Making Business Sense of Social Media

April 7, 2008 · Comments

Talking to people isn’t much of a business, except it is. Customer service has some talking in it. Sales has talking. Hmm, okay, so maybe there’s lots of talking in business.

Blogging, podcasting, video, microblogging, presence platforms all help facilitate communication.

Following the happenings around you in your industry won’t help you get ahead, except that it probably will. Knowing where people are, what they’re interested in, what they like and dislike, as well as understanding shifts and trends and news seems like a good way to stay up on what might impact your business.

Twitter and Facebook and all those social networking sites facilitate sharing of information.

This blogging and social media stuff is just for marketing and PR types, except it’s not. Building networks of interaction, delivering new tools for collaboration, empowering knowledge compilation are all opportunities for the use of these tools that don’t fall into the hands of only the communications team.

Status and presence and wikis and collaboration tools are useful to business teams, and not just marketing and PR.

It’s not immediately obvious why some of these tools apply to some businesses, and it’s DEFINITELY true that not all these tools will be useful to all businesses. But to not even consider how your organization can improve their productivity, their customer service experience, their product design, their hiring processes, and more, well, that just seems like a ticket back to 1996.

What do you think? Is there a business application to all this? Why are big companies delving in? What will convince businesses to dig in and experiement a bit more?

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  • Social Media is not good 4 business.

    Unless u want more.

    It's like asking why big corporations take
    polls or surveys or collect feedback from
    their clients.

    It's funny how some "professionals" try to
    pooh-pooh "social" media just because it
    happens 2 take place ONLINE.

    Yet - they don't even question if it's good to...
    let's say...

    Play Golf
    Go to networking events
    er - make that BORING networking events
    or follow up with clients via phone call

    That's all "Social Media" is
    connecting with your prospects, clients, and tribe

    @CoachDeb
  • It is definitely important. The problem is that small businesses can't afford anyone dedicated to this task. Big business has money to burn, they'll jump right into it, but the business owner in the town of 1,000 people, the guy who can make the most use out of realizing the new trend before anyone else, can't afford it. They're already struggling to make it work in a rural area, and they simply don't have the resources. However, as time moves along, and somebody has a business that is hugely successful because they had a guy on Twitter constantly keeping a community informed about their developments, everyone else will be in a mad scramble to get up to speed. At which point something will replace Twitter.
  • Social media is going to be a huge boon for businesses, first and foremost, for keeping on top of trends in niche markets. Most social networking starts with special interest types of friends or groups interested in a single topic, then filters out to others.
  • beckymccray
    Shawn, let's talk about the small town small business. No, we don't have anyone to dedicate exclusively to the task of tapping social media. But we can do it. Ideally, we make it part of our marketing mix, and we dedicate part of our time and money to it. I'm far from the only one at work on this from a small town. And there is a huge opportunity for coaches and consultants who reach out to the small town small business people and help them make social media work for them.
  • Deborah
    Hmm, start-ups - entrepreneurs, seems like they go together lately with social media. Wikinomics, Smart Start-Ups, other recent books say it is key to what business could be in the "wisdom of crowds" and "the world is flat" world.

    My vote, ignoring it, bad idea. (Movie note, Pretty Woman, "You work on commission don't you?) Just note the evening's twitter regarding a Comcast service outage in Calif, via techcrunch, and the blogging references all the way back to Dell. Oh yes, how about Jet Blue?

    Even Google, with Google Groups in beta has issues with its Google Groups blogs, regarding silence. To answer or not to answer, when users are asking many questions about service outages on your very own blog. Such a customer relationships challenge.
  • Who you know has always been - of course - one important component of success. But now with everyone networked online to the nth degree, one must (if others agree) occasionally take a step back to analyze and reanalyze from time to time, what networking approaches one is taking and wishes to take to be most productive.

