As 2010 comes to an end, it is a natural time for reflections and predictions. At this time of year, I take the opportunity to look backwards and take stock of what has happened with social media and customer communities. This year has been dominated by a shift in focus from social media marketing to social business it evolved from being experimental to being a business imperative.
Online communities have become the center of the customer experience and we spent much of the year trying out social media programs, creating customer communities and trying to make sense of the richness of structured and unstructured data the was created through the social channel. And, we face the New Year with profound opportunity to make sense of the experiments and weave the lessons together to inform a cohesive and scalable strategy that will change business as we know it even more significantly as it already has.
In the spirit of continued learning, I offer a few of my favorite writings to help you succeed. These are some of the most compelling and useful writings I believe can be found on the topic of social business. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Happy Holidays to all!
I've been thinking a lot about online trust this week -- and I wish I didn't have to. My email contacts were victims of a spam event of the worst kind -- one that strains the foundations of the trustful relationships we so carefully create in our connected world.
It wasn't porn or anything unsavory -- while that would not have been better, at least it would have been less believable! Instead, this attack cut to the very essence of my professionalism. My email account was hacked and, using my address book, zillions of my friends and colleagues were spammed with invitations to join something called Fast Pitch Networking. You can find their site using the usual search tools. I won't be linking to them.
The problem is I don't know who they are. I never heard of them before this. I certainly haven't recommended them to anyone. But, according to the spam email, I recommended joining their site to my contacts -- possibly inviting even you. Perhaps Fast Pitch is unaware of the problem and is a victim too. But they haven't returned my phone calls, I still don't know them, and I certainly don't trust them.
Here's the rub. I learned about this spam over the weekend when a respected colleague and neighbor came over to thank me for the invitation. "I usually don't join these kinds of things," said this person whose trust and friendship I value, "but because you recommended it, I decided to give it a shot."
I was horrified! He sent me the email and sure enough, it appeared to have been sent from my account -- my name was all over it. I ran home and sent out an email to my connections to let them know about it. Many respondents told me they did join the site on my recommendation. Why did they join a site they had never heard of? Because someone they trusted said it would benefit them. For all of you who received that wretched invite, my apologies.
My quick response may have helped remedy the situation. I received a slew of positive responses indirectly assuring me that our trust had not been broken. One witty comeback suggested "Someone seems to have confused the holiday season with the "spam" season." Perhaps it is the season -- news reports today tell of data breaches at Gawker Media, McDonald's and Walgreen's leading to possible spam outbreaks. Big players all, but still, it's an event to which I'd rather not be invited nor attend!
I also heard from people who had not received or read the spam email invite, meaning I had now troubled them with an errant communication of no value -- something a professional never wants to do. "I am disappointed I did not get invited to your spam party. Maybe next virus! Happy Holidays."
This whole fiasco served to remind me of the importance of trust -- online and offline. In an age of lightspeed social broadcast, one fell tweet can inadvertently reveal a confidential matter; a mistaken email click can turn a snarky comment into a ballistic missive; an ill-considered photo upload can become a personal or professional land mine.
Trust is a hard thing to win and an easy thing to lose. It represents a fragile balance between understanding who people are, respecting the give and take of relationships, and relies on the belief that a trusted person will not do something that undermines trust. While I did not cause of this mishap, I had to manage it quickly and carefully. It was my name -- and reputation -- on a recommendation broadcast to hundreds of people. People I know, people I trust, people I work with and work for. To breach that trust risks serious personal and professional damage.
The need to create, manage and protect social trust pervades many industries that are based on accountability. For example, consider the impact of social media on HIPPA rules. The American Medical Association (AMA) released long-awaited guidelines for physicians using social media just last month to help them understand the impact of social media use upon patient privacy. The new policy encourages physicians to:
Use privacy settings to safeguard personal information and content to the fullest extent possible on social networking sites.
Routinely monitor their own Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information on their own sites, and content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate.
Maintain appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship when interacting with patients online and ensure patient privacy and confidentiality is maintained.
Consider separating personal and professional content online.
Recognize that actions online and content posted can negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, and may even have consequences for their medical careers.
This is very good general advice for all of us. Let my experience be a reminder: use social media tools responsibly. They are very powerful. They allow us to build and sustain trusted relationships over time, across business, social and cultural boundaries, connecting at light speed. And in an instant, destroy them.
Today, like most days, I start my morning with a daily dose of social media scan – what is going on in the twitter sphere, LinkedIn groups and on the private communities where I am a member. I can't help but notice the vast difference between the two types of social media I receive: thought leadership content, which I quickly gravitate towards to fuel my day and work practice with innovative ideas and new concepts to think about, and all the other stuff: marketing plugs, teaser activities to drive traffic, come-ons to open sales doors. This is stuff I never read, and I doubt you do either.
