The Path from a Social Brand to a Social Business. InShare706 I’ve been a long-time supporter of MediaTemple’s (MT)Residence program along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, and many others whom I respect. I wanted to share my “7 questions to answer to become a social business” with you here.. Social Media is pervasive and is becoming the new normal in corporate marketing. Brands who get this right are starting to build their own media networks rich with customer connections numbering in the millions. Right now, Coca-Cola has over 34 million fans on Facebook, but they’re hardly alone. Disney follows just behind with 29 million fans, Starbucks boasts 25 million, and Oreo, Red Bull, and Converse play host to over 20 million fans. Sounds great right?
We’re already approaching the first of many crossroads that new media will present. It’s a tough decision to make right now especially at a time when all we read about is how much success many businesses are finding without having to answer this very question. The 4 Strategic Steps To A Social Business. The speed of change in society is accelerating and according to John Hagel “the average life expectancy of a company in the S&P 500 has dropped precipitously, from 75 years (in 1937) to 15 years according to a recent study”.
Social media is part of that change and has become embedded in our pscyhe at an accelerated pace in recent years and is becoming part of our DNA as human beings and you only have to look at the Facebook phenomenon to see the evidence. Social Media Is Dead Recently David Armano of Edelman and the author of the blog “Logic and Emotion” declared “Social media is dead” which in essence means that social media is no longer a separate entity that has its own existence but has evolved and become enmeshed in how we work and play online in an increasingly social web. Some companies are embracing this change while others resist and hope that things will remain the same. The Challenge 4 Strategic Steps To Become A Social Business 1. 2. The cycle of engagement includes 3. 4. The State and Future of Enterprise Collaboration.
InShare34 More than a year ago, in an article for CMS Wire, I wrote that corporations are starting to ask themselves the following questions: ”Now that we all have the tools, what shall we do with them? How can we use them to change the way we work? And even if we see the use cases and want to change our ways of working, how do our work environments encourage and enable us to do this?
I think this pretty much sums up where a lot of corporations are today; they have implemented new communication and collaboration tools, but they still have a lot of work to do ahead to figure out how to use them to develop better ways of working, as well as how to create good conditions for information workers that supports the change process.
Without a doubt, the importance and availability of social, mobile and cloud technologies will continue to increase. As we are soon moving into 2014, it can be a good idea to take a look at some recent research related to Enterprise Collaboration. Consumer Driven IT: The Revolutionary Promise of Social Business. Here’s something you probably don’t know about social media: It’s designed to help businesses become social, and not necessarily intended to deliver traditional value or return on investment (ROI). It’s true: Current social media may not result in business value despite your best efforts. I’m sure that will change in due time, but for now, expect to face a long and frustrating road to convince executives of social’s true potential and bottom-line impact.
Getting to the next level will take a strong, coordinated effort between the business and technologists. It will also require revolutionary — not evolutionary — transformation and change. In my research over the years, I’ve found that a fair share of what we call “social media strategies” by big brands is, in fact, antisocial in nature. By this I mean that programs might look social, but they’re generally still just clever marketing campaigns disguised as conversations and engagement. Unfulfilled Social Promises Fix the Disconnects. Quick Guide: The Collaborative Economy Body of Work for Corporations.
Updated: Nov 15, 2014, with newer posts added. The Collaborative Economy is a powerful movement that shifts power away from corporations. Over the last several months, I’ve focused my research efforts on the Collaborative Economy a new economic model where there’s shared ownership and access among people, startups, corporations, and governments. They’re using social networks as a conduit to get what they want from each other –rather than inefficient institutions like failed subway systems, taxis or un-interesting hotels. They’re also Making their own goods and products and selling or giving it to each other, unlocking core skills that all humans in villages used to have, but not using technology to learn, share, and distribute beyond physical borders.
The impact this can have to opportunity markets all across the globe can offer them new ways to generate income, share what’s valuable, and reduce their dependency on others. To best understand it, I’m living in the collaborative economy. Report: Corporations must join the Collaborative Economy. Right now, customers are sharing media and ideas on social technologies, in the near future, they’ll use similar technologies to share products and services, which will cause a ripple of impacts far more disruptive than what we’ve seen before.
