Chapter 26

Laying the Foundations for a Social Business

Jed Hallam

Here we do not examine the importance of social business, or even its implications, but instead look at the critical stages to laying the foundations of a social business. From creating new job roles and setting up working groups, to changing culture and encouraging mistakes – becoming a social business won't happen overnight, but following these key stages will help to start the ball rolling.

Over the last few years the concept of “social business” has entered the zeitgeist – a combination of the rise in technology (leading to an increasingly demanding consumer) and an appetite for agility within businesses has led to this. What was initially seen as a communications tool for public relations and marketing practitioners in 2005 is now becoming an area of interest to the entire business, from the CEO to the IT department – this change has had an impact on everyone.

Then add the fact that the new generation of business leaders is “digitally native” (i.e. they've never experienced life without an internet connection) and it's easy to see that the future of business will be neither offline nor online – it will be integrated. I've discussed this extensively in the past, mainly in my book The Social Media Manifesto238 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), but a question that is repeatedly asked of me is: But how do we respond to this?

So, my purpose is not to explain the impact or rationale of social business, but instead to look at the two major challenges that businesses face in starting to incorporate social technology into their organization. However, before we do this, it's important to recognize two overlying trends – convergence and complexity. These are, fundamentally, the two themes that cause the greatest issue for businesses looking to change, and within both there are organizational and cultural challenges.

Convergence

I think I may have twisted Henry Jenkins's definition beyond the limits of its original incarnation, but in my mind convergence is the increasing integration between online and offline – and the next generation certainly doesn't see the boundaries between the two, they just don't make that distinction. The increasing access to always-on internet (primarily through mobile) now means that there's never been a smaller gap between online and offline – from Apple's iMessage to FourSquare deals – the social web has become ubiquitous in our offline lives.

This has two major impacts on the way in which an organization operates: externally and internally. Externally means that your customers expect to always have a point of contact – in the same way that it's annoying when the local Post Office closes at 5pm (well before you've inevitably left work) or when a washing machine breaks down the evening before a wedding – it'd be incredibly powerful for a customer service team to help fix the problem that very evening, rather than waiting for a plumber to visit a few days later.

The challenge is around creating an “always-on” culture that doesn't fatigue your employees – ensuring that “flexi-time” is actually flexible, so that when an employee is spending an entire Sunday speaking to someone influential on behalf of your business, they're compensated accordingly. In the same way, if your customer care team is helping someone to fix a product or explain a part of a service in the middle of the night, then this has a massive impact on the relationship with your consumer – and it should be recognized and encouraged.

This convergence has to