The Problem with the “6 Stages of Social Business Transformation”

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I was excited to dig into the results of the recent study of 700 executive and social strategists on social strategy development by Altimeter Group’s Brian Solis and Charlene Li.

After six years of having the word “social” in my job title, I wasn’t surprised to see that, of those surveyed, “28% felt that they had a holistic approach to social media,” or that “a mere 12% were confident they had a plan that looked beyond the next year,” or that “only one half of companies surveyed said that top executives were “informed, engaged and aligned with their companies’ social strategy.” Social has been a slow burn on the uptake – for businesses, not for users.

Solis and Li go on to pretty much nail the ideal development process for a social business with their “6 Stages of Social Business Transformation.” I agree with the definition of every stage; although, unfortunately, it’s rare to see them actually develop in this order. For example, Stage 1: Planning – “Listen to Learn,” almost never happens first. Social tends to start with marketing tactics or product integrations and expand from there vs. starting with a real strategy. Regardless, I do think the stages represent the ideal roadmap to social business success.

The biggest problem I found isn’t actually with the stages themselves, it’s in the fact that too many companies are all too happy to skip right over the most important step, Stage 3: Engagement – “Dialog Deepens Relationships.” This stage is described as:

When organizations move into this stage, they make a commitment where social media is no longer a “nice to “have” but instead, is seen as a critical element in relationship building. Key tenets of this stage include participating in conversations to build communities; using engagement and influence to speed path to purchase efficiently; providing support through direct engagement, as well as between people; establishing a risk management and training discipline to shift mindsets; and fostering employee engagement through enterprise social networks.

Please, notice the sentence: participating in conversations to build communities.I would go, as far as to say, this is the single most important value of social media. And as someone who has been in hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations about social, to know – this is where things really go off the rails.

Not only do many companies skip deepening the dialogue with their customers, the issue cuts further than that. The truth is, once you get to this step, you come to find out, many companies really, truly don’t care about their customers at all.

It is hard for me (and most consumers) to understand this mentality, but I run into it more than one might hope. I once had a Sr. Executive at a company tell me, "I don't care about our thousands of current customers! I care about the millions we don't have!" As I picked my jaw up off the floor, my brain processed the gravity of this statement. How did he expect to have a good product if he didn't value his current users and therefore their feedback? How was he going to retain his current users and get any word of mouth if he didn't care enough to invest in those relationships? How was he going to attract new users if the current ones spread word of not being taken care of in a timely, courteous manner? What world does he in that the real users are useless but the potential users would be valuable?

As a consumer advocate, I was astonished. As an employee, I knew I better start thinking about a new job. I might have been early in my career, but even then, I knew this business would fail. And it did. Unfortunately, since then, I have run into this type of thinking at some level at almost every organization.

To be clear, not only should a business care about its consumers, it should LOVE them. It should invest in them. One of my favorite marketing thought leaders is Joseph Jaffe whose book, Flip the Funnel, focuses on this subject. Jaffe’s book details how off the mark most marketers are -- spending the majority of their money attempting to acquire brand new, unqualified customers instead of investing in creating evangelists out of the ones they do have. Show me a company that focuses on their current consumers/readers/fans, and I'll show you a company with a perfect foundation for a social business.

This isn't rocket science and so I'm not sure why it escapes well-educated and experienced executives but here it is:

Have a great product/service that solves a need. Take care of the people who like to use your product. Listen to the feedback from these people -- every day. Engage back with them in real, authentic dialogue -- every day. Make your product and service better based on their feedback. Rinse and repeat.

Once consumers are a priority, then social can deliver word-of-mouth on steroids. But companies that choose to skip this step and go straight to Stage 4: Formalized – “Organize for Scale,” are setting themselves up for disaster. This is when you hear of companies having an issue and then lashing out at users in a panic or covering mistakes up with fake accounts.

Social Business is the future of business, and no companies can get through these 6 Stages if they don’t begin with caring about their customers. This is what people mean when they reference the democratization of the web. People's voices matter. The smartest businesses are figuring out how to harness this power by listening, engaging and giving the people what they ask for, in other words -- building a social business.

