Many of you commented that you want to see case studies, and that’s something I hear a lot in the trenches from folks. But it also got me thinking a lot about what case studies are good for, and what they’re not. So let’s talk about that for just a minute.

What Case Studies Can Be

Inspiration

If you’re stuck about where to start or if creativity isn’t your strong suit, case studies can help you get inspired by what others are doing, and help you generate new ideas for what you can do. They give you context and little seeds to grow bigger ideas.

Reassurance

Sometimes, it’s reassuring to see that someone else is doing what you want to do, especially if you or your company is a bit risk averse. It’s proof that someone is blazing a trail so that there’s a little clear ground for you to walk on. In some cases, it can help show your boss that your idea isn’t as crazy as he thinks it is, or that there’s at least a little precedent for what you want to try. But…

What Case Studies Aren’t

Universal Proof

Every business is different. I’ve said that so many times. Someone else’s success with a blog or social network is not necessarily a fool-proof recipe for you. You must be accountable for your own planning, execution, and results tracking. You have to take the time to plan your initiatives relative to your business, not someone else’s, even if their company looks a lot like yours.

And your ideas for strategy, tactics, or measurement might be perfectly valid and well-thought even if no one else has done it that way. There is no guarantee of success in any project, with or without precedent. There is only the guarantee you’ll learn something by trying.

Always Complete

Few companies like to shine the spotlight on hard realities of their successes. The fact that they failed three times before succeeding, say, or the fact that they lost money on the first two endeavors before creating a return. Or how many hours they spent in meetings writing and rewriting broken strategy before they made it look so easy. Don’t forget that case studies are often marketing vehicles, even if they’re presented by a third party, and they don’t always show the less glamorous or compelling bits of the process. We all want to show our best sides and celebrate our successes.

A Reason Not to Do

I’m a bit concerned that sometimes, waiting around for a case study is what’s putting some companies behind the 8-ball, or preventing them from putting their own brains to work on their business. Precedent just means someone else did it first (and not always better than you could). When it comes to social media especially, there’s still lots of room for strategic experimentation. Please don’t let the lack of a perfectly reflective case study stop you from creating your own goals and approach. Experience is the best teacher.

All this isn’t to say that I won’t be seeking out practical examples of what companies are doing with social media. I sure will be, because you’ve asked me to, and I think teaching with examples is good, as long as we can uncover not just WHAT people did, but why and how it was successful (or not).

But please keep the notion of a “case study” in perspective. Don’t count on them to be the shortcut to strategy or hard work. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can merely replicate them. Don’t cite them as gospel. And most important of all, don’t scuttle your ideas because you can’t find written and published proof that someone else made them work.

That’s called innovation.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Case Studies in Perspective

This isn’t a short read (about 30 pages) because it’s all the posts smashed into one document. But it puts them all in one place, and hopefully gives you a go-to resource – for your work, your boss, your clients.

I’m hopeful it’s helpful to you as you do some real, actionable planning in your companies. And if you have ideas about how to make it better, please share them.

As a quick recap, the book covers:

• Why you might need a team
• Assembling the team
• Sorting out some roles and responsibilities
• Listening tools and ideas
• Participation tools and ideas
• Communicating and reporting back within the team
• A case study on how Humana has built their team

I’d love it if you’d download it, share it liberally, tell your friends. It’s free. And do share your feedback or ideas for additions or improvements. What have I left out?  My email’s right in the sidebar, or you can always find me on Twitter (that’s in the sidebar too).

Happy reading!

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
The Social Media Team Ebook

Greg is the Director of Consumer Innovations where he’s focused on using social media to create different kinds of interactions with consumers, and he blogs at CrumpleItUp.com. As we wrap the “Building a Social Media Team” series, what better cap off than to hear – straight from the organization – what’s working for them? This post is big, but it is FULL of ideas and takeaways. Grab a bevvy, sit back, and learn.

Humana made the decision to step – lightly – into social media last year.  But the interesting thing is that it wasn’t really one decision, but many . . . perhaps dozens of decisions, happening all at about the same time. And when you think about it, it’s really not all that surprising that in a company of 29,000 people operating a complex business, the benefits of using social media became obvious to lots of us.  Or, at least, too enticing not to try.

For those of you who don’t know our company, we’re one of the bigger health benefits companies out there.  Here’s a pop quiz:  How many of you love your health insurance brand?  Nobody?  OK, how many of you find your health insurer easy to work with?  Ahh, yes.  A few more, but still not many.  How many of you find the health system easy to navigate?  Crickets again.

Can you imagine why we might want to make a deeper connection with consumers?  Why we might want to collaborate better with doctors and hospitals to make sure that our members get the best care for a reasonable price?  To connect healthy people with programs that will keep them healthy?  Then you can imagine why social media started to appear on everyone’s “solution radar” in 2008.

How it started

For me, it started with a realization that I couldn’t keep telling people that social media was a solution unless I started actually living it out.  So, I started doing the usual stuff – blogging, setting up a facebook page and even a twitter account.  You can read more about it here and here .

But things really took a turn when our team got some good press from the social media campaign for freewheelin.  That led to a presentation to Humana’s executive committee, and a directive to create some kind of company-wide platform that we could use to help bring together Humana’s social media activities into a common place. After having done some pretty low risk exploration, we figured that the first thing to do would be to lay out a set of principles to live by – and the Town Square was born.

