Section I: Understanding the External and Internal Landscape
This section of the book is about understanding the external marketplace—how your customers interact with media content and how your business can change to adapt, stay competitive, and blow your competitors out of the water.
Before making any dramatic changes to your business, you must first do a complete analysis of the external and internal factors your business faces. It’s wise that you get a complete, 360-degree view of the customer ecosystem and understand the factors that affect your customers’ behaviors. Multiple screens and devices, mass amounts of content, media, and marketing messages command their attention every day. Also, many consumers have CADD (Customer Attention Deficit Disorder), meaning they can’t pay attention to any one thing at a given time. They are multitasking and consuming mass amounts of content on multiple devices with unpredictable behavior patterns.
Internally, it’s important to understand how a social business strategy can help your organization change the way you think, act, operate, and communicate when it comes to social media, content marketing, and general communication principles. This section not only gives you a complete view of your target consumers, but it also helps you understand the fundamentals of a social business strategy, which is needed to take your brand and transform it into a media company.
Chapter 1: Understanding the Social Customer and the Chaotic World We Live In
There is a content and media surplus in the market today. And, most consumers suffer from attention deficit. This chapter describes the unpredictable nature of customers and how difficult it is for brands to reach them with targeted and relevant content:
• We Live in a Multi-Screen Economy
• CADD (Content Attention Deficit Disorder) Is Among Us
• Relevance Is the Key to Content Consumption
• The Customer Journey Is Dynamic
• Business Objectives Stay the Same Despite the Changes Externally
• Vendor Spotlight—Social Flow
Chapter 2: Defining Social Business Strategy and Planning
For any change to happen in your company, you will need a calculated plan that can facilitate change effectively. This chapter gives a comprehensive overview of social business strategy and how it can be implemented to facilitate the transition from brand to media company:
• The Social Media “Bright and Shiny” Object
• Social Media Has Caused Internal Business Challenges
• The Three Pillars of Social Business: People, Process, and Platforms
• The Social Business Value Creation Model
• The Differences Between a Social Brand and a Social Business