MAKING SOCIAL MEDIA WORKINSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ENTERPRISE

(CC) http://www.flickr.com/photos/whsimages/998243013/

1Although, quite thankfully, work is not like the way it’s portrayed for most of us in this room, it still feels a lot like this for many people. So to do external facing processes, such as recruitment and “brand activations” through marketing, advertising and PR. This is because most large businesses have been built on foundations that are largely hierarchical and exclusionary: we tell you what your role is, your role will define what you can and cannot do, we’ll speak as you listen. Social media can bring people stakeholders of all types, internal and external, closer to business critical processes - empowering them in having a say in what they define as giving meaning to their lives, whether they are staff or customers, in ways that contribute measurable progress towards meeting strategic business objectives. To achieve such lofty objectives, however, social media activities must be supported by participatory frameworks that are strategically aligned.

STAKEHOLDER ECOSYSTEM COMPLEXITY

Your Business

2We all instinctively know this. Brands exist with in complex, multi-stakeholder environments, where just about every type of stakeholder comes with both a risk and an opportunity.

Invest in the right opportunities and you’ll see a return on that investment. Focus on the right stakeholders, and they’ll do the job of engaging stakeholders in other areas of the eco-system.

ONE STAKEHOLDER, MANY TOUCH POINTS…

Derived from: (CC) http://www.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/3508041510/

3Staff, consumers, competitors, regulators, recruits...

Most businesses still insist upon assigning different business functions to engaging with them. But this isn’t the way most stakeholders view your brand - it’s all part of a unified experience for them, with organisational complexities merely generating confusion, not to mention enhancing a wide range of risks, from repetitive investment in content, platforms and resources to reputational damage caused by lack of unified action or even inaction as things fall through the cracks between business functions.

MARKETING PUBLIC RELATIONS SALES RECRUITMENT CUSTOMER CARE

SILOS INHIBIT ACTION…

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“To stand out in a commoditized market, companies must understand what customers truly value. The only way to do that is to break down the traditional, often entrenched, silos and unite resources to focus directly on customer needs."

~Ranjay Gulati, Harvard Business Review

4Social media is particularly adept at making a mockery of boundaries:

* of geography and time* between publishers and an audience’s ability to publish their own response* between distinct business functions* between consumers and the businesses they choose to patronise

And the one I think that’s most exciting...

* social media can help break down the boundaries between those who know the answer or have power simply because they have been deemed to, and those who are able to tap the power of the network to find out better answers and to get listened to

http://edelmandigital.com/2010/04/21/social-business-planning-aligning-internal-with-external/

“A new organizational structure is required to accommodate and benefit from the culture of sharing that social media has fueled over the last four years. The information flow we all experience daily can no longer be organized into neat org-chart silos."

~Charlene Li, Author of Open Leadership

PERFORATING THE BOUNDARIES

5So the fascinating shift we’re seeing a lot of our clients make - and social media helps enable this shift - is from being closed, towards more collaborative... mostly because they’re starting to listen more, and to pay more attention to those voices... and we’d like to keep that trajectory moving towards even greater openness.

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Own Search

Social

Aggregatio

nEmbassies

SEO&

SEM

SeamlessVisibility

CONNECTED SPHERES OF DIGITAL

6Our experience of building digital propositions for brands large and small, has helped us to understand that in order to create Seemless Visibility online, brands must participate across ALL three spheres of activity - Owned, Social and Search.

Just as the three spheres overlap, so to can and should many of the social media initiatives that play out in them.

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Content Connections

Collaboration

Online W

orkin

g

Groups

Participation

Sharing Best Practice

Social Business Results

CONNECTED SPHERES... INTERNALLY

Draft!

7The same is true within the organisation - where content can drive greater awareness, leading to participation and collaboration at a greater depth and breadth than ever before. This collaboration, in turn, can foster new connections, and generate new opportunities for the sharing of best practice, experience and insights.

PULLING IT TOGETHER

(cc) http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4424552903/

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AN ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO (1/3)

9A new product is launched. The advertising, marketing, PR, retail staff, and after-sales departments all have a role to play. But they’re not used to working together when it comes to social media. Despite the social media team knowing that there are problems with the product as message boards, blogs, twitter and facebook are all inundated with feedback from irate customers, no one thinks to pull the plug on the next day’s big retail push, or the advertising blitz - they probably don’t know who to contact in those departments anyway... The problems become increasingly visible, leading to reputational damage, a potential share price dive when markets reopen and a demoralised workforce left wondering, “what on earth went wrong?!”.

the gulf of organisational complexity

AN ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO (2/3)

10The problem isn’t that people don’t know how to do their jobs, it’s that they’re separated by a gulf of organisational complexity.

the bridge of social business

AN ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO (1/3)

11It could have played out very differently. Had the customer care people had an internal platform to help them find the people, in another department in another building, who could supply a resolution, they could have shared, via social media, this resolution to customers. Those customers might have shared it with their friends. Staff in other departments could have been informed - from people in retail outlets to people who pack boxes but have friends who might have bought the product - and provided with shareable content to inform their own networks via social media. Rather than it taking from the Friday morning launch to mid-day to deal with the issue, with social media - internally and externally - the brand could have sorted this out in a couple of hours.

It’s not just product launches or crisis scenarios. The same “bridge” can be used to target high value recruits or clients through people they know, or people similar to them. It can be used to solve real challenges faced by businesses. To innovate. Etc.

(cc) http://www.flickr.com/photos/45699481@N04/4664596482/

12Successful social media is about joining up the dots, and perforating the barriers, as part of a stragtegy to bring people, both inside and outside the business, closer to business critical processes and, of course, each other, in ways which help them find shared meaning.