Does your company leadership ‘get the business case’ for digital word of mouth (aka social media)?

Social Media Workshops

According to futurist Dr James Canton the top 10 workforce trends necessitate employees commit to continuous learning particularly  up skilling their technological skills if they are to attract the cream of the crop positions in a global workforce.

As the global war for talent heats up, new key skills will be required of the C Suite. ‘Smart Talent’ has been identified as the top driver of competitive advantage. Highly educated, skilled and experienced employees will be in demand.

Finding, training and retaining high-tech skilled employees from a global talent pool will be the greatest challenge for every organization. And that is the dilemma; many C Suites are failing to embrace the fundamental shift in stakeholder collaboration that has dramatically turned our customers into our collaborators with the rise of Web 2. We no longer communicate outside our office walls with linear messages and just the ‘old media’ as the commentator. Our customers are now commentating on our every corporate move, many with powerful followings who can literally make or break a product such as a bad review that can in a split second resonate with their followers and go massively viral.

Learning this lesson the hard way has cost some companies dearly while some savvy CEO’s have identified the business shift that is not an option but, an imperative holistically within the organisation similar to the days when the first PC’s were introduced to all employees desks adding the benefit to the bottom line of improved productivity and labour cost controls.

That same paradigm shift is now once again required of business.

Just as businesses in 2010 are  having to adapt to a rapidly changing world and are embedding innovation into the organizational DNA as a key driver of future competitive advantage, so too is the imperative upon organizations to commit to employee development, continual education and   training in the social media arena, returning to the organisation new skills and new competencies.

The philosophy is very simple, if your customers are in this new social media space and populate it with ever increasing daily time habits, then why too aren’t you?

This business process transformation can’t be delegated to low level functional roles if the company is to reap the true benefit of active engagement with your customers and stakeholders. It must be owned at leadership level. Social media affects the entire business, and should be looked at Board Room and CEO level.

So what exactly is this ‘thing’ called social media? Firstly I like to refer to social media as digital word of mouth. It is easier for C Suites to get their head around that definition and takes away from the often confused recreational image of Facebook and other social networks.

Fact is many C Suites are missing the point entirely about social media and are lagging far behind many innovative small businesses and competitors. I will go as far as saying many of the larger enterprise organisations don’t even allow employees to access their emails using Smart phones. Only yesterday I heard of the frustrations of one young savvy product manager who was frustrated with her organisation’s leadership and understanding of where and how their customers are ‘hanging out’ as she said to me rightly about the 18-35 market. “They are online, not listening to drive time radio.”

To ‘get it’, you must understand, social media is NOT just a marketing activity, it is a fundamental shift in almost every purchase or conversion process. It is the next generation of business engagement. Whether consumer facing, B2B, for profit or non profit, people are turning to people like themselves for the information they need to make smart choices and are talking about products, causes and activities BEFORE they will even consider the purchase process. They form opinions, talk with their communities, share news and more.

The advent of Web 2.0 and the social web is clearly a game changer, on numerous fronts. It is most effective when it is applied in a holistic manner – take the Zappos case study as an example a company growing from Zero - $1.2 billion using social media strategically rather than simply operationally. To illustrate this let’s take a look at the role of Chief Operating Officer which of course differs from industry to industry and from organisation to organisation. However in most cases the COO is responsible for the daily operations of the company.

As we know many COO’s have worked their way through the company holding different positions of responsibility and are now being groomed to take over the CEO position.

Key functions of the COO often include:

1.        Organise resources as set by the CEO with the aim of creating maximum value for the company’s stakeholders

2.       Lead by developing and cascading the organisational strategy and mission statement and aligning personnel with company goals

3.       Plan by prioritising customer, employee and organisational requirements

4.       Maintain and monitor staffing levels and key knowledge requirements that align the organisational goals

5.       Drive performance indicators for the measurement of the organisations results.

Need convincing then consider the following hypothetical meeting.

Here are some thought provokers:

CEO – Is this a PR function OR whole of organisation function? What’s the business case, what are our competitors doing?

CFO –Will this strategy increase revenues and what about costs?

CIO –Network security will be an issue.... all these desktop social applications downloaded by every employee is a nightmare to manage.

