@Rupesh: Apologies for not replying earlier. Since you raised such interesting points, I wanted to respond with a full post, but couldn’t.

Well, you are right. Ideally, all of Nokia’s employees should participate in social media conversations about Nokia, and engage with customers and citizens directly. This is the approach most social media purists would prefer.

However, this is not always possible. Only a few Nokia’s employees would be comfortable with directly talking with consumers or citizens and even fewer will be comfortable using social media tools. Even the employees who have the ability and the inclination to engage in social media conversations may not have the bandwidth. Therefore, the need for a dedicated social media resource.

In a high-value, low-volume B2B context, an in-house community manager may be the correct answer, as the number of social media conversations will be fewer.

However, in a low-value, high-volume B2C context, like Nokia, a dedicated in-house team will be too costly, and outsourcing will be the only option.

Call centers operate on the same logic. Ideally, all customer complaints should be handled by company employees, but they are handled by a third party call center because of cost considerations.

Response-based social media outreach is basically online customer support. If Nokia can outsource telephone customer support, why not outsource online customer support too?

I hope I have answered some of your questions.

@Manuscrypts: I guess that answers your question too. And, in response to your tweet, yes, this is similar to what Rajesh does, only on a much larger scale.

Also, users will always be there to write negative about the brand.. and who knows may be they are also doing as Negative SMO..??

BTW, did you read this post http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/03/three-internet.html ?

1. See, taking your e.g. only, Nokia has a large number of employee database. & mostly are on social n/w sites. Many are themselves bloggers. Now, the scenario might be that these social n/w sites are inaccessible as per silly corporate rules.. but what if they understand this fact & open the gate. Their incentive system will add a parameter called social branding.. No other 3rd party can understand the company better than the Nokia employees.
Then there will not be any need of outsourcing the SMO thing as “Divide (the job among huge Nokia employee base) & conquer” will work for sure..
What is you say on this?

2. Leave the employee base, fans & devotees are doing it for “FREE OF COST”. You can see many communities on orkut, groups on Facebook, run by fans only in self interest.
I am a blogger [though a lazy one ;-)], i have received many times news, beta service invitation .etc. from CEO’s, CTO’s directly to blog upon.
Because bloggers need only one thing, RECOGNITION. And any breaking news .etc. will help drive traffic to their blog. That’s what they want most of the time.

I would appreciate if you & others continue the discussion from where I left…!!

Social media outsourcing is not a new phenomenon and a couple of KPO outfits have been playing some over the last year or so… there have some interesting assignments right upto the highest point on the value chain.

I also know of outfits which handle outsourcing of a totally different kind - creation, management and SEO of fake blogs. Why are these fake blog s created? To kill negative reportage on relevant categories by generating content on an ongoing basis.

Factory like in their orientation, they are alive and kicking, these outfits.

More face-to-face.

Cheers.

R

Read a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) company BuzzPundit to understand why SMO will be the next big business opportunity for India after BPO and KPO.