#51 Issue additional titles for employee initiatives like SMO – Social Media Officer – to encourage ownership and get things done.

As your firm grows or responsibilities change, you will soon find you can’t do everything. And sadly, it is easy to let things slip when you have plenty of work or you’re out trying to drum up new biz. We’ve found that the best way to keep information flowing and stay on top of things that are important is by aligning those tasks with others interests. For example, we have a designer who is very concerned and committed to getting us to be more ‘green’. So recently, the “Green Diva” took the lead. We talked about what goals I wanted and she related the things she was interested in. In a year’s time, we had an internal intranet with green terms and a checklist for our work. We began recycling more and developed goals and steps to reduce our carbon footprint. In addition, the “Green Diva” alerted me to talks, websites, resources and organizations we could join to raise awareness, support and follow-through.

This same result is happening with our social media footprint. We delegate responsibility for the various sites we’re on to different people depending on their area of interest. This way, we stay up to speed as participants, but also know about updates and changes that we can bring back to our clients.

Now, this all still takes time. You have to plan and be purposeful. But with a little practice and communication with your team, you can make it happen. If it’s just you alone, assign some of these responsibilities to days of the week or times of the day. Trust me, with some planning and discipline, it is possible.

You may have missed it, but a little over a week ago the Skittles brand (owned by Mars, Inc.) relaunched their website with much debate to follow. Skittles unveiled their site to overlay on top of major social networks like Twitter, Flickr, & YouTube. Each navigation button led you into a different social network to get more information about Skittles. For instance if you wanted to know the flavors or ingredients the site simply took you right over to the Skittles page on Wikipedia.org. This is revolutionary for a consumer brand to simply put their website into the hands of social networks. On Day One, skittles.com automatically led you to Twitter search where you could watch the conversation happen live about #Skittles. It was pretty interesting to read the comments on the likes and dislikes or how it seemed as though they blatantly ripped off Modernista’s web update from a year ago.

Either way y ou see it, this concept is new, innovative, and effective. Skittles quickly trended to the number one topic on Twitter that day and definitely started a ton of conversation around their brand and use of social media. If anything, with this update Mars, Inc. discovered that Skittles fans use their candy to give flavor to vodka and most people think the Chocolate Skittles taste awful. Not to mention the outlet for direct feedback on the new site. The only drawback was instant feedback  also meant instant spam. I suppose that is to be expected but it was definitely interesting to see how it played out.

Do you think it’s a wise idea to turn over your site to your fans…will it catch on? What’s your favorite flavor of the rainbow?