Legal – Our risk exposure could be huge. We’ll need to consider procedures, standards, workplace law requirements around social media. Definitely a social media policy is needed.

HR – Are we giving all employees access? Who’s training the whole organisation? Can this be used for recruiting?

CSO – Is this going to generate sales leads or is it just about customer service. Do I need to involve the call centre for customer complaints resolution. How are we going to monitor this?

What are your views? Do you think social media discussions need to take place in the boardroom and with company leadership?

The Origins of Six Degrees of Separation and the power of social media for business

Yesterday I spoke to a terrific group of people about developing a social media strategy and programme. The event was organised by that super networker Sean Grobbelaar. I spent quite a lot of time talking about innovation and the importance of connecting with tribes as you plan your social media campaign. The concept of tribes and finding super connectors is not new. We all feel closer together because of the power of the web and indeed more so than ever with the advent of new social media platforms that bring us together often with networks and friends that we may even have lost contact with at some point in our lives. So when we casually say 'gosh isn't the world a small place and it only takes six degrees of separation before I meet someone we mutually know' what does that really mean?

In the late 1960's well before the advent of the internet, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find an answer to what is know as the small world problem. The problem is this: how are we humans connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds, operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world, are few and distant? Or, are we all bound up together in a grand interlocking web?

What Milgram was asking has a great deal of relevance to the success or failure of some social media programmes, that being how does an idea or trend or piece of news - travel through the population?

Milgram's idea to test this question was a chain letter. He got the names of 160 people who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and mailed each of them a packet. In the packet was a name of a stockbroker who lived in Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his or her name on the packet and send it onto a friend or acquaintance who he or her thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker. If you lived in Omaha and had a cousin outside of Boston, for example, you might send it to him, on the grounds that - even if your cousin did not himself know the stockbroker - he would be a lot more likely to be able to get to the stockbroker in two or three or fours steps.

The idea was when the packet finally arrived at the stockbroker's house, Milgram could look at the list of all those who hands it went through to get there and establish how closely connected someone chosen at random from one part of the country was to another person in another part of the country.

Milgram found that most of the letter's reached the stockbroker in five or six steps. This experiment is where we get the concept of six degrees of separation.

This phrase is so familiar to most of us today that we lose sight of how surprising Milgram's findings were. Most of us don't have particular broad and diverse groups of friends.

When Miilgram analyze his experiment to determine how did the packet get to Sharon in just five steps, the answer was not all degrees are equal. He found that many of the chains from Omaha to Sharon followed the same asymmetrical pattern. Twenty four letters reached the stockbroker at his home in Sharon, and of those sixteen were given to him by the same person, a clothing merchant Milgram calls Mr Jacobs. The balance of the letters came to the stockbroker at his office, and of those the majority came through two other men, whom Milgram calls Mr Brown and Mr Jones.

In all, half of the responses that came back to the stockbroker were delivered to him by these same three people.

Think about it. Dozens of people, chosen at random from a large Midwestern city, send out letters independently. Some go to college acquaintances. Some send their letters to relatives. Some send letters to old workmates and so on. Yet in the end when all those chains were completed, half of those letters ended up in the hands of Jacobs,Jones and Brown.

Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special people.

These people who we rely on heavily are 'connectors', people with a special gift for bringing the world together. We'll talk more about the traits of these special people in a later post, that too is a fascinating insight.

However I wanted to share the relevance of this experiment dating back to the 1960's and the rise today of the phenomena known as social media. Imagine if you could and can tap into these special connectors to communicate the benefits of your product or service with passion and with meaning for their lives. Who will they tell, I wonder...


This in itself is a strong argument for networking on linkeIN, facebook, twitter and so on. Have you observed these special people on social networking sites and met them in the real work perhaps? I'd be interested in your thoughts and observations. One person who comes to mind is Iggy Pintado. He has written an excellent book on what he calls the Connection Generation. He says 'Connection Generation reveals how individuals, groups and networks have progressed beyond their intent to communicate - but to a tangible connection between people, information, experiences and ideas. Due to the advent of internet and mobile technology, this dynamic transcends traditional thinking about societal generations. It proposes that anyone who had access to a computer or mobile device since 1995 - regardless of age - is part of the Connection Generation'. Personally I think what he is showing, albeit in a technology driven society, is how true Milgram's basic experiment was, that the power of social networks offers enormous opportunities to grow our businesses in ways many of us do not tap into.

