FreshNetworks Blog

So far in our social business blog post series we’ve looked at defining the term ‘social business‘, as well as examining three examples of multinationals who are implementing it.

To make it easier to start thinking more about social business, here are four steps that can help ease a company’s transition from being social media users to a full social business.

1. Put people first – not tools

Social media may still have a somewhat intimidating air of the unknown about it for some businesses. It’s important not to forget the fundamental element is in the word “social”: communication and forging relationships is the key -  something that any successful business should already be familiar with.

2. Evaluate the structure of your organisation

An evaluation of how the company is structured for social media use is a good starting point. While social business offer cross-silo communication and collaboration, issues may remain  over the “ownership” or “control” of the channels. In practical terms, the technology should be owned and maintained by IT, but departments should own their own processes. However these processes should be standardised across the business as a whole to ensure best practice and maximum return from social media.

3. Start small and build momentum naturally

The scalability of social business is one of its best assets. Running pilot schemes allows flexibility and opportunity for tools and practices to be evaluated properly. Internal early adopters turned evangelists will be able to demonstrate the real value of social business to colleagues.

4. Educate your workforce

Applying social business will come naturally to some, but for many the change in process and practice may be overwhelming. Social business requires a change in company culture as much as it does technology, and so guidance and education is important to ensure successful, company-wide adoption. Use evangelists to energise the company and demonstrate the benefits of social business to encourage word-of-mouth to spread the message, but dedicated training is a worthwhile investment to ensure a consistent adoption across the board.

Social business - the scale is international

Continuing from our definition of  social business, this post will introduce look at 3 brief case studies of multinational companies that have successfully adopted social business.

As part of the 2.0 Adoption Council, IBM (in association with MIT Center for Digital Business and the Dachis Group) has published a series of case studies demonstrating integrated social business. Here is a summary of three of the largest:

Alstom

The French multinational has 70,000 employees across 70 countries – giving great collaboration potential, but the formation was fragmented  due to growth through acquisitions and mergers.

The Alstom University focused on their people and process before considering technology. Running a series of pilot communities allowed them to receive executive buy-in, which promoted adoption by employees. Awareness about the community platforms and collaboration tools was achieved by a video shown at company events, and education was provided through an e-learning programme.

By taking this people-centric approach Alstom succeeded in creating a collaborative culture throughout the company, where the social tools were treated as a means instead of an end, and collaboration was not relegated to being used only virtually.

IBM

In an organisation as large as IBM (nearly 400,000 employees worldwide),  initiating change requires advocates.

IBM’s initial aim was to develop social collaboration for the IBM sales team, but their long term aim was to roll this out to the entire business. In IBM’s case a pool of 50 enthusiasts grew to 250 within six months, and was over 1,300 within a year.

An important part of IBM’s approach was to highlight the benefits of collaboration to its employees through blogging and sharing content. The aim to “evangelize everyone” and promote understanding of the benefits has been reinforced with top-down encouragement, with IBM CEO and President Sam Palmisano encouraging all IBM staff to use social collaboration in their day to day work.

Nokia

With almost 60,000 employees and an autonomous culture, Nokia found that social media tools were being used independently of each other and social media silos existed throughout the business. The challenge was for Nokia to harness these individual networks into one collaborative social business strategy.

The success hinged on executive support, which granted two internal pilots to take place in the business. The micro-blogging pilot has already seen success, and a crowd-sourcing pilot has even resulted in a change to the company culture. One key benefit was a boost to employee morale – the feeling that they are being listened to and the potential for recognition of their ideas has given the company a “feeling of connectedness”.

Learnings

It’s essential for buy-in from an executive level in order for a large company to become a social business. It’s also important to remember that technology should only enter the equation after considering the people who will be using it. These mini case studies show the strength of social business in terms of scale.

As all these examples are technology companies – it could be argued that they could integrate social business more naturally. In the next post of this series, we’ll look at companies who are already using social media and should be thinking about taking it further – if you have any suggested examples please do leave a comment below.

“Social business” – what does it mean? We’ll be exploring the concept of a social business in a series of blog posts over the coming weeks.

What is social business?

The term “social business” predates social media (referring to “a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective” – Wikipedia).

However, in the context of social media we define it as: the implementation of the unique communicative properties of social media across all levels of a business.

