By Sandy Carter
Companies around the world are now focused on becoming Social Businesses.
Until recently, Social Media has been top of mind for marketing and PR executives, with the focus on leveraging social tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and communities, as a new form of media. As these social techniques advance, businesses are now applying their value to more than just marketing and public relations, but to all processes in a business – including Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Supply Chain and more. A Social Business is one that uses these social techniques, as well as a wide variety of other collaborative technologies, in all of its business processes.
This trend towards embracing Social Business is global. According to the 2011 GlobalWebIndex Survey of over 51K web users, use of social tools is now mainstream in all countries (except Japan), having over 50 percent of their respective populations using the tools. Communities are the number one social tool being used, with Facebook as the dominating communities, except in Russia, Netherlands, Japan and China where local brands dominate.
So with this major focus, organizations around the world are beginning to ask: “How does my company start the journey?”
Based on working with thousands of clients, here is a way to create your personalized Social Business Agenda.
A - Align your goals and culture to be ready to become more engaging and transparent. Do not underestimate the task ahead of you. Culture eats strategy for lunch. Take a look at IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines as a way to get started.
G – Gain Social Trust by focusing on finding your fans, friends and followers, and forming best friends from your tippers or most influential clients or outside parties. It dives into what social trust is all about and how you instill it.
E – Engage through experiences with your clients and employees -- consider diving into gaming, virtual gifting, location based, mobile, or other stellar experiences to drive that engagement.
N – “Social” Network your processes. Since this is about business, figuring out how to add social techniques to your processes is critical. Think about customer service — adding in Twitter to address your customer’s concerns. Or Crowdsourcing for product innovation, or Communities for incrementing your marketing processes around Loyalty.
D – Design for Reputation and Risk Management. This is the #1 area of focus for the C level — managing the risk of having your brand online, your employees being your brand advocates, and even your clients becoming your marketing department. The value typically outweighs the risk, but see how to develop a Disaster Recovery plan as you plan for the worst, and expect the best.
A – Analyze your data. Social analytics are the new black. You need to see the patterns of sentiment, who your tippers are, and listen daily
As organizations of all sizes around the globe embrace Social, it’s critical that you’re not left behind. Becoming a Social Business doesn’t happen overnight though. A culture of transparency and change must be embraced first in order to start the Social Business journey.
Sandy Carter is IBM vice president of Social Business Sales
Companies around the world are now focused on becoming Social Businesses.
Until recently, Social Media has been top of mind for marketing and PR executives, with the focus on leveraging social tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and communities, as a new form of media. As these social techniques advance, businesses are now applying their value to more than just marketing and public relations, but to all processes in a business – including Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Supply Chain and more. A Social Business is one that uses these social techniques, as well as a wide variety of other collaborative technologies, in all of its business processes.
This trend towards embracing Social Business is global. According to the 2011 GlobalWebIndex Survey of over 51K web users, use of social tools is now mainstream in all countries (except Japan), having over 50 percent of their respective populations using the tools. Communities are the number one social tool being used, with Facebook as the dominating communities, except in Russia, Netherlands, Japan and China where local brands dominate.
So with this major focus, organizations around the world are beginning to ask: “How does my company start the journey?”
Based on working with thousands of clients, here is a way to create your personalized Social Business Agenda.
A - Align your goals and culture to be ready to become more engaging and transparent. Do not underestimate the task ahead of you. Culture eats strategy for lunch. Take a look at IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines as a way to get started.
G – Gain Social Trust by focusing on finding your fans, friends and followers, and forming best friends from your tippers or most influential clients or outside parties. It dives into what social trust is all about and how you instill it.
E – Engage through experiences with your clients and employees -- consider diving into gaming, virtual gifting, location based, mobile, or other stellar experiences to drive that engagement.
N – “Social” Network your processes. Since this is about business, figuring out how to add social techniques to your processes is critical. Think about customer service — adding in Twitter to address your customer’s concerns. Or Crowdsourcing for product innovation, or Communities for incrementing your marketing processes around Loyalty.
D – Design for Reputation and Risk Management. This is the #1 area of focus for the C level — managing the risk of having your brand online, your employees being your brand advocates, and even your clients becoming your marketing department. The value typically outweighs the risk, but see how to develop a Disaster Recovery plan as you plan for the worst, and expect the best.
A – Analyze your data. Social analytics are the new black. You need to see the patterns of sentiment, who your tippers are, and listen daily
As organizations of all sizes around the globe embrace Social, it’s critical that you’re not left behind. Becoming a Social Business doesn’t happen overnight though. A culture of transparency and change must be embraced first in order to start the Social Business journey.
Sandy Carter is IBM vice president of Social Business Sales
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