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The Social Customer…and What Brands Need To Know

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

You think marketer’s lives are rough, try being the customer. So much is being thrown at the customer these days, its hard to keep up.

B2B Customers: You used to have a few vendors that competed for your dollars, the agencies were simply creatives and technology vendors simply did technology. Without all the improvements in technology, manufacturing had many barriers to entry which reduced your choices. You never heard about how vendors were treating your employees (good or bad) and you never cared how they were performing with other peers in related industries. Marketing was marketing and technology was, well, technology and never did the two meet. Decisions were made independently without concern to the ecosystems that are in place today.

B2C Customers: You were able to make purchase decisions simply based on how the product tasted, handled, or felt. You did not worry about their greenhouse effects, the videos their employees were making behind the scenes or how much the same product cost at other stores within a 7 block radius. Your friends may have mentioned cool products but you did not have to worry about your friends seeing every purchase you make (remember that Dixie Chicks album you really want) nor did you have to remember if you had ”like’d” the Brand in one of your networks. You did not care what they were making next because if you did not want it, you would simply just not purchase it. Forget writing letters to your friends to warn them that the “new & improved” product really wasn’t.

Fast forward to today. Customers are more equipped through technology and network science to make purchase decisions than every before. Interestingly enough though, the buying cycle is getting longer, not shorter. Customer’s purchase paths have changed. No longer do they call you to see if something is in stock or what your hours of operation are. No longer do you get a chance to speak to prospects, they simply search online, visit the first few sites that come up, comparison shop through online and physical stores, review product ratings and comments. If prospects can’t relate to the things they find in that process, those potential customer simply go away without you ever knowing they were actual prospects.

While purchase patterns have changed, so have expectations. The expectation is that I, as a customer, can ask a question online to a company and get a response back either from other customer zealots or from the company itself. The other expectations are that you are being a good corporate citizen (because I’ll find out if you are not) and that my vote counts. I want to influence the direction of the next product, not as a shareholder, but as a product user and Lord help if my product breaks down before I think is reasonbly expected.

We know that customers are changing for both B2B and B2C and yes, even for B2B2C. The challenge is that customers have not yet fully transitioned from customer-of-old to customer-of-new so they are still in motion. They don’t know what they want in a Brand yet however the expectation is still there. So how do you handle this? We’ve brought in one of the best thought leaders in this space from one of the most renowned agencies in the forefront of this battle. Please welcome Chris Carfi from Edelman. Chris wrote the customer manifesto and has built his career helping companies managing the ongoing customer transition. The topic and Questions for this week are:

Topic: The Social Customer…and What Brands Need To Know

Q1: How has the social customer changed since 2004?

Q2: How does mobile affect the social customer?

Q3: Where does the “brand” actually meet with the social customer online?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, November 2 at noon ET. Follow #sm84 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live

Tags: Chris Carfi, expectations, jason breed, marc meyer, purchase patterns, social customer, social media
Posted in Branding, corporate | Comments Off

Knowing Your Customer As Well As They Know You Through Social

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

The rise of the customer. That is the motto for most every social media guru holding court in social media meetings everywhere. The customer is now in charge, they control your brand, they can lift up the veil and get behind the covers of your organization like never before. The customer influences everything now based on the power of information and reach that social media provides.

I just have one question though. If customers have all this access to everything all the sudden, why don’t companies counter with more intelligence? Raise the stakes?

Consumers in general have very little time. Consumers in general have limited technical ability and comparatively have tiny budgets. Even with those limited resources, consumers are able to create communications nightmares for companies who are spending even less time, money and resources to address new digital issues. Think about the advantage across the enterprise if companies took the time to learn about their customers. If they actually sent a birthday wish to those who make it available on Facebook. If they new when a person walked in the store that they were having an issue with the last product they purchased from you. If you knew a customer felt a strong positive conviction about your company yet was never compelled to tell anyone about it.