Examples of social business integration would be:

• Collaboration tools – allowing colleagues to work on a project simultaneously and remotely.
• Customer service – responding to questions, complaints and suggestions made on social networks. This can be handled collaboratively such as BestBuy’s Twelpforce.
• Internal communication – intuitive messaging that is free from fragmentary nature of email.
• Social CRM (SCRM) – customers will increasingly expect consistency and awareness of their social history with a company, no matter who or what department they interact with.

Why should I be interested in social business?

While the marketing potential of social media is well known, social business offers smoother internal workflows for employees, as information is passed and updated in a fast and intuitive manner.

Consumer social media is important for communicating with the public, but Facebook or Twitter are not always suitable for internal use by enterprise, and so specialised software and tools are required. While these may have a Facebook-like “feel” to them for easy employee adoption, enterprises have to be prepared to roll out new platforms, as integration across the entire organisation is essential.

So why are companies not using social business yet?

Fundamentally it’s because businesses are daunted by the implications of making fundamental changes to their operation. While social business is designed to be scalable,  the first step  requires a desire and understanding of its importance from the top-down.

Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter has written on the topic of the “social maturity” of an organisation, and similarly their progression through a variety of organisational models. We will consider these models, and the future of social business, in the later posts of this series.

Many businesses want to get started using social media or want to make their use of social media more effective. There is often a benefit of talking to a specialist social media agency. But for all businesses and organisations, whatever their size and whatever their focus, there are four simple steps that will put you on the right track with social media. Make sure you are using it but doing so in an informed way.

The presentation below takes you from listening and understanding what people are saying, to measuring and evaluating the impact you are having in four simple steps. If you want more information on this or on how to get started with social media then look at the FreshNetworks guide to Getting Started in Social Media.

Ever since sites like Kaboodle and Zebo spearheaded “social shopping” (a mix of e-commerce and traditional shopping where consumers shop in a social networking environment) consumers now have the ability to swap ideas, share product reviews and discuss latest fashion trends with like-minded people before, during and after their decision making and purchasing journey.

Social shopping has certainly helped to personalise the sometimes faceless online shopping experience.  And with 67% of shoppers spending more money online after recommendations from an online community of friends or like-minded people (according to Internet Retailer) a key element of social shopping seems to be the ability to recommend and share additional items that shoppers are likely to want to purchase.

A recent social shopping survey by e- tailer PowerReviews has also shown that a retailer’s own e-commerce sites play an important role in the purchasing process.  Survey respondents rated customer reviews as being the most persuasive factor in making a purchase and nearly half of all respondents said they would leave a retailer’s site if user-generated reviews were lacking.

Online shoe and clothing shop Zappos has certainly taken this knowledge to heart.  Largely known for their successful use of Twitter, thanks to the CEO lending his personality to the company brand, Zappos was also one of the early adopters of social shopping. Their site has a comprehensive ratings and reviews section to advise people on what products they might like based on their purchase selection, aiding the shopping process and helping with the conversion rate. They also have a “notify me of new styles” button, as well as plenty of  “favourite” ratings options so that customers can formulate a shopping list based on selections made by customers who have viewed the same or similar products.

More recently, apparel company Levi Strauss and Co has turned their hand to  social shopping . Their new Levi’s friends store uses the recently-launched  Facebook “like” plugin  to allow shoppers to see the number of Facebookers who ‘like’ an  item. It also allows the shopper to cast a vote about a product, encouraging joint participation in what was previously an individual shopping experience.

Social shopping can benefit retailers in several ways, especially if it is integrated with a wider online sales strategy.  With this in mind, we’re running a free breakfast seminar for retailers on how to use social shopping to increase online profits.

The event runs from 8.30am-10.30am on Wednesday 19th May and will include useful tips and advice on social shopping from the likes of  Geoff Quinn, CEO of TM Lewin, as well as real-life case studies from high-end brands like Jimmy Choo.

While the event is free to attend we ask that you register for the event below or call us on 0207 692 4376 to attend.

Please note: As places are limited the event is reserved for retailers only.

• Location: FreshNetworks, 229 High Holborn, WC1V 7DA,  London (map)
• Date and time: Wednesday 19th May 2010, 08:30-10:30