It's often useful to interview customers to understand their perspectives about their suppliers. In these discussions, open-ended questions about supplier "success stories" and "horror stories" can prompt enlightening replies. Answers in the latter category invariably connect to some supplier failure to deliver, an implementation problem that had implications for the customer's business. And a surprising number of these problems were traced by the customer to some change in the supplier's IT and business systems that rippled through to impact on the customer organization.
The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Apps , which lets you quickly create and publish Facebook, iPhone, iPad and Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following its blog . Building any kind of team is a challenge, but pulling together the people who are going to represent your company in the social media arena is a particularly tricky task. What is the ultimate purpose of your social media team? Do you hire experts from outside the company or utilize existing employees? What do you look for in a social media executive? We talked to professionals who have gone through the process — from big global businesses to small companies — to try and find some answers to these questions. Have a read of their advice and let us know any useful experiences you’ve had in the comments below. 1. Set Clear Goals Before you consider the question of who , you need to have already established the answer to why ? “Firstly, before you set up a team, you have to be clear who you want to talk to and engage with and what your internal goals are,” says Jakub Hrabovsky , head of web relations for Vodafone UK