Imagine you did know these things, how could you react (or pro-act in this case)? First, everyone loves a birthday wish, this sentiment goes a long way. Next, if you knew a customer was having an issue with a product, you would be crazy not to greet them with a manager as they walked in and solve whatever issue they have before it exacerbates. Finally, if someone has a great experience and was grateful for your service, provide them with a book of coupons or online codes to give out to their digital networks with 7 day expiration. That satisfied person will create more positive stir than any madison ave agency could do….and for the cost of a couple of online codes that might get used.

Companies need to re-imagine the competitive landscape, adapt and overcome. Make it a priority to know more about your customers than they know about you. Afterall, you have millions or even billions of dollars of resources, access to the latest technologies and armies of people to better utilize. The only reason a customer can out-flank a company digitally is very simple – they have a purpose. Whatever the issue is, they are on a mission. Adversitity becomes the mother of invention and customers sneak up on a sleeping corporate adversary.

So let’s start the process of re-imagining with some how-bouts, what-ifs. what if you put unique url on every mailer that went out that was tied to a person. Everytime that person visits, you learn more about them and are also able to reverse look-up their IP address and create a database of publicly available information (yes, this exists). Or use SMS (text messaging), pro-active bluetooth messaging or QR codes to engage customers walking by your store front. Once you have a mobile number, you can learn LOT’s of information if you are able to handle the data management.

What if you actually had a mobile strategy beyond “Let’s create an app” and used engaging apps to capture information and WAP sites to better convert prospects. Both are driven through mobile, yet used effectively, both offer very different types of interaction and outcome. All of this becomes building blocks for continuously capturing information about consumers at every touchpoint that they are open to providing if you structure it the right way (note: I am not refering to a survey here, old school marketers).

In the 1960′s & 1970′s successful marketers created personas around their products. “If you want to look like this, use our products” and people inferred a lifestyle if they associated with that product. Today, it’s the opposite. Consumers are creating digital lifestyle personas. Their LinkedIn accounts portray what they aspire to be from souped up experiences they may have had (who says they “stocked feminine hygeine products at Walgreens”? No, it reads “I designed product placement for essential needs”). their Facebook accounts portray the lifestyle they want their friends to see, and so on. It is up to companies now to review their customers personas and target those customers that best fit the product. It is up to the companies to become more prepared than their customers. The companies who do this first will have a decade head start over their competitors be more in tune to deliver what their customers need.

This may sound like a lot, so that’s why we asked Tim Hayden to help all of us out by moderating this week. As the Head of Strategy and Partner with Blue Clover, Tim has a long history of innovative marketing and digital leadership. To help us think differently, Tim will run with the following questions:

Topic: Knowing Your Customer As Well As They Know You Through Social

Q1: What “offline” touchpoints do you leverage to drive online engagement (social)?

Q2: When do you provide a mobile app vs a mobile website?

Q3: What can you use socially to “learn” more about your customers?

We invite you to join the conversation on Tuesday 10/19/10 at 12 noon ET. The chat will take place on Twitter. Follow along by using #sm82 or simply goto our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

Tags: customer insights, data, digital marketing, jason breed, marc meyer, Mobile, Tim Hayden
Posted in Branding, corporate, Mobile | Comments Off

Professionalization of the Social Media Industry

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

It’s interesting to look back over the last few years as it relates to social media in the enterprise. Just consider the corporate process of buy in around social. Initially, employees, detractors or zealots were jumping into social on behalf of the company. Kicking and screaming, companies started to dip their own toe in the water by testing and piloting blogs, forums, communities, etc. Recently, I have noticed companies beginning to get serious about social media. One way to tell, look at the positions they are hiring for here and here.