    Is it better to have more friends, or fewer? What do you say to your friends? Do you talk to more than one at a time. I'd love for some really highly networked people, maybe a Scoble or Arrington, to write a chapter, maybe a book on this topic. Not only how they built up their networks and utilize them, but what it all means (from their perspective).
  • Social is about the knock-on positive, long-lasting, organic/SEO, bookmarking, tagging, forwarding, viral sharing, brand, search and actual social benefits. It’s about the consistent long term placement of your brand(s). Social is maintaining your brand and your reputation. In its best form it multiplies over time with compound growth. It’s all about acting like a human and networking in it’s traditional form.
  • This post is very much in line with a book I am reading right now called "A Whole New Mind - Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future" by Daniel Pink.

    http://tinyurl.com/5ud6td

    A great read for anyone interested in new ways of doing business.
  • In the old days, one of the maxims of direct marketing was to ask your recipient what their preferred way of communication was - and it still should be.

    This is not about the world embracing web 2.0 nor social networking platforms - it is about meeting people on their turf - speaking to them in their language and communicating in the format they prefer.

    Today there still are people on one side of the spectrum that prefer fax (lot of tradespeople) and others are starting to prefer communication via the social network of their choice.

    Whomever is concerned with communication cannot avoid these communication channels.
  • @CoachDeb - I think there used to be a lot fewer ways to network, and most of them weren't exactly my favorite. About a decade ago, I was almost tempted to learn golf. I'm not knocking the sport, but it's not for me. An article I read last year talked about World of Warcraft being the new golf. Now, THAT I could support.

    @Shawn - you're not wrong. It's hard for someone to roll yet another thing-to-do into their daily grind at a small business. I suppose I'll have to write starter moves for that to see what comes of it.

    @Kris- agreed. That's how I see things going, more or less.

    @Becky - so you're our model of a small business using social tools, except I'm curious how much of this is for your retail business vs how much is for your consulting work. If B, how has it helped so far?

    @Deborah - interesting, so when the crowd complains in a channel that isn't the company's primary channel, they'll still be held responsible to come and comment.

    @Alex - with over 5000 twitter friends and thousands of connections in other social networks, not to mention a combined total of around 8,000 daily visitors to this blog (via RSS *and* pageviews), I can tell you that it does change when volume and velocity is applied. That's an interesting question, and I might take a swing at it while we wait for Michael or Robert to write a book.

    @Sue - Daniel Pink rocks.

    @Hans - I quite agree with that. Finding your customers where they are is the most important advice.
  • It all depends upon the business. I'm pretty sure if SocialThing started pushing their company blog posts on Digg no one would mind because the content is probably useful and interesting, even if it's marketing their product in some form. If (just for example) WeFixBadCredit Inc. attempted the same thing, they would be considered spammers.

    Though, blogging and networking can benefit any business, IMHO.
  • I've seen a number of companies start to integrate/experiment with social media in HR departments. I think there are two implications to this. First, it allows a company that's still uncomfortable having uncontrolled conversations to test the concept with its own staff, hopefully reducing its learning curve when (if) it starts conversing with the outside world. Secondly, it opens up social media to people who might not otherwise have engaged before, creating a second wave of social media adopters.
  • @Chris: Is it a party, is it for kids, is it social or business, personal or professional?

    There's a great deal of fear and anxiety some people feel when doing social networking, because a misstep will stay online forever, but will likely be forgotten a week after you were at the convention center in person.
  • Convincing businesses to dig in and experiment more is about results. For example, the top barrier to social media advertising according to B2B Magazine's survey last November was insufficient metrics to measure impact. Now I realize social media goes beyond "advertising," but guess how many business people do not?

    Fortunately, there is a great deal of opportunity to make your presentation to the decision makers. And regardless of how you wow them with your knowledge of slick aggregation tools and new media thought leadership -- the most important slide in the deck better address expectations around ROI.

    In the meantime, case studies are in the works. And now, more than ever, you may find yourself being asked to help address the social media line item in the latest fund raising plan.
  • I've been thinking about Social Media a lot lately, and had a shacking revelation today about it (or my attitude toward it). I blogged about here: http://tinyurl.com/6ng3hv

    I have to wonder if this is what other people are wrestling with? People are making it too hard or over-analyzing it?
  • Business is 100% about the ability to engender trust with your prospects/customers/channels. The way to engender trust is communication.

    Add the network affect of social networking and the presence of the online world and now many people can 'see' how I interact with my small network. The network affect can happen very quickly if there is something of value in that conversation that is also trustworthy - others will see it and pile on. The opposite is also true - companies that never respond or participate will not be 'seen' and potentially not be trusted if they are not being publicly responsive.