Stay out of social networking and you may miss one of the greatest business opportunities you have to reach new customers and in some cases turn them into powerful evangelists for your product or service. Of course six degrees of separation also means the reverse is true, a lousy experience and your tribe may tell their friends and so on...

Focus on a great customer experience whatever social media platforms you use: service, customer satisfaction, innovation and brand essence, delivering on the promise remain paramount. A great social media example of doing it well is Zappos, the shoe company. You can read their case study for more information.

For further reading on Six Degrees of Separation, I highly recommend reading The International Bestseller - The Tipping Point, How Little things can make a big difference by Malcolm Gladwell.

Have you determined who 'brand you' is?

I was at a workshop last week, at which I gave an impromptu “from the heart” mini-talk on personal branding in the era of social media.

People often question if they “need” a personal brand. Here’s the news – you already HAVE a personal brand. The only questions are, what is it? Are you projecting it effectively? And with the rise of social media, you also now have to think about your personal brand online. Is it congruent with brand YOU!

When people see you, think of you, and relate to you, words and images and feelings come to mind. That is your personal brand. If people who know you think “friendly,” “helpful,” “kind,” when they see you and talk about you, you are well on your way to possessing a positive personal brand. Of course, you can easily see the flip side of this as well…

So, you have a brand. Do you know what it is? What distinguishes you from the teeming hordes of humanity? What are you known for? Here, you need some self-examination, maybe some personality profiling (I found the Gallup books on Strengths to be particularly helpful), and some honest friends to help you distill it down.

What you’ll find is a constellation of qualities, and perhaps 1-5 characteristics that really stand out. Those are what you build your brand on. And, once you really have a grasp on it, you can communicate to people much more effectively what you’re all about. Where you fit in. Even what your future business endeavors should look like. You project your brand NOW – but you can project it more effectively when you actually know what it IS, and feel comfortable in your own skin.

What is my personal brand? I listen, analyze, distill, and rapidly find the core, then communicate it fairly effectively. This becomes my brand voice.

Let’s make one distinction. There is your personal brand essence, which is that grouping of personality traits, character traits, strengths, and capabilities that make you you. Then there is your personal brand role, which is how you function in the world and marketplace. Your role may change, but your essence remains the same, and hopefully, your functional and professional role is increasingly aligned with who you (essentially) are.

I’ve had live and on-line conversations with several people in the last few months who are wrestling with how to define themselves, and project their personal brand. As it turns out, my core competencies of analyzing, distilling, and expressing makes that a very enjoyable and meaningful exercise.

You don’t have to be a personal branding guru, or a consultant, a blogger, or an entrepreneur, to have and project a brand. You simply have to have a pulse. And a willingness to discover what really makes you tick. You DO have a brand, and you DO have something to offer. What endeavor could more rewarding and noble than identifying that brand and running with it?

Nearly 20% of Marketing Dollars Will Go to Social Marketing in 5 Years

Social media networks are a marketers dream. With over 500 million active users on Facebook today, there’s no doubt that Facebook is a social media powerhouse. And although Facebook is a social networking favorite, it’s not alone.

Marketers are actively taking note of many different social media opportunities and beginning to implement new strategic social initiatives at a higher rate than ever before. Here are 3 new studies that show social media is on the rise. As a business you cannot afford NOT to participate:

#1: Small Business Doubles Social Media Adoption

At least one positive result from the economic downturn is the rapid growth of social media marketing.

A recent study, “The State of Small Business Report,” sponsored by Network Solutions, LLC and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, points to economic difficulties as the catalyst for social media’s rapid popularity.

The study results show that social media usage by small business owners increased from 12% to 24% in just the last year, and almost 1 out of 5 actively uses social media as part of his or her marketing strategy.