Hiring a few of these positions myself, I am wondering what companies are looking for in candidates. Social is a strange bird as no one company created it and no one technology runs it. Therefore there are no processes, textbooks, online courses, etc that cover all the skills a “social” leader needs to have in order to be effective. In fact, social media has become such a bucket term that anything that smells like an online interaction gets the label. That includes search, CRM, community mgr, web architect, public relations (blogger), recruiting (HR) and others. Companies can hire any of these positions with some proficiency. Add the word “social” in front of it and it sends shivers of consternation through hiring managers. Those managers don’t know how to differentiate a blogging skillset which is more journalistic in nature from a digital strategist from a community manager (think traffic cop). To make sure you are getting the right person for the job, What keywords do you use to search? what questions do you interview with? what skills do you test for?

Companies are tentative now as they have gone after social skills that understood how to set up a blog but did not know how large corporations run in complex environments. They understand how to get small groups of people interested in having online conversations but they don’t understand the pshychology or cultural elements that go into consumer marketing. The other side is to take existing employees and train them to be social. This helps align the needs of the business and the intricacies of getting things done but assumes a ramp up time to come up-to-speed on becoming social.

This approach to professionalizing your social efforts assumes that it is a personnel issue. I’m not exactly sold on that either. Socialmedia has effectively transformed the way we communicate in many ways, it did not invent it. Companies who have never wanted to communicate with partners or customers before, simply don’t have the culture to do it today, whether they have a staffer who can blog or not. So it becomes an organizational design issue not a staffing issue. Companies who are set up in silos or independent operating groups or P&L’s are simply not designed to communicate across department whether you have the latest version of Jive or SharePoint or not. There is something more fundamental to becoming a social business than a couple of trained people or a few new toys.

Another interesting point of view on this topic can be found here: http://healthissocial.com/process-improvement/professional-development-in-the-age-of-social-media/ ( a solid post by Phil Baumann)

So what is the best way to professionalize your company’s approach to social media? How do you take it to the next level? This week’s chat will take this discussion head on! To facilitate the dialogue we have Chris Heuer, a proven innovator who has been able to re-invent himself many times over. Chris is best known recently for co-founding the Social Media Club that has become the connecting point for the professionals in the social media industry. there is no one better to help figure out how to professionalize the social media efforts of businesses. This week’s topic and questions are:

Topic: Professionalization of the Social Media Industry

Q1: How do you determine a professional from a wanna be?

Q2: Does the bucket term “Social” need to be broken into specialties?

Q3: What pieces of social can you learn from books? From experience?

Join us this week 9/28/10 at noon eastern by following #sm79 from your favorite Twitter client or simply participate from our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

Tags: chris heuer, corporate, hiring, jason breed, jobs, marc meyer, professional, social media
Posted in corporate, Human Resources | Comments Off

The Lifespan of a Social Community

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Are social communities getting old all ready? Companies who jumped into the social fray a couple of years ago and built out their social communities are beginning to re-evaluate their benefits. Other companies are looking to these early adopters for signs of value and best practices as they consider building out their own.

So by now, we have all figured out the magic beans for developing and sustaining brand or service based social communities. Right? Product research communities? Unfortunately, those magic beans have yet to sprout. Even within the same industries, companies struggle to replicate the success of their competitors. Yet we know some of the ingredients that are needed.

solid platform
community manager
brand fans to join
some cute marketing to drive traffic
then, like fishing, we sit back and wait while listening all the while.

We rely on the community manager to create new, clever ideas every day for content and conversations to keep the candle lit and if that fails, we can always bribe them to stay (chatchkies!). Seems a bit rudamentary even after 2-3 years of experience, yet we have a hard time trying to come up with that one killer idea that will revive our community and keep it engaged for another few months. That may be one of the problems. There’s not one idea but rather the execution of many smaller ideas together that keep the community going. But it’s certainly hard to create the ideas when you are so vested in the middle of the community.

