d said… So it’s possible that she wasn’t as critical as it sounded). I’ve done webinars with her, so it’s not like she didn’t know we were active in social media and are working to embrace everything social means. And, as Shel Holtz pointed out, GM has a long track record of activity here that is kind of hard for a social thought leader to miss. So I kind of felt like she was piling on a little.
That said, to those who’d say that GM (or other large organizations) are late to the party here, I’d just ask this: does it matter when we got here? Or is the more important thing that we’re here now and trying to be honest participants in the community conversation? You and I both know that there are still lots of big companies who aren’t here yet; criticism like this just disincents them to show up even belatedly (Why try to come to the party if the folks throwing it are just going to pull up the velvet rope and say the place is closed?) .
The biggest reason that i thought it worked out well is that our engagement - and the largely positive reception it received - further opened a lot of eyes here inside gm and earned the social team a lot of capital. Folks who never gave twitter, facebook or other channels a second thought were looking at it quite differently after this week. I think this week makes it easier for us to do more of the right things going forward.
GL: Twitter was a highly focused upon area. Yet you also engaged in your own chat on the gmreinvention site, engaged in significant blogger relations, and Facebook. Which of these tools were individually most important?
CB: Even though I will tell you later that I think we might have overused Twitter a little bit, I will still say twitter was most important — because of the real-time conversation it allowed us to have. Responses on blogs and in facebook were and are very effective, but they don’t occur in real time… And on a day where there was so much information breaking and so much room for interpretation and questions, I thought the real-time aspect of Twitter was most important and effective for us.
How important is it not to get stuck on one particular medium like Twitter? This is probably the one thing I’d do over if I had to. We *did* get stuck on Twitter a little bit. There were good reasons (the real-time interaction i mentioned above), but we had everyone so primed to engage there that it almost became “easy” to overlook the other channels. I flat out acknowledge that we haven’t paid enough attention to the facebook fan page. We need to engage more there.
The problem with getting overly focused on any single channel is that you ignore or miss out on the unique benefits and opportunities each provides. Go too much on twitter, and you miss the deeper, long-term affinity-building opportunities that facebook relationships or blog communities offer — not to mention that traditional media often now look at leading blogs as source material and report on the conversations happening there; overlooking these blogs means missing an opportunity for additional outreach to the traditional media as well. Overlook YouTube, and you miss a chance to use visuals — not overproduced, slick ones, but more ‘real’ ones — to reinforce or better convey what you’re trying to get across. Dismiss Twitter as a fad for narcissists with no attention span, and you miss that real-time interaction that means so much to a consumer. You really do have to be well rounded.
GL: What’s next for GM on the social web?
CB: Sleep? ;-)
As I suggested above, we need to be engaging more voices, telling more stories, joining more conversations. The reinvention site is currently, by necessity, focused on our leaders and discussions of our financial situation.
Our biggest opportunity going forward lies not in engaging our leadership more frequently in the social web (though it is important and we’ll continue to do it). It’s in showing the people and individual stories of general motors - making them as significant a part of our public face as Fritz or Ray Young or Mark Laneve (or on a much smaller scale, me).
As the summer winds down and our new company emerges, we will start shifting to ‘real’ people, engaging audiences in how every individual’s jobs here impact what they see in showrooms, how each of us are accountable to the taxpayers who are now our shareholders.
When I have a designer, or someone who works in the paint shop, or someone working on environmentally cleaner combustion systems or alternate propulsion solutions — not an exec but a regular employee — engaging audiences in chat and via video, attracting nearly as many questions as our leaders, and then following up those conversations by getting on twitter and into facebook groups and joining blog communities on their own, then we will have really gotten to where we need to be.
One of the biggest benefits of the social web has always been its democratizing factor, its ability to flatten hierarchies and enable ideas from unexpected places. That applies to organizations too; getting Fritz on webchats and our CFO ray young to do a twitter chat this week was great… But when we’ve gotten the line worker or the 24 yr old who just started their career to engage, that’s the real potential for us.
I also have to figure out how to most effectively develop mobile apps and a mobile presence for GM that adds value for users, because i figure we’ve got less than a decade before the only people who use laptops or computers to access the net will be writers, reporters, and old guys like me. ;-)
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June 4th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
[...] can read Part II of this interview on the CRT/tanaka whatcanbe blog. Chris answers questions on whether detractors were correct, which social tools were best used in [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 6:55 am
As a member of the “extended” social media team at GM I concur with what Christopher has to say. I was taken aback by the supportive comments and Tweets we have received throughout the week.
However, what bothered me was the nasty tone of some posters. One person, in particular, was gleeful in swearing in his posts, whenever a Tweet appeared in an update. I know emotions run high but honestly, if anyone - critics or supporters - want to be taken seriously, be civil.
While I couldn’t see all the Tweets I would say most people were civil this week. There were critics who made some pointed and accurate assessments but they were mature enough to engage in a meaningful discourse.
The use of social media tools will continue to evolve in a positive manner. There is little choice for organizations but to engage consumers and customers in this realm. To do so puts their communications into the hands of people who can either make or break them.
Am I overselling the value of things like Twitter or FB? Maybe,but I would rather have a presence there so I can engage people one on one.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
To try and keep the Australian arm of GM (Holden) afloat, the government have just offered a $200m line of credit (as well as around $150m, earlier to promote ‘green car’ development). But is this just buying time?
August 30th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Thanks for writing this great blog I really enjoyed.