I caught a piece on eMarketer by Clark Fredricksen today about the dilemma of customer engagement companies face when moving into social media. The basis of the post is found in the video embedded below.  Tension ramps up between the desire to have a presence and the need to participate.  To quote the post:

What he says is entirely true, launching a presence on a social channel (i.e.. facebook, twitter, yelp, flickr, blogging) is a great thing for many companies and their customers, allowing them to mutually share and receive information.  The dilemma comes when a brand has to decide how, when, and who should engage.  In my opinion, if a brand is opening an account they are already in the game so there is not the option to not participate so the question becomes how and who.  This should adhere to some basic rules of responding to most mentions, answering questions, etc. and every company will have secondary rules they will need to explore that will work best for them.  Two great examples of this choice on engagement are Best Buy’s @twelpforce or Comcast’s @ComcastCares –  where they are defining their intent because while the CEO of Best Buy is on twitter – having the expectation that he’ll respond personally to every question/whim isn’t only crazy its incredibly of base.  Along that path, deciding to do customer service is a common tactic for those companies who use twitter.  This brings up the great point that Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group makes “As companies accelerate their social support efforts, responding to customers in public reinforces the behavior of complaining to everyone they know.”  I’m certainly not saying that responding to customers on twitter is a bad idea, but it’s an interesting idea to consider.

Something else to consider is that with the growth of web technology the last few years, the barriers to entry have dropped to a level for where for all intents and purposes it’s 0.  It requires very little technical skill to open an account on any of the pieces named above which presents the dichotomy that marketers face – the ease of use can quickly translate to accounts that amount to “hello world” but often get forgotten in the hustle and bustle of day to day work.  Without a focus on any account, those customers  (guests in Ruby Tuesday’s world) who were very excited at the entry of a company they cared about in a digital space – will quickly move from excitement to vocal anger as their tweets and comments go unanswered and seemingly uncared for.

Which means that brands must ask, and then quickly answer the question, “what type of social media engagement is right for our brand?”