5 Stages Of Social Media Growth

June 8, 2011      Admin

Here is an interesting — and a bit amusing — depiction of social media evolution in large organizations, as seen by research firm Forrester.

The process of ‘social maturation’ for social media utilization …

1. Dormant stage — one in five companies don’t use social media.

2. Small victories — baby steps and case studies.

3. Distributed chaos — the ‘testing the waters’ stage as various pockets of the organization excitedly do their own thing.

4. Coordinating stage — management takes notice and puts the ‘governance’ and resources in place to create consistency across the organization.

5. Scaling and optimizing stage — now there’s a steering committee, a budget, policies and process … and a focus on results. This includes solving customer problems — what Forrester seems to see as the ultimate use of social media.

I can see how this progression might apply to nonprofits. I particularly like ‘distributed chaos’ … what we used to call, “Let a thousand flowers bloom”!

Where is your organization in the maturation process?

Tom

One response to “5 Stages Of Social Media Growth”

  1. Brock Warner says:
    June 8, 2011 at 9:31 am

    This is great! Taking an objective look at where your charity is in the social media adoption life-cycle is an extremely important step.

    My experience is that the distributed chaos more often comes before the small victories, because often you can’t get those small victories without some sort of order and basic measurement in place.

    Just my 2 cents. Keep up the good work Tom!

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