    Interesting times we are seeing evolve...mostly for the better I think.
  • As the IT manager for a 25-person professional services firm, I'm looking for ways to facilitate collaboration, communication and information gathering -- while reducing mental overhead and tech complexity. There's certainly a business case for client-based or web-based interface that aggregates feeds and conversations while integrating presence, blogging and sharing tools. I'd add another one: email. Our employees live out of their inboxes, and I would like to see a system that integrates all of it elegantly so they can read up and join in effectively.
  • beckymccray
    @Chris - My small town retail store has a blog that has actually drawn an excellent measurable return on investment, far more than I expected.

    Ironically, for all my personal social media presence, I don't talk about the areas where I do most of my consulting, such as grant writing and web presence. I get my almost all of my consulting clients in those areas through word of mouth, locally.

    What I DO talk about online is what I am passionate about: succeeding in a small town small business. And I think that is starting to pay off, with a few speaking offers, a few joint venture offers, and a few other things that excite me.

    How do we help small town small businesses "get it" and then find time to use social tools? That's a very, very large subject. But basically, you show them, and then you coach them. Start with those businesses that already rely on breaking out of the local market, like tourism related businesses and small manufacturers. They want to connect with the larger world.
  • Mobile phones were a hot topic when they were about 2 kilo's and the size of a loaf of bread in the mid 80's. McKinseys then(1986) did a now famous global market review for AT&T >> Objective: "Tell us what the global market opportunity is".

    AT&T threatened McKinsey with enough money and they went away to do their research and came back: "By 2000 there will be only an estimated 900k handsets globally".

    *close to 900k UK citizens dropped their handsets in the toilet in 2006 (insurance claim data)*

    What social networks will be in the future is hard to say - we cannot look around corners. However we know that today people are using it to communicate and that communicaton will evolve and grow - with different channels, tones, loaded languages, uniforms etc.

    Its just about communication - and we know it works that way.

    Its a communication tool AND a channel.

    What it will become depends on what we create or make of it. Bit like life.
  • Chris, I agree. And not only that. This is what sometimes' happening in R&D project close to where I work at: http://alex.digns.com/collaboration-for-real/ (well, yeah, especially when it comes to collaboration)
  • I just started a twitter account for the company I work for (without permission).

    We're an online travel agency. I saw our vendors (Carnival) on Twitter and a few other agencies as well as other travel providers (JetBlue).

    I took us there to experiment with using it to lay a bit of a foundation for future community growth, future customer service, and, yes, to push out some marketing and brand extension.

    We are kind of doing this a bit backward IMHO. Twitter followed by RSS followed by a blog. The blog requires the most planning and commitment.

    I'm excited to be trying this out, and I hope the experiment pays off well.

    @93octane
  • -What do you think?

    I definitely think you are right Chris, to get the most out of social media, two of your core content goals and outreach goals should be product marketing and customer service. More about listening then talking.

    I believe this because I've seen a few companies become really successful using blogging and social media. Poster child's were, Macromedia, Microsoft, and now Dell.

    -Is there a business application to all this?

    As above, product marketing and customer service.

    What's really interesting is the process of monitoring. Think about it, if you worked in communications and you spent most of your time promoting and talking about yourself, what would you know? Well getting involved in social media means you have to listen, all of sudden you become much more news savvy about what's going on. That means you can react more quickly to developing stories because you have really been paying attention to the community.

    Monitoring will also give you some amazing insights into competitive intelligence.

    Why are big companies delving in?

    Because customers are talking amongst themselves, and because of search engines, and the way that search works, those conversations between websites mean customers have a competitive advantage in the world of dominating rankings on an industry topics (The Long Tail helps search).

    This means those voices are being heard, by other customers, and now by companies. It is becoming a competitive advantage, and depending on the industry, an imperative to dive in.

    What will convince businesses to dig in and experiment a bit more?

    Customers. More of their peers jumping in. Think of the Geoff Moore model here.
  • Great Article. You mentioned that some tools are not useful for business, at Konnects our site is a tool not only to network but also to conduct business.
  • Great post, Chris. Got here by Googling "business sense" and lo, there you were!

    Thanks for the wisdom.
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