Social Business - Where do we start?

Where to start

For many organisations we talk to the question of how to use social technologies to benefit their business beyond the use of marketing has finally arrived at the board room table. Many have made taken their first steps in using social tools and started to listen, learn and integrate their marketing. The broader issues of where and who is responsible for the social business plan brings into focus the many different areas of the business impacted by the use of social business tools.

Different people will have different views on where to start. Some may argue that the focus needs to be on an integrating strategy while others may work on a priority basis and use pilot projects to prove the business case. There is of course the complexity of knitting social into the often siloed activities of an organisational structure. So where and how can organisations start to tackle some of these problems?

Looking at the Business of Being Social

There is both the opportunity to internally and externally harness the social capabilities to help organizations solve business problems. But it is context of how culture and technology need to be integrated that we understand the implications on strategy and how important it is to embrace change management.

Initially organisations need to understand their own capabilities and audit there current position:

• understand who in their business is currently using social media in relation to the business e.g. active in Linkedin forums...


• understand employee activities on social media - this is often useful and helpful to determine who could be recruited to help on projects


• benchmark you brands/products and services on social networks


• benchmark your competitors

In much the same way as you would put together your information sets to build a business plan and strategy you need to understand your current position for developing a social business capability.

Set clear goals and measures e.g.

• % increase in coverage of PR per £XX spend


• Sales could be a % Increase in Sales Leads


• Customer Service could be % reduction in response times or % reduction in number of customer service queries

Moving Quickly

We often see that many organisations end up with analysis paralysis. As we talked about in our last blog prioritizing how you intend to use social business is critical.

In today's fast paced world it is about being agile:

• Flexible and responsive resources (internal and through partner network)


• Rapidly assimilating changes in your business environment


• Focusing on information that can quickly be acted upon


• Harnessing influencers for change (internal and external)

The changes in technology and business are not incremental they are a major shift to a new form of technology and operations orientation. It is how the organisation responds to a new internal employee engagement model and also respond to a social customer across multiple channels. As consumer adoption of new technologies and behaviours change, the challenge is for organisations to reconfigure resources and capabilities to meet those changes.

 

Key Take Outs

• Benchmark your business and capabilities


• Research and benchmark your competitors


• Understand your customers/listen to where they are/what is being said/channels


• Research your network and find out who are influencers and potential social champions


• Aim to develop a centre of excellence for social business that is cross divisional/departmental


• Recognize that mistakes are going to be made - that is why we call it learning


• Remember to be adaptive/respond top changes


• Build pilots that can be scaled quickly