Another issue may be the old hammer and nail analogy. Most community managers and social media directors come out of the public relations or communications fields so it makes sense that content would be at the top of the list when it comes to brainstorming. I have a bit of a problem with that though. Almost by definition, it’s not sustainable and certainly it’s expensive. So knowing that, let’s come up with new ways to increase the relevance of your community (for both participant and company), make it sustainable and most importantly add value. We have to look beyond content as the strategy and consider what else is out there. Here are some ideas:

Collect names in CRM not just the community. Track users inside and out of your community (yes they have other interests). See where else they go and incorporate those topics into your community.
Research how your users live, not just demographic and geo info, but the cultures they represent.
Incorporate Open Graph (facebook, Google, LinkedIn) tie-ins and recruit new participants from your existing user’s social graph
Use analytics to identify gaps in your community experience.

To build on the idea of sustaining you social community, we wanted to tap a professional resource and there is no one better than Connie Bensen. Connie is a community strategist with Alterian (better know by their social monitoring solution Techrigy) and known throughout the industry as a go-to resource. Connie will lead us in discovering advanced ways to create value from your communities and make them more sustainable. Join us this Tuesday 8/10 at noon EDT for this topic and questions:

Topic: The Lifespan of a Social Community

1. How do you plan resources for the lifespan of a social media engagement?

2. Do the communities you create need a community manager or can they be self-sustaining?

3. What do you do with a community when the budget is exhausted or resources are no longer available?

4. Can a community continue indefinitely and how?

Follow along on Twitter or your favorite Twitter client by following #sm72 or simply visit our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

Tags: community, connie bensen, jason breed, marc meyer, networks, social, sustainable, value
Posted in Content, corporate | Comments Off

Creating a Social Media Strategy? Stop Wasting Your Time!

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

I enjoy hearing about companies having success with social media and I am certainly intrigued in understanding how they got there. After researching dozens of case studies (as many as I have been able to get my hands on) one theme rings through. Most of these companies have had success with little more than a tool, a concept and someone willing to figure it out through trial and error. Noble for sure, not usually very sustainable or repeatable though.

Then you hear about all the companies developing their social media strategies. This becomes the plan behind a tool, a concept and someone willing to figure it out through trial and error. Noble for sure, yet not very successful usually. Why is this? For one, the conversation usually starts with “We need a blog!”. The boss needs to be able to cover their trail, so they require a strategy to go along with it. The team creates a strategy full of love and happiness, the boss has no clue what it means and three (3) days later…violla! The blog is in place.

The point of this (yes there is a point after all), is that no where in here did anyone tie a social strategy into a business objective. You don’t hear much around “we created x number of new sales or x reduction in costs because of our social media strategy”.

Having a social policy or code of conduct for how employees should represent the company (both internally and externally) is needed. Having some thought around governance and a crisis plan is certainly good measure. However developing a social strategy that does not tie back to meeting some corporate objective is simply a waste of time. Instead, create a business strategy that includes social media to help solve a problem faster, better, cheaper (assuming that it will).

In the end, it really doesn’t matter what you want to call your efforts. Call it a social media strategy, call it a business strategy or call it a Bazinga! Whatever you call it, it has to tie back to some real value to the business. To ensure that we do tie it back to the business, our host this week is B.L. Ochman. B.L. is a 2nd time moderator for us (#sm45) and is recognized for her contributions to this industry. For the chat she will cover the following topic and questions:

Topic: Creating a Social Media Strategy? Stop Wasting Your Time!

Q1: Should you create separate social media strategies or business strategies?

Q2: How do you budget for social?

Q3: Do you train staff for social or hire for it?

The chat will take place Tuesday 8/3/2010 at 12 noon eastern. Follow along by monitoring #sm71 from your favorite Twitter client or simply goto our LIVE page (www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live). The chat will begin at noon as B.L. tweets the first question and the conversation will start. Then at 12:20, the next question is asked and 12:40 the final question. The conversation is fast-paced and full of helpful insights from the people who are blazing the trails in this industry.