Here's what's interesting about this phenomenon: when social media programs are poorly designed, they can actually reduce new business instead of facilitating it. There is a medical term called "iatrogenesis" -- an illness stemming from a bad medical treatment or intervention. Poorly-conceived or executed social media marketing programs will have a similar effect on the health of your business. A corporate Facebook account with few followers, a self-promotional twitter stream, a over-eager LinkedIn user can injure your brand and reduce sales.
Consider the flip side: many elegant and well-produced social media marketing efforts, centered on providing value and offering thought leadership content, can really make a difference to the brand and drive sales. While not claiming we are especially elegant, let me be explicit: the content we provide on the Leader Networks blog drives the majority of our new business.
We focus on being useful, creating helpful and actionable information so companies can succeed with social business programs. Our efforts drive most of our clients to call us. They see the Strategy Map, Social CRM, social media marketing training programs and great posts from thought leaders we trust, such as Don Bulmer of SAP. (And here's a shout-out of thanks to all who find value in our content!)
Our friends over at Bloom Group are experts at developing thought leadership content for big brands. They talk extensively about the power of thought leadership as a marketing channel. In a recent blog post, Bloom Group CEO Bob Buday writes:
Good marketing generates many leads. It also gets a firm recognized by companies that don’t need help at the moment but will in the future, what marketers call “market awareness.”
That's the value of good marketing. Great marketing produces an abundance of leads – many more than a firm can handle at the time. It also spawns widespread awareness. But great marketing generates two other things that are even more important: the discretion to work only with clients who share your vision and values, and the dignity of knowing you can stick to your principles.
Discretion and dignity can’t be quantified in revenue and profit. But for managers who take pride in their company and their work, discretion and dignity are far more useful for the soul.
Before your marketing department skips off to push information about a webinar or a new product or service out the virtual door, it's worth taking a moment to ask: Is this information adding value in the social sphere? Would anyone care about this tweet, post or blog? Is it simply self-serving? Does it demonstrate integrity and shepherd a new idea or point-of-view? Does it demonstrate trust and a deep awareness of the audience and business needs it tries to support?
And, simply put, would anyone want to say “thank you” for this information?
Social Media Leadership: Will Readers Thank You or Ignore You?
Just eight ingredients, 3 hours and a quarter. That's all you need to create social media soup.
Planning Time: 15 minutes Prep Time: 45 minutes Post-mortem Meeting Time: 2 hours Waiting Time: One quarter Serves: Fewer than you promised
Ingredients list:
Two or three fresh, young marketing or PR interns
One manager, unseasoned
Several bunches of stale documents or outdated white papers (toss in a webinar of any kind, if you have one)
One whiff of a plan for flavor
10-500 “followers” -- a random mix is fine
A dusting of emails
A cup of hope, preferably from the eternal springs
A grain of salt
Preheat oven and C-suite expectations to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Directions:
Step 1: Begin with a few interns from marketing or PR. Dice up some social media sites like Facebook or Twitter or whatever they are familiar with. Divvy them among the interns to create a “presence” online for your company.
Step 2: Add personal photos and profiles wherever you see fit online. Link back to those stale documents and outdated white papers you've been keeping in the back of the 'fridge to add some mature flavors to the mix. Just toss them together any old way - they're just for visual appeal.
Step 3: Add your marketing plan flavor of the moment: a lead generation campaign, buzz-gen, brand awareness, whatever. Make sure the documents and white papers aren't relevant so they don't overpower the plan.
Step 4: Blanch your followers by urging them to friend, like, link or spam as many people as possible to show your soup will be really, really, really yummy.
Step 5: Place in the oven and turn off the heat. Let it stew in the oven for weeks -- up to three months. Be sure not to open the pot, taste or stir at any point.
Step 6: When it's ready, open the pot and add seasoning to taste -- personal information or quirky non-professional updates broadcast on the social stream to jumpstart things.
Step 7: Ladle what's left into business plan bowls. Explain the small portions by re-defining the soup as "just an appetizer."
Step 8: Sprinkle with business justification success emails and serve to senior execs. Be prepared for "Ummmm...", "Ahhhhh...", and, best of all, "Oh no!" as you get responses from around the table.
For dessert, try pairing a PowerPoint presentation about social media success with your newly-updated resume.
While enjoying the results of a well-planned Thanksgiving holiday dinner last week, it occurred to me that many business firms seem to spend less time developing and executing a social media strategy to reach hundreds or thousands of prospects, partners, clients or customers than families spend planning, coordinating, preparing, serving and enjoying a large family holiday dinner. Voilà! Social Media Soup.
Just for fun, try adding up how many person-hours were involved in the creation of your Thanksgiving dinner social event. Include all the planning, coordination, prep, travel and "enjoyment" time before, during and after for everyone involved. Does your firm invest as much in its social media efforts?
How To Create Social Media Soup: A Recipe For Disaster
