Guest Post by Mark Pilipczuk, VP Marketing Services - Neustar

The success of a professional services organization is ultimately dependent upon the professionalism, creativity and experience of its client contacts. 

Personally, I am fortunate to work for a set of clients that, in most cases, I have known for years.  Our relationship has solidified based on shared success, as well as the lessons gained from opportunities missed.

Neustar  is just one example of a client relationship that is rewarding.  It's an innovative company that is pushing forward on a number of growth initiatives. 

One of our senior-level contacts is Mark Pilipczuk.  He is appropriately demanding of vendors, yet views the relationship as a true collaboration.  This is critical as we have taken on a number of social media marketing programs.

Based on a recent discussion with Mark, I asked him to contribute these thoughts to the "Strategic Guy" blog.

Corporate Success in Social Starts Internally

One of my responsibilities as a corporate marketer for a global, publicly traded technology company is to move the organization towards the adoption of emerging and social media in a strategic and disciplined manner.

At Neustar, we have engaged in social to support corporate positioning, as well as to drive tactical sales and thought leadership objectives.  We insist that every new initiative have a well defined purpose and a clear set of measurable external communications goals.

However, I’ve come to understand the success of corporate social media adoption is often as much about education of internal audiences.  I’ve focused on three core internal-oriented activities to set expectations about what’s required with a social media program: 

1.   Devote the time to grow a following and, more importantly, grow the interactions.  It takes time before the interactions with key audiences evolve from us messaging them to a more dynamic, two-way dialogue.

2.   Ensure commitment by content creators.  Without a commitment to put the time in on the part of the subject matter experts (SMEs), it's better not even to get started in social. Without SME content and interaction, there's no point in getting started.  Nobody wants to hear from marketers and PR guys!

3.   Willingness to consider all messages are not as sanitized and perfect as you'd like. Since the interaction is key and it's two-way, we (Neustar) won't have perfect control of both the outbound and the inbound messages. 

Social media can have dramatic and groundbreaking impact on a company’s success in the market.  Yet, it takes the right internal environment for this potential to be achieved. 

It’s up to us as corporate marketers to do what is necessary to create that environment.