What do you think is the best example of a company embracing deep engagement.

By Gretchen Fox, Social Architect at grtchnfx

 

Posted on March 29, 2013 .

My Top 10 Lessons From The Last 15 Years

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Although, I have had some great mentors, most of my best life lessons have come from trial-and-error. I have a very high tolerance for both risk and failure, and because of this, I have generated a high volume of experiences from which to learn. Failure is always the best teacher.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity (and honor) to share these lessons as a  guest speaker for Clint Schaff's USC Annenberg Program on Online Communities class in Santa Monica. I really enjoy teaching, especially teaching graduate students who are quick to grab concepts and put them into action.

Petr Pronsati is an excellent example of this. I think he did an excellent job honing in on the main points from my experimental, non-linear discussion in his "What I Learned"  post. You can find those points re-blogged below with some additional background/commentary (in italics) below.

(1) “Being early is the same as being wrong” – If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s important to figure out if the market is ready for your idea and if this is the time and place for your idea to exist.

GF: This is actually an old saying in startup culture and one a previous boss, Andria Tay, reminded me of recently. We had this experience first hand when we launched a Social TV product at CES in 2007. It is great to see that Social TV is all the rage -- in 2013 -- we knew it would be... We were just too early for the market. Lesson learned. And now, I repeat this lesson to every entrepreneur who will listen.

(2) Testing, Testing, Testing – Make an assumption, try it, test it, get all the data and figure out what you learned. Then, test against that. So, change one element and repeat the process. Compare. Repeat. Learn.

GF: We all learned the Scientific Method in grade school. This is the backbone of my process and one of the ways in which I have been able to create structure in the unstructured world of social.  If you use this method as a business process, you will find the gold -- whether figuring out what will make your consumers Retweet your messages or which Facebook ads drive the most amount of sales.

(3) “Go for it” – If you are working with new or emerging technology you have to be willing to take risks. It may be a failure, but you’ll live through it to try again.

GF: I doubt this comes as a surprise to you if you are reading my blog. Risk taking is my ethos. I am willing to completely bomb publicly to try to figure something out. Somebody always has to go first and I would rather recover from failure than suffer from fear. Always.

Erik’s brain is a creative cross-pollinator.

Gretchen is all about power statements. 

GF: I experimented with the teaching dynamics a bit to co-create the learning experience with the students in this class. I wanted our experience to be more social and demonstrate the difference between a crowd and a community. We all learned about the students' strengths and goals in order to be able to support one another. We discovered, one student, Erik, has a common strength with me -- I call it pattern recognition for business application. He called it creative cross-pollination. I loved that term! And I shared that I love powerful combinations of words. You'll see that a lot in my writing. Words have the power to transform. Just take a quick glance through the book, The Power of Now, to see.

(4) “The people that you know are going to be the most important people in your careers” – Most jobs are given to people by people they know. Form a network and help each other.

GF: This is probably the biggest thing for young people to understand -- don't bother submitting your resume a hundred times to job sites. People give jobs to people they know. Build your network. Let people know what you're looking for and help them find work, too. This approach will serve you better.

(5) “Producing as much as possible is key to manifesting the life that you want” – Blogging about the things you’re interested in doing not only keep you informed, it will give you a body of work that can set you apart from everyone else.

GF: This is one of the key differentiators I see between people who are successful and those that are not. Producing is about acting. It's about taking the reigns. Most people do a lot of thinking and wishing about what they want and don't actually take steps to make it happen.

Blogging is a great way to take action, and so are other forms of social media. Through these efforts, you can cultivate your personal brand (see number 7) and create community around shared interests, specifically work interests.

(6) “Keep your overhead down” – Tumblr sites are easy to update. Don’t make it too overwhelming to update. Keep it lean. Technology has a lot of simple solutions.

GF: I see this issue frequently. You decide you want to start blogging so you find the "best" solution out there. Often what is the best solution for a pro is not the same as what is best for a beginner. Start with something manageable and then upgrade when you have outgrown the platform. Better that than to drown in a host of features and options only to find yourself unable to even get started. 

(7) “Everyone has a personal brand” – You can use social media to figure out how you want to position yourself in the business world.