Tags: B.L. Ochman, jason breed, marc meyer, purpose, social media, strategy, tools
Posted in corporate, ROI in Social Media, social media | Comments Off

Buiding our own Frankenstein: Is engaging with customers via social media required, or optional?

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Social media is the greatest boon for business since, well, the cash register right? I mean just log onto twitter and grab some Facebook love and sit back, watch the customers start lining up and make sure your cash register is full of change. It’s that easy.

Listen to a few “experts” and they make it sound that easy. Some agencies focus on creating Facebook pages, widgets and applications and sell it to everyone who will buy it. Just change the colors and voila!

The fact is that social media is not the savior for everyone. Social media is not the silver bullet, the people behind it are. Some companies will be poised to take advantage of new forms of engagement and new ways of interacting with customers, suppliers and employees. Then again, some won’t.

Just having a tool will not make you successful, the purpose, strategy and planning you do first might. The way you integrate it into the entire campaign or initiative might. Having a clean user experience may make poor tools perform better. Even as simple as configuring the tools to support the initiative and not using the tool to define it. Understanding the science of networks, the phsychology of why people participate and making that work for you and not against you is another way to make your social initiative stand out. Once again, it’s not the tools, it’s the heft of the planning and purpose behind them.

Some companies have figured out how to make television work and some are still trying to figure it out after 60+ years. For some companies, radio works great and is less expensive than alternatives. Your business cannot be forced to go social, it has to be ready for it.

So how do you know if your company is ready to go social and what do you use first? This week’s host of the 70th edition of #socialmedia chat will help us explore just that. Jay Baer has been weeding out the social media overgrowth for a long time and has ben helping companies figure out their right marketing mix for more than a decade. This week’s topic is:

Topic: Buiding our own Frankenstein: Is engaging with customers via social media required, or optional?

Q1: What are the circumstances when a company should NOT engage with customers via social media?

Q2: What are the organizational drawbacks to engaging with customers in this way?

Q3: How should companies modify their interactions, based on individual customers’ influence (if at all)?

Join in the discussion Tuesday 7/27 at noon eastern by following #sm70 from any twitter client or simply goto our live page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

Tags: advertising, engagement, jason breed, jay baer, marc meyer, purpose, silver bullet, social media
Posted in corporate, social media | 3 Comments »

Weaving Social Throughout Your Organization

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Companies are challenged to grow in uncertain times and to do more with fewer resources. There is a continuous need to explore new systems and methodologies to help your employees work smarter internally and engage external resources who will advocate more often with less incentive. As a result, organizations are turning to the promise of new web based technologies. As our moderator, Adam Cohen puts it:

“Social media is changing the game, providing new touchpoints, technologies and techniques for businesses to build, maintain and encourage relationships with customers. But social media tactics and tools alone will be limited in their business impact. When combining social media with other interactive marketing practices, the results can magnify both. In other words, social media integrated with other forms of marketing is greater than the sum of the parts.”

So what are the parts and how does the sum equal more than the parts themselves?

Social media should not stand alone and “being social” does not change your objectives. Being social merely changes your approach to achieve those goals whether internal or external focused. When used as part of your digital ecosystem, the results can be significantly more valuable. Consider the following areas:

CRM + Social – although we discuss it quite a bit, the market is still not at a point general adoption. Social CRM provides an opportunity to know more about your customer’s frame of mind at the time and better understand life events that may affect purchase decisions.
Search Engine Optimization – most companies have paid and organic search strategies. If your site does not optimize for what customers are asking for then your your competitors will enjoy more organic result while you will end up paying dearly for your web search traffic. As social typically creates a wealth of fresh content (of which gets spidered by the engines quickly), you can focus the topics of your content to better effect organic results that your prospects are using at the time.
Content Management – Ask this wealth of content is developed, you are creating a corporate asset. If you are a global company or run across an enterprise, there is a lot of value to making those assets reusable across campaigns, countries, departments, etc.
Mobile - find companies where they are, when they are there and in the way they want to be found.
e-Commerce – Imagine going to Best Buy site, searching for TVs and your friends from Facebook populate the TV screens. You would be more apt to take notice and spend time.
Website-optimization – Imagine once again that the first set of comments on that TV are that of your friends who have purchased that same TV.