Disruption: Customers are now sharing products and services with each other, like AirBnb (vs hotels), Lyft (vs buying cars), Lendingclub (vs banks), 99 Dresses (instead of buying clothes), odesk (vs traditional hiring methods) as an alternative to traditional sales, in fact, our small list of 200 startups only has a portion of the services that have emerged, enabling this trend. At Altimeter, we’ve been tracking this space, including a number of blog posts tagged Collaborative Economy (list of startups, list of corporations involved and more), an upcoming free webinar that you can join, and I’ll be announcing some private events for our clients to dive in further. The executive summary encapsulates what you need to know: Perfected Social Business? Good, Because Here Comes the Collaborative Economy. If you’re still trying to get a handle on social business, hang on to your bootstraps.
According to a new report from the Altimeter Group, the emerging next phase of social business features consumers buying and sharing products and services, not just media and information, between themselves. In other words, welcome to the Collaborative Economy. The Net’s Evolution Some adventurous companies are experimenting with new, collaborative economy models. NBC, for instance, is working with sharing site Yerdle on peer-to-peer sharing. A company called Bookcrossing allows students to exchange or rent books with each other, Toyswap offers swapping of children’s toys, and Airbnb provides a marketplace for renting rooms or homes in cities around the world. The Collaborative Economy, according to the report, is the next step in the Internet’s evolution of e-commerce. Of course, we’ve heard the “power shifts to the consumer” mantra many times before, most commonly in our current, social media era.
Salesforce debuts ‘Company Communities’ to help you kill off your corporate intranet. Cloud software powerhouse Salesforce has introduced a new product called Company Communities that aims to replace boring corporate intranets with a network that emphasizes mobile and social features, the company announced today. Company Communities is targeting businesses that already spend a lot of cash on intranet sites that employees couldn’t care less about.
It aims to engage those employees by providing social interactions and tailored applications for iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms. “There are a lot of companies that want a corporate intranet but don’t have enough features,” Jim Sinai, Director of Product Marketing for Salesforce’s Platform, told VentureBeat. “Right now, legacy intranet providers aren’t user centric. We want customers to have intranet their employees actually want to use.” From VentureBeat Buying and getting the best from mobile marketing technology doesn’t need to be difficult. These tools include: Top image via Salesforce. SAPVoice: What Is A Social Business? 4 Resources To Help You. Venessa Miemis studies how social media influences the way people communicate and behave. (Photo courtesy of Venessa Miemis) In response to my post defining social selling, I realized that I needed to take a step back and define “What is a social business?”
There is a lot of talk about the social business and too often it involves a discussion of social tools and channels. In this article I’ll offer my own definition as well as plenty of links to other resources you can check out for more ideas on how to help your organization transform into a social business. A social business is not a business that sends a lot of Tweets or has a ton of Facebook FB +1.10% likes.
What is a Social Business? A social business places equal value on the needs of its customers, employees, partners and shareholders. This is not all that different from the concept behind one of the first posts I wrote 3 years ago this month. Edelman’s Michael Brito writes that “social business is not about communication. Social business and the changing theory of management. A manager recently voiced his concerns: “Most employees prefer being told what to do. They are willing to accept being treated like children in exchange for reduced stress.
They are also willing to obey authority in exchange for job security.” That is the way we have seen it: managers inspire, motivate and control employees who need to be inspired, motivated and controlled. These dynamics create the system of management and justify its continuation. If we want to meet the challenges of the post-industrial world, this relationship needs to change. The workers changing their role are often seen as a matter of the extent to which the managers are willing to allow it and give up responsibility. The dysfunctional relationship between managers and employees creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and a systemic failure in creative, knowledge-based work. A few researchers have started to dispute the assumption that the present system of management is a fact of life that will always be with us. A new framework for supporting learning and performance in the social workplace. Here is an updated version (V3) of the WSD Framework with more charts and descriptions, and now available as a PDF to download under a Creative Commons Licence.
