Brian Solis spoke at the IBM Get Social event in Santa Clara, CA. He’s an analyst at the Altimeter and focuses his research on media, social media, and ongoing impacts to that. Overall, his presentation was really good. He takes a pragmatic approach to social business and highlights the difference between just having a facebook page and actually using social business to influence how your company improves itself. His focus is on company to people interaction and not so much company to employee interaction.
Quote: To succeed, enterpreneurs and busines leaders must look at this rapidly changing world through a different lens. ( Sir Richard Branson)
Quote: Using twitter and facebook is not a social business.
We are all competing for relevance and attention. Look at the “gold rush” of people trying to get people’s attention on facebook and twitter. But that’s not it. Relationships are ongoing. You can’t build a whole social business around pushing.
Brian’s reasons people unlike brands:
- It was boring
- You post too much
- It’s not relevant
Quote: The key here is that the audience now have their own audiences.
What do people want from social networks?
#1 is connect to friends and family
#12 or so is to interact with a brand. It’s not high on the list but it’s there. Why is it even on the list?
- Because customers want to learn about new products
- because they want information on products
- because they want discounts and special offers
- because business partners want insight
- because they didn’t want the ability to purchase in their social network
Companies need to design experiences that provide tangible value to their customers. These customers are not traditional consumers. They are not online consumers. They are social consumers. Social customers have thousands of connections.
Quote: Customers see one brand, not siloes.
Take the example of an airline. Brian ran a search on what people feel about an airline. He came up with a word cloud that includes, “delay, sucks, worst, hate, cancelled, and a bunch of other unmentionable words” Of course, the airline doesn’t describe themselves that way but do they understand the sentiment about them?
The social business uses yelp, youtube, face book, twitter, blogs, and other tools to engage with customers and to understand how they feel about your business.
Business must balance, technology, customers needs, and products.
Dell Hell blogs forced Dell to create their Ideastorm. Dell now has a listening command center to track Dell sentiment. Their social business is working acrosss multiple departments. It includes product development, marketing, sales, customers service, and communications.
Social Business Code
If social media is presented as an independent priority, it’s going to lose support every time. As an enabler, linked to priority business goals and objectives,however, it will gain support. Social media must always be an enabler of something.