This does not even mention customer service, marketing, advertising and running campaigns. To cover this topic in more depth is Adam Cohen. Adam is a partner at digital agency Rosetta. He will tackle one of the bigger issues that we have had on this chat and is more than capable of doing so. The topic and questions this week will be:

Topic: Weaving Social Throughout Your Digital Marketing

Q1) How should marketers approach weaving social media tactics into their marketing arsenal?
Q2) Why does blending social media improve the effectiveness of other tactics?
Q3) Which tactics have the most impact when combined with social media? (Think both digital and traditional)

Be sure to follow the conversation this Tuesday 7/20 at noon EST by tracking the #SM69 tag on Twitter or visit our live page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com.

Tags: Adam Cohen, CMS, eCommerce, integrated marketing, jason breed, marc meyer, SEO, Social CRM
Posted in corporate, Mobile, Public Relations, SEO, social media, SocialCRM | 4 Comments »

Quick & Legal: How to Make Social Media Less Scary for the Legal Dept

Monday, May 24th, 2010

There’s a saying in software development that customers want to get their projects done:

Cheap, Fast and Good.

The typical IT joke is that you can have 2 but not all 3. I have a feeling that’s where the legal department’s position is with the other departments who are deploying social and have a need to engage with their customers. Where the CEO ideally wants the response to happen Quickly & Legally. The joke here is that Legal departments say “Quick” OR ”Legal” but not both. There have been a couple of big brands on the wrong end of that joke lately and therein lies the importance of incorporating the legal department as a founding partner of your social efforts in the beginning rather than trying to “bolt” them on afterwards.

To be fair, there are a lot of reasons that the Legal department should be a significant partner in your efforts. This deck from Daliah Saper does a solid job identifying all the reasons that mitigating risk in social is important. Here are just a few:

Privacy Laws – Like HIPPA in medical
Negligence – in assuming a duty and not following through on it
Trademark – confusing a consumer about your Brand and it’s use
Copyright – using/sharing something that’s not yours
Discrimination – especially when used in the hiring process & checking up on current employees

The marketing reality though is that Brands simply don’t control their messaging the same way in which they used to. Responses to outcries from promoters and detractors alike that are measured in days or worse yet weeks is simply unacceptable today. Speed is of the essence and customers just want to hear the truth. That puts legal departments, who are in place today to mitigate risk, in a precarious position. Where their primary job is reviewing the actions of employees it typically takes longer to get tasks completed. Much of the time now executives who take the time to run through legal are actually opening themselves and their companies up to increased risk of being perceived as non-responsive and contrived (or not authentic). The damage from being too slow can sometimes be more than acting quickly and genuinely.

What are companies to do? Our moderator this week, Lucretia Pruitt, has been working on answering this question as well. A veteran of the digital space, she has had her share of run-ins with the legal debate and has agreed to help all of us work through this. Following in our tradition of 3 questions spaced 20 mins apart, Lucretia will lead the chat starting at noon eastern with the following questions:

Topic: Quick & Legal: How to Make Social Media Less Scary for the Legal Dept

Q1: How can big companies advocate for less regulation to reflect realities of social media engagement?

Q2: Should you train legal in SM and what does it look like?

Q3: How do you create SM policies/strategies that legal will accept?

We invite you to join in the conversation to share or learn or both! Follow along by using #sm61 on your favorite Twitter client or simply follow along on our LIVE page.

