CMS + Social Media features = are CMS sized to become social softwares?

In one hand social softwares are developed to create conversations and above all share ideas (who cares about content when speaking of social media?). In the other hand CMS is a one-way communication tool to ease the content creation and management. CMS vendors then can’t really join the social software competition. What would really mean to add a “share this” button at the end of a presentation, or a comment box below a service pricing table?

Consumers are in need to engage with brands to develop more relevant products and services for their daily lives, willing to change the brand equity and image so that they can fit better with what they think they’re made of, and brands are looking for a tool to structure the conversation in-between customers (waiting for a user based consensus regarding any idea), help them sort out relevant points of product/ communication enhancements (looking for mass interests as a relevancy indicator and not waiting for people to make decisions in place of the company), and easily inform active community members (fans, disruptive customers, ambassadors, advocates, irritated customers) of what’s being currently done and what they can expect to be.

Which means to me the real social CMS dilemma isn’t about community or publishing features, but about point of interests analysis tools on community generated content. Who cares to have a social feature for a brochure? we do want and need to socialize focusing on something that can evolve, which is in contradiction with what a CMS is made for.

Social software is a new business area, there’s for sure CMS knowledge and expertise required to join this business, but mainly social media expertise (sharing, connecting, engaging). The questioning about the social CMS dilemma and proposals of CMS evolution Jeremiah Owyang suggested, CMS+community management and CMS+publishing features, aren’t right moves to me because they’re not including community content datamining or analysis features:

• CMS+community management features (like ability to create personal pages) would always stay CMS because still not allowing people to share and connect with other people (if for granting a digital activity, we don’t care to be related to brands, there are blogs and forums)
• CMS+publishing features, would not help much CMS join the social area, since if you’re willing to spread the word, there’s still no better option than managing an advertising campaign (you can say social media “viral” campaign are worth trying, but there not a high rate of success and that costs a lot to make it work online, maybe more than a standard online campaign)

Last thing that has to be pointed out regarding social software is the way of working brands have to implement to make any social software works and leverage social potential. One great example to take into account would be MMORPG and their guilds way of working where open collaboration is greeted and enhancement features to make a better in-game and in real life collaboration, activities, members management, image, continiously suggested to guild masters. Now convert collaboration by advocacy, activities by features or optimization, members management by customers relationship management, and you get the point: these extreme virtual but more social than real life small companies (they got the same issues and objectives as real companies, such as awareness, reputation, recruitments, loyalty, image, all related to how they manage to sell their product- themselves) show what are the stakes of online social media integration for real life companies and process they have to manage (which would be highlighted in an upcoming post).

To read more on that topic:

• Social Media + Marketing = It’s not just another micro website campaign
• Review of the Internet news of the Day
• Web 2.0 + Best Practices = Connecting and creating value
• Review of the Internet news of the Day
• Word of Mouth + Strategy = engrave it in your delivery strategy