The Town Square is a concept that says every department in the company can get a “lot” on the town square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best.  It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration.  It’s for our customers, yes, but not JUST our customers.  It also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and – yes – each other.

The Town Square model

We figured that if we were going to be working in social media, we needed to apply social media principles to the way we worked.  And that means that we weren’t going to be a governance committee.  Or an approval board (oxymoron alert!).

There’s only one rule in the town square . . . but it goes with six fundamental principles.  The rule is: We Share.  We share our ideas and plans.  We share what’s worked and what hasn’t.  We share vendor recommendations.  We share reference materials and resources. The fundamentals are important too, although pretty obvious:

• Authenticity – We’re honest, accurate and thorough.  We’re not marketing; we’re having a conversation.  We don’t keep secrets or spin the truth.  We’re people, too.
• Active Listening – We’re taking the time to stop talking and just listen.  We want to hear what you have to say – even if it’s negative.  When we enter a new space, we’ll listen first before we start talking.  We’ll listen for how we can make your life better or easier.  We are changing the way we work based on your needs.
• Going Where They Are – People go to the places and do the things they know, trust and enjoy.  You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you.  If it’s necessary for you to come to us, we’ll build you a bridge.
• Personal Voice – We will interact with you as people, not as a corporation.  I am accountable to you as a person, not as a corporation.  We will use language that you can understand – not just what’s convenient for us.
• Learning through Action – Nobody has found the “magic bullet” in enterprise social media.  We will try new things.  We realize that we will make mistakes and do things incorrectly, but we will learn as we go.  We’ll be honest about what we’ve learned, and celebrate our smart failures.  We’ll get better every time we try.
• Sharing/Open Source – We are adopting a culture of sharing, both inside and outside of Humana.  If we can’t share our successes and failures, we limit our ability to learn.  We don’t have to control, but we do have to communicate.  We will create a culture that emphasizes and values collaboration and sharing.

So now that we had a framework, we needed someone to start building around the square.  I mentioned before that there were a whole lot of people who’d begun to work in the space.  Our Perfect Service Innovation team was the first part of the company to work with an internal wiki for knowledge sharing.  Our Web/New Media team has launched a series of videos (over a million views on YouTube – pretty amazing!)  And another part of our marketing organization had launched a real social network for pre-retirees.

Continuing the Town Square metaphor, we needed to find a way to bring together the right people from around our business to carry the learning forward – we call it the “Chamber of Commerce.”  A group of 17 people – none above the Director level – from 14 different departments of the company.  They are all either currently engaged in some form of social media or preparing to be.

How we run it

We run it as a radical social media democracy.  It’s an un-committee.  We don’t have a charter, and we don’t have rules.  We don’t have a P&L and we don’t have a budget.  We don’t have a leader and we don’t have any formal reporting structure.  We even live-tweet our meetings (watch for hashtag #hcoc for Humana’s Chamber of Commerce).

We’re what a management guru might call a self-managed team.  The Chamber of Commerce itself doesn’t actually do any work or have deliverables … but it does set up workgroups that people in the team can voluntarily join – and since they’re all leaders in their organizations, they can also commission others to help. The Chamber of Commerce meets every 3-4 weeks, and our agenda usually looks like this:

• Updates from last meeting
• 1 member presents an update of their social media work: what is it, how and why did they do it, what have they learned?
• We incorporate a “voice from outside” to provide expertise
• One or more work-groups present updates

How does it work? It’s amazing.  It’s the only team I’ve been on that has nearly 100% attendance at every meeting – even, as it turns out, when they’re called at the last minute.  And you don’t have to look hard to figure out why.  It adds value to people’s jobs.  It fuels their passion.  And it’s one of the rare groups that actually lives up to the saying “you get out as much as you put in.”

What it means for Humana

We’ve recognized up-front that this new way of doing business will stretch and redefine the capabilities of every department in our company.  As a group  . . . so #hcoc will advise:

• HR on Creating a culture of collaboration, and on hiring, training and rewarding people for collaborating and sharing
• Marketing on having a conversation and building a brand based on collaboration
• IT on issues of security, access development and toolsets
• Legal on IP, compliance, liability and indemnity

I have to admit at this point that this is a new team – we’ve only been meeting since January.  We have really tough issues to tackle, and we all have “day jobs” that keep us busy.  And frankly, the biggest threat to the Chamber of Commerce is biting off more than we can chew.  But the value we can bring to our company is this:  There are very few large companies that have really made social media a differentiator for their business.  And I can’t really think of any in health or health care.

We know that health, and the health system, have to change.  Humana intends to continue leading that change through innovation and our focus on consumers. There’s a lot of work to do . . . but luckily we work in a company with 29,000 other people who can help.  And that’s what the Chamber of Commerce will be tapping into.

Special thanks again to Greg Matthews and the kind folks at Humana for sharing their experiences (follow Greg on Twitter and tell him thanks, too!). Let’s talk about what you’ve learned. I have to say that if a big, monolithic company like Humana can pulll this off, maybe you can too?

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Building the Social Media Chamber of Commerce: Humana