Archive for the “Strategy” Category

Customers Are Smarter and Want A New Relationship | The New Economics of Business Reputation

While preparing to launch Social Business Services for B2B Sales in January 2012, I have been engaged in its Ecosystem Audit. I have plumbed online conversations about B2B Sales and Marketing adoption of social business (erstwhile social media). I have been struck by a recurring realization: a large part of Marketing and Sales as we know them is significantly out of alignment with B2B customers. Social business is permeating customer networks throughout the economy and changing customer behavior and expectations. This has created a rare opportunity for B2B marketing and sales people who understand and respond ahead of the market. If I’m right, this could be one of the most important posts you read this year.

Two quick examples of misalignment: one of Marketing’s underlying assumptions is that it is not economically feasible to have large-scale one-on-one customer conversations, so marketing must achieve scale through secondary research (and remain isolated from the customer). One of Sales’ key assumptions is that it must rely on primary one-on-one prospect/customer communications to drive value. Both of these are increasingly false, so I’ll drill down on them before offering practical recommendations for how Marketing and Sales can explore social business at a new level. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently participated in a discussion in which we debated how size of brand or firm should affect social business strategy, so I’ll dive deeper into the issues here because they are an excellent opportunity to show how strategy and execution are connected and how they differ. I’ll compare how startups and enterprises approach four areas of executing a social business initiative: team, collaboration, learning and scaling. Read the rest of this entry »

2011 will be remembered as the year “social media” fell by the wayside, strategy became a recognized prerequisite for serious efforts, and “social business” began displacing it in boardrooms’ mindshare. “Social media,” which usually tries to use social technologies to talk at people, has been the predominant “first use” of socialtech because marketing drives most social initiatives, and marketers “communicate,” i.e. push content, to their targets. When they “listen,” they use limited legacy processes such as focus groups, email marketing, data mining and online surveys. However, none of these scratch the real itch because they emphasize the company asking individuals structured questions; they don’t allow customer to customer interaction, which is ten times more illuminating because it is spontaneous and customer-centric.

Socialtech gets there, but marketers are ambivalent about it because it means a loss of control. And more profits and career growth for marketers, but they have to let go first. It’s a leap of faith, but imminently doable.

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If your business involves physical locations, geosocial applications represent a tantalizing possibility: people can talk about their presence and experience at one of your locations and, potentially, friends of their friends that have the same interest (or thirst). It adds long tail digital grease to conditions on the ground at a retail location.

Pithy insights on major Web 2.0 transformation driver: reflecting on the significance of Facebook Connect and Google Friendconnect, which offer Web 2.0 single signon services

Drive customer engagement and brand value by focusing on the experience of using your product or service. This is the manna of word of mouth and social computing conversations.

Summary of the Social Networking Conference “Grand Panel”: privacy, innovation, community, strategy

Emerging good practices for social networking at Hewlett-Packard, from Angela LoSasso, a full-time social networking manager.. thoughts on working in B2B and B2C contexts

How Wal-Mart’s employee social network addresses a 2 million member global workforce and seeks to draw them into an online community that adds value to the employee experience

How Digg uses video and physical events to strengthen and grow its online community–and marketing clout: the strategy behind Diggnation, Digg Town Halls, Bigg Digg Shindiggs and Digg Meetups.