Tags: jason breed, law, legal, Lucretia Pruitt, marc meyer, mitigate risk, partnering, Privacy, quick, social media
Posted in corporate, Privacy, social media | 1 Comment »

Culture Shift: Is Your Company Ready To Go Social?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

"not everyone should karaoke either"

Social media is on the minds of every marketer in corporate america today. Whether good or bad, they are certainly at least thinking about it. In fact, according to a new study just released by Social Media Examiner, 91% of marketers are using social media in some capacity. After social media makes it’s way through the marketing department, then what? What happens to the rest of the company?

From that same research marketers are reporting exposure, leads, better customer service, reduced costs and more as benefits of being engaged. The only problem is that exposure is the only benefit that stays in marketing. The other listed benefits affect many departments across the organization. So what’s happening with that adoption? While marketers were forced by their consumers into social engagement, other departments may not be feeling the pressure…yet.

How do you socially infuse your company? It’s the same discussion that has been around for a couple of years at least, however it feels a bit more real right now. There has to be more to it than getting your company’s name on twitter or setting up the “Facebook page” as a catch all. There has to be more than an executive decree to become “social” and there has to be something more substantive than 3 front-line employees in a dark corner somewhere taking some social initiative. Maybe it’s all three or a smaller combination of them. John Bell from Ogilvy PR spoke to Lucas Watson from P&G recently and had some solid insight. Lucas, Global Team Leader for Digital Business Strategy at P&G, had three key points when he was asked how he gets his teams to embrace social for the first time:

1. Get them out of the office. Take them somewhere provocative like to a startup’s office or to the Googleplex or somewhere where they can feel and see the excitement of doing things differently. Don’t try and convince them in a conference room at P&G behind a Powerpoint slide

2. Get a digital champion on the brand. Every team needs an enthusiast who will push and keep challenging the usual way. We constantly shift between making digital everyone’s job and embedding it via true experts. Truth is both are necessary and the balance will change over time as more people make digital a part fo their jobs.

3. Show them the ROI to inform marketing modeling. P&G is know for their marketing modeling. This simply confirms what each of us not inside the company would guess and that is that you have to have a ‘pretty good’ story of both the performance and ROI to convince hard core marketers like those at an FMCG (fast moving consumer goods).

I personally agree with these points with a minor exception on point two. Instead of making it “everyone’s job” or leaning on the expert (which exonerates everyone else) make it a department requirement and let each department come up with their own way to handle it. Depending on the department, they will self-organize, take turns, hire someone, etc. Social cannot be forced on people just like not everyone should have to Karaoke at the bar just because it’s there. Some people enjoy it and some are genuinely good at it. It should be up to the department lead to figure out how best to manage it within their own environments.

These three points are a good start, but what else can companies to encourage social innovation within their companies? Ask any salesperson and they will tell you that compensation dictates behavior, I just don’t think that applies to social though (and I’m a sales dude). Socially infusing your company will take initiative from four equal directions IMHO:

bottom up
top down
outside in
inside out

To help us put some more meat on that bone, we have asked social magnate Trey Pennington to moderate this week’s chat. Trey comes with an impressive background of teaching, implementing and consulting for some great brands and focuses much of his time on using technology to make meaningful relationships with real people. For companies, it requires a new mindset—a huge cultural shift. It’s filled with huge opportunities. These opportunities are available to everyone but not everyone is ready. Spend some time with us on Tuesday 4/20 at noon EST to make sure you build your checklist of things you can do to get your company ready to go social. The questions will be asked every 20 minutes starting at 12 noon then hold on to your seats as this topic will certainly be fast paced:

Title: Culture Shift: Is your company ready to go Social?
Q1: Employees or Management: Who drives the social culture of a company?
Q2: What comes first, executive investment or employee initiative?
Q3: Create a checklist that companies can use to become more social.

To participate, follow along on Twitter or you favorite Twitter client (www.tweetchat.com is mine) using #sm56 or simply goto our live page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

Tags: Culture, digital, infuse, jason breed, marc meyer, mindset, social, traditional companies, trey pennington
Posted in corporate | 1 Comment »

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