Here’s a breakdown of what the small businesses reported as the main uses of social media marketing:

* 75% have a company page on a social networking site
* 69% post status updates or articles of interest on social media sites
* 57% build a network through a site such as LinkedIn
* 54% monitor feedback about the business
* 39% maintain a blog
* 26% tweet about areas of expertise
* 16% use Twitter as a service channel

According to the study, different industries are adopting social media marketing at different rates, and while many industries have started using social media marketing in their efforts to reach more customers, many still have not positioned it as their top priority.

According to the survey, “Professional services firms, real estate businesses and entertainment/food/lodging businesses rely more on email marketing than other types of small businesses. Firms in the education/health/social services sector rely more on social media marketing and direct mail. Not surprisingly, retailers depend more on print and broadcast advertising.” Those slow to adopt to the new way of communicating via social media may remain in the backwoods for years and may simply be unable to catch up with their more aggressive and savvy competitors

The report also measured small businesses’ expectations of social media. While 58% feel that social media “met expectations,” 12% feel it has “exceeded expectations,” while 25% feel social media has “fallen short of expectations.”

Some of the reasons given for social media’s shortfalls were:

* 50% feel it has used up more time than expected
* 19% believe social media has lost them money
* 17% feel social media has allowed people to criticize their business

Overall, social media use by small business is a major growth area. The report says it best: “This dire environment has not stifled innovation. The most successful small businesses are competing by offering superior service and creativity and small businesses are rapidly embracing social media as a way for keeping engaged with customers and tapping knowledge resources.”

#2: Nearly 20% of Marketing Dollars Will Go to Social Marketing in 5 Years

In just the last 6 months, marketers have shifted their attitudes toward social media marketing spending. This was recently affirmed in the new study, “The CMO Survey”, from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association. A key finding: Social media marketing budgets continue to rise. According to the results, businesses currently allocate 6% of their marketing budgets to social media, an allotment they expect to increase to 10% during the next year and 18% over the next 5 years.

Back in August 2009, marketers had already planned on devoting more money to social media. However, in February 2010, marketers reported that they plan to allocate one-fifth of their marketing budgets to social media marketing in the next 5 years. This is a definite increase from the 2009 projections. The study features the following comparison from August 2009 to February 2010:

Current marketing budget spending on social media:

August 2009: 3.5%

February 2010: 5.6%

Marketing budget spending on social media in the next 12 months:

August 2009: 6.1%

February 2010: 9.9%

Marketing budget spending on social media in the next 5 years:

August 2009: 13.7%

February 2010: 17.7%

According to the director of the survey, Fuqua Professor Christine Moorman, “Even though many are still experimenting and learning how best to use social media tools, these results indicate that marketers think social media marketing is here to stay and will play an increasingly important role in their work in acquiring and retaining customers in the future.”

#3: Mastering Social Media: A Top Goal for Marketers

Anderson Analytics and Marketing Executives Networking Group recently released a report titled “Marketing Trends 2010” with some interesting insight into the minds of marketing executives.

Marketing executives were asked to choose the most important trends and buzzwords to pay attention to in 2010, marketing ROI (getting a good return on marketing efforts) was number one, with 58% saying it was the most important trend to keep an eye on. But what’s even more interesting is that social media made the top 10 list, with 42% choosing it as one of the top trends to watch. In addition, 72% said they work for companies that are planning social media initiatives in 2010.

The study also explored social media presence and reported interesting findings when comparing personal social media use among marketing executives and their company’s social media use.Individual executives are most likely to use networking tools like Facebook and LinkedIn, while companies are more likely to keep a blog than individual executives.

Equally interesting is the consensus on how to carry out the social media initiatives. Marketers turn to internal employees, social media consultants and interactive agencies for support and are less likely to use PR and ad agencies. The growth is certainly in social media marketing agencies.

When selecting a supplier for social media initiatives, marketing executives focus on the influence over a target market and the extent of a consultant’s network as major deciding factors.

These three surveys are great indicators that we will continue to see social media marketing rise and perhaps over time see less of the traditional marketing strategies. Social media is here to stay so for those still working within organisations where it is a low priority your challenge is to show how linear marketing is no longer the norm. Your customers hear about your products from many, many different sources.

Have you seen a major shift to social marketing initiatives in your company? Is there still a hesitancy to make a substantial leap to this new way of marketing or has the shift been an easy transition?