GF: Your presence on the Internet is a representation of who you are in real life. For example, I am bold, assertive, and slightly irreverent. You can hear it in my writing voice and it makes up a part of my personal brand. Social media is a great place to exercise your personal brand and discover your unique voice. People remember things that are clear, concise, and consistent. This should be the goal of every brand, including yours.

(8) Do it right — If you want to start your own social media consultancy, have the resources to do it right. You don’t want to have to do every job yourself.

GF: This is actually my second time to have a consultancy. I learned a lot from the first go around -- namely, it takes a lot of work and money to start a business. I promised myself I would never do it again without hiring and partnering with people that are strong where I am weak. Nobody is good at everything. It's better to play to your strengths than go down for your weaknesses.  Luckily, there are a lot of startups catering to small businesses these days, and you can find a good and affordable solution for everything you need.

(9) “Social business is a core business function” – It’s about making sure every piece of the business is using social data; is leveraging social technology, community and conversation; and is able to respond in real time.

GF: This is my mantra right now. I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. Too many businesses are stuck in the early phase of social media and there is a way bigger vision for social. I will be detailing this vision as well as practical steps to get there over the coming months. Get ready, I am going to rattle some cages in the process. (If you are interested, you can get my blog updates in a weekly newsletter by subscribing here.)

(10) “Explore, Explore, Explore, Explore” – Technology is always changing. Everything will be different in two years. But the human connection has always been there and always will be there. So one way to ensure success is by finding ways to use technology to build community.

GF: This is actually two pieces of advice. First, play with every new technology that comes out. Things move way too quickly to not keep up. Second, as you explore technology, always think about how it can be used to improve your relationships. It *always* goes back to relationships -- whether you're looking for a job or acquiring a new user. People like to feel like they matter and technology can be a great facilitator for those connections -- and one of the biggest areas where most companies miss the boat.

What do you think? Do these align with your own life lessons? I would love to hear your own lessons in the comments below and I am sure many students will be very appreciative of your insights.

By Gretchen Fox, Social Architect at grtchnfx


 

Posted on March 20, 2013 .

@gretchen Q&A: Aligning demand generation and promotions

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Q:

What do you recommend to ensure that  demand generation and social promotions are aligned, and effective?

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A:

Hi Vince,

Thank you for the question, let's actually break these into two parts: how to make sure these efforts are aligned and how to make these efforts are effective. 

For efforts to be aligned on any campaign, it comes down to having an integrated strategy and plan. Creating integrated campaigns should be relatively easy if your company has weekly intra-departmental meetings where everyone shares upcoming campaign plans and objectives. If your company does not have this type of meeting, I recommend championing the effort to create one.  During these meetings, it is important to cover the goals of the campaign, the tactics, and the way you will measure success, as well as, open up the conversation to generate feedback from the other teams. Often times, other channel managers will have invaluable input that allows a more aligned approach -- they just need the space to contribute.

The second question isn't quite so simple to solve. Effectiveness isn't something you can learn how to do once and then repeat forever in the future. It is an ongoing process with changing variables and the results are often challenging to comparle. I recommend using a system to set goals, measure results, and gather insights. Once you go through this process you will be able to use your insights to make assumptions, for your next campaign. By repeating this process, you will identify insights and correlating triggers for your specific audience and be able to improve effectiveness campaign-over-campaign.

A few extra tips and tricks learned over time:

  1. Be clear on your goals for your campaign
  2. Create a multi-channel communication plan for your promotion
  3. Strategically plan out the timeline of each communication for maximum exposure
  4. Create separate bit.ly links for each communication so you can see which effort drives the most traffic
  5. Ensure your landing page is designed for conversion (whether the goal is to create a lead or drive a sale)
  6. Pour over your data for insights

I hope this is helpful!

I would love to hear how other teams are making sure their marketing efforts are aligned for maximum effectiveness in the comments below.

Please, submit any questions to me on Twitter or through my contact page, and be sure to let me know if you want your question to be anonymous.

By Gretchen Fox, Social Architect at grtchnfx

 

 



 

Posted on March 14, 2013 .