Social tools are changing not only the way that professionals are working and learning but also the way that organisations are transforming into social businesses. In the new connected workplace, current training, e-learning or blended learning services, which take a top-down, ”command and control” approach to organising and managing “learning” will not be appropriate to support these new ways of working and learning. What will be required is a completely new range of services – which we might call non-training services – that are focused on supporting continuous performance improvement and learning in the workflow as people do their jobs. The Workforce Development Services (WSD) Framework comprises 4 key service areas. Click image for full-size version 1 – Training/Instructional Services 2 – Performance Support Services.
Customers define what Social Means for their Business. 7 Lessons From Social Business Leaders. 3 Lessons We Can Learn From Big Brands In Social Media. This is a guest post by Kristi Bergeron from Kravetz & Company Public Relations. Social Media campaigns and contests can add a lot of excitement to brand pages. If you’ve spent anytime looking around the social web, big brands have been known to go to great lengths to create engagement amongst fans and followers.
No matter the size of your business or brand, some of these ideas have some very useful takeaways we can all learn from. The three brands outlined here will give you a little creative inspiration to bump up engagement on your social media pages. Not all big ideas need to be complicated Recently Orangina, that adorable little Orangina soda bottle everyone loves, underwent a social media re-brand. Chances are, you aren’t pushing a soft drink on social and you don’t necessarily need a mascot for your brand or business. Create content that drives your fans and followers to action Don’t be afraid to highlight your history Like advertising Social Media is dominated by storytelling. How IT Can Reclaim Social Relevance - The BrainYard. Social technologies are spreading through the business in a decentralized way, not via IT leadership. How can organizations and IT leaders make the most of this trend?
If there's anything that's striking about the changes taking place in technology today, it's that many of the most transformative new advances are bypassing the IT department entirely. One only has to look at the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) phenomenon to see this clearly. Most IT departments are planning to enable (if they haven't already) BYOD, a form of user-led computing adoption. It's easier and easier to make the case today that technology, especially on the edges, is increasingly moving out of IT's hands. It hasn't always been thus: Graphical user interfaces, computer networks, the Internet, e-mail, and the first and second generations of mobile devices. The rise of social media has been an outlier in this historical arc of corporate IT adoption. 1 of 2 More Insights. A symptom of siloed #SocBiz strategies? Social-Focused IT Hires On Back Burner - The BrainYard - Companies that have made social a high priority, though, are adding a significant number of jobs, according to InformationWeek IT staffing survey.
Six Ways The iPhone 5 and iOS 6 Amp Up Social Opportunities (click image for larger view and for slideshow) Social networking is hot. IT hiring around social networking is not, according to the InformationWeek 2012 State of IT Staffing Survey. To find out which technologies are driving increases in IT staffing, InformationWeek surveyed 1,391 IT professionals who hire or manage IT personnel. Although companies in general might not be increasing IT staff due to social, the hiring picture changes for companies that have made social a high priority. Matt Ripaldi, senior VP at IT staffing firm Modis, said he is seeing a steady increase in the demand for people who have social networking skills, in a variety of areas. [ Related: Social Opens New IT Career Path In Marketing. ] The fourth bucket is where IT comes in, said Ripaldi.
Cathexis: Enterprise 2.0 Innovate: Beyond Adoption to Social Process Transformation. Many companies and organizations rollout out collaboration and enterprise social networking with an initial burst of early orientation and hoopla. Once the initial excitement wears off, they are left with a “what next?” Dilemma and ask themselves how to get sustained and building engagement in order to get all the benefits of working socially.
Richard Hughes, Director of Social Strategy at Broadvision and Paul Karazuba of QuickLogic reviewed some key considerations and strategies for getting past the “shiny new toy” phase and making enterprise social networking (ESN) a productive element in enterprise workflows. As Hughes said it has to be a place where real work gets done and as it becomes an embedded experience, helps change the nature of work as well. Hughes noted that to address that problem, the processes need to come into the social network so the work takes place and gets hosted within the social network. There are specific benefits of a social business process. The Six Pillars of Social Business.
How To Overcome Social Business Performance Obstacles - The BrainYard. What Enterprise Social Networks Lack: Purpose - Global-cio - What makes a community tick (6 tips to make it work) | By Rick Mans. Can Salesforce replace your corporate intranet? | CHRISTOPHER'S BLOG. Five Reasons Companies Are Going Social At Light Speed.
#GoingSocial.