How are you as CEO using Social Media

A Harvard University study “Society For New Communications Research” (SNCR) in November 2009, is a great insight into the rise of social media and usages by CEO's

I thought that a summary of their findings would be a great backdrop and insight into how the CEO and major decison makers are using social media, particularly as CEO's now have to consider themselves personal brands as well.

In the survey they asked questions like

* Are professional networks being utilized by decision-makers in business?
* Is social media typically regarded as a trustworthy source of information for
professionals?
* In what ways do professionals rely on social networks to support business
decisions?
* Will social media change the business and practice of enterprise-level
operations?

The survey was administered online to 356 participants via online survey with close to a quarter (23%) are CEO of their organization, 50% are “Director” or “Manager”.

Company size ranged from less than 100 to over 50,000 full-time employees and age was well distributed with the greatest proportion in the 36-45 range, 25 countries were represented, with 58% of respondents living in the US and all respondents were either the decision makers or influenced the decision process.

So what were the “30 Key Findings”

1. Professional decision-making is becoming more social, traditional influence cycles are being disrupted by Social Media as decision makers utilize social networks to inform and validate decisions.

2. Professionals want to be collaborative in the decision-cycle but not be marketed or sold to online, however online marketing is a preferred activity by companies.

3. The big three have emerged as leading professional networks: LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter.

4. The average professional belongs to 3-5 online networks for business use, and LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are among the top used.

5. The convergence of Internet, mobile, and social media has taken significant shape as professionals rely on anywhere access to information, relationships and networks.

6. Professional networks are emerging as decision-support tools.

7. Decision-makers are broadening reach to gather information especially among active users.

8. Professionals trust online information almost as much as information gotten from in-person.

9. Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% – combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust).

10. Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years.

11. Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions with reliance increasing essentially for all respondents over the past three years.

12. Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation with younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.

14. There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet.

15. Professionals tend to belong to “Multiple Social Networks” for business with

* Half of respondents report participating in 3 to 5 online professional networks
* Another three in ten participate in 6 or more professional networks
* More than 7% used more than 10 professional networks

16. The Big Three Social Networks Have Emerged as Professional Networks, so popular social networks are now being used frequently as professional communities with

* More than nine in ten respondents indicated that they use LinkedIn (91%)
* Half reported using Facebook (51%)
* Twitter followed closely with (41%)

Note: The closest next channel only scored 13%. Blogs were frequently listed as ‘professional networks’

17. Mobile Is Emerging as a Frequent Professional Networking Access Point with 94% using a PC and 44% using a Mobile.

18. Usage Of Professional Networks Is Increasing

* Three quarters of respondents visit their social networks at least daily
* Four in ten visit many times each day
* All indicated that their usage has increased over the past three years
* Those who belong to more online professional networks are more likely to
visit many times per day
* Small companies are more likely to indicate that they have increased their use
significantly

19. Professional Networks Are An Increasingly Essential Decision-Support Tool

* Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support
business decisions
* Reliance has increased for essentially all respondents over the past three
years

20. High Levels of Trust Exist in Information Obtained From Online Networks

* Offline is strengthened by online engagement – to extend relationships and
collaborate
* Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust
with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% – combined strongly/somewhat
trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust)

21. Connecting And Collaborating Are Key Drivers For Professional Use of Social Media.

22. More than half of respondents expect that in 1-2 years their company will increase social media use to share more content.

23. Over half the respondents will increase social media use to do more company-wide communications.

24. Changes in Company External Use of Social Media with More than half of respondents foresee more marketing programs and content distribution in the next one to two years.

25. Social Media is supplementing the traditional professional decision-making cycle with great affect.

26. The era of Social Media Peer Group (SMPG) has arrived and information will travel at a business velocity that has never been seen before enabled by the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies.

27. Challenges are facing marketers who endeavor to mange or control social media network content.

28. Traditional cycles of decision-making are being disrupted by Social Media Peer Group (SMPG) .. I like this new acronym!

29. Managing and influencing professional decision-making will be the major challenge as professionals often do not seek the information that marketers want to share online.

30. The greatest opportunity business has is to engage collaborative influence – via immediacy of impact through social channel.

So how are you as CEO using social media?