The 3 Building Blocks of Social Business Evolution
Posted on 12. Jul, 2011 by Michael Brito in Blog, corporate culture, guest post, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, Social Business Design, Social Media Book, Social Media Staffing and Operations, social media strategy
Guest post by Michael Brito, Vice President at Edelman Digital. He writes the Britopian blog, and wrote the new social business book, Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization
Building a business is easy. Start with an idea. Find a wicked developer who is willing to work 80 hours a week for small paycheck and equity. Spend some time on Sand Hill Road. Hire smart people and then watch your bank account grow.
Building a social business is not so easy. It requires people to actually communicate — processes and governance models that help shape employee behavior online — and technology to facilitate collaboration across the organization.
3 Building Blocks for Social Business Evolution
A social business is built upon three pillars – people, process and technology. All three need to work independent of each other, yet need to be completely integrated into the DNA of organizational culture.
1.Change Management is the foundation of a Social Business
The foundation of a fully collaborative social business, whether for a small or large firm is the company’s most valuable asset, its people. It addresses the need to drive organizational change in an effort to shift employee behavior, communicate more effectively across job functions and geographies and tear down organizational silos.
All the technology, collaboration software and community applications deployed behind the firewall will not be effective unless there is a fundamental shift in the way employees think, interact with one another and communicate. These change management initiatives have to be driven by organizational leadership and practiced at every level in the organization from senior leadership all the way down to a customer support agent. Otherwise, change will not occur. This means that executives must not only talk about changing the organization but exemplify the behaviors that really do facilitate and practice change.
The end result is an increase in trust among all employees at every level; trust of employees and empowering them to engage externally; an increase in budget investments to social business initiatives, collaboration and more effective social organization models.
2. Creating Processes that Create Organizational Consistency
Process cuts right through the entire fabric of the organization. It ensures that every job function in every business unit and within every geography is consistent when performing certain tasks. For example, when a new employee joins a company and wants to start blogging or Tweeting on behalf of the company, a process should be in place that governs training, certification and social media policies.
Another example is when marketing departments in other countries want to create a Facebook fan page specifically for their geography. A process should be in place that will manage the creation of new social media destination; and escalate these requests to governing body (i.e. Social Media Center of Excellence) to avoid duplicate pages and inconsistent messages.
Processes should help facilitate the chaos that exists from behind the firewall – i.e. employees sharing sensitive material externally, social media ownership, crisis management and product feedback workflows; and ensuring there is one measurement philosophy that the entire organization is bought into and using for reporting. Additionally, training initiatives, social media policies and guidelines, moderation policies, global expansion must be documented, approved and then rolled up into a co-created governance model. This ensures that there is message consistency globally, a legal documentation that protects the organization, empowers employees and ensures that everyone is on the same page.
3. Deploying Technology that Facilitates Collaboration
A social business needs technology in order to facilitate change and collaboration. Organizations need to be smart and think long term before investing in technology applications that facilitate internal collaboration (Jive, Lithium, Yammer), social listening (Radian6, Meltwater), measurement (Rowfeeder, Argyle), social relationship management (Sprinklr, Syncapse Platform) and social CRM (Nimble, JitterJam, Pivotal).
Companies need to first understand what it is they are trying to achieve before thinking about which technology vendor to deploy. Are they trying to streamline communication between business units or geographies? Are they looking to roll out a collaboration application that will eventually replace their intranet? Or, are they planning to use social CRM and weave it into their sales and marketing initiatives? Whatever the case, it’s important to understand the culture of the organization and its leadership. Technology will not change an organization’s culture. However, having a strong understanding of it will have a huge impact on the technical requirements, choice of technology and how to implement and configure it.
The challenge with technology is that there are so many software vendors in the space to choose from. Organizations need to think strategically before making significant investments into technology; and consider scale, integration, support and maintenance costs, and the current suite of applications that are already deployed within the enterprise.
The foundation for social business transformation is culture and leadership. All the technology in the world deployed in the enterprise; and all the process/compliance documents created are useless if organizational behaviors aren’t changed. Change starts from the top and business leaders are the ones responsible for facilitating this change.
Speak No Evil – Why Trust Isn’t a 4 Letter Word in Social Media
Posted on 20. May, 2011 by Jay Baer in Amber Naslund, Blog, decentralized social media, rashard mendenhall, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Business Design, social crm, social media operations, Social Media Staffing and Operations, social media trust, The Now Revolution
Now is the summer of our discontent. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For social media, one hand giveth (instant spread of the Bin Laden news) while the other hand taketh away (seemingly daily stories about a company or person doing it “wrong”).
The most egregious occurrence of late was Rashard Mendenhall (running back for the Steelers, for readers who may not be sports fans) firing off a few tweets that were far outside the boundaries of mainstream American thought with regard to 911, Bin Laden, justice, and so forth. The Steelers disavowed his statements, and Mendenhall eventually apologized.
The belief in decentralized social media and every employee being in marketing is taking root in America. The more companies I talk to, the more I recognize that once they have the official company social outposts humming, organizations want to socialize other parts of the enterprise. This is gratifying, as this is the core premise Amber Naslund and I put forth in The NOW Revolution – that social media is about people not logos, and it’s everyone’s job to represent the company on the social Web.
Trust Is Not a Four Letter Word
But there’s a huge obstacle preventing many of these companies from executing on this plan. In short, they don’t trust non-marketers to represent the brand appropriately. The people who oversee social media in companies are afraid that other employees will pull a Rashard Mendenhall and do more harm than good, leaving the “professional marketers” to rush in like a bucket brigade to douse the flames and pick through the smoldering ashes of the brand.
I understand the concern, I really do. But, I have two problems with it as an excuse.
First, it contains a substantial amount of unspoken conceit to presume that marketers are inherently better at social media than non-marketers. Social media success is more about being social than it is doing social, and while knowledge of the tools and tactics are helpful, common sense and good judgement is not the sole property of a department, educational or vocational background, or any other circumstance.
I’ve been in meetings and heard these exact words spoken, “It would be great if we had a lot more people active on Twitter, but we’re scared to death to encourage sales reps to set up accounts.” Seriously? These are the same people that communicate for a living, persuading people to part with hard-earned cash to purchase whatever magic elixir you purport to provide. They build rapport and overcome objections for a living, and given that they often do it in a commission-driven environment, they have more at stake in their ability to do so than most marketers ever will.
Second, nobody is disproportionately bad at social media, it’s just that social media missteps are public. Let me give you a challenge. I’d like you to work with your IT department so that you can read all of the emails sent by your employees to non-employees. Not forever, one day should suffice. I guarantee you will FREAK OUT. Your employees are saying all kinds of crazy stuff via email right now as you’re reading this. Insensitive. Poor grammar. Too salesy. Not salesy enough. It’s all there for you to obsess over. But you don’t because it’s not easy or culturally appropriate to read all those emails. Or to listen in on phone calls, for that matter.
You don’t think Rashard Mendenhall has been sending wacky emails for years, that if published in a newspaper wouldn’t send alarm bells ringing at Steelers headquarters? Wake up and smell the keyboard.
At least on Twitter you only have 140 characters to give people the impression that you’re stupid. In an email you have limitless space to confirm the notion.
As Amber so succinctly and eloquently says, if your employees aren’t “good” at social media, you don’t have a social media problem, you having a hiring problem.
So when you’re ready to expand your social media program beyond @companyname and get everyone on board, set aside your biases, engage in rigorous training with all participants, and recognize that social greatness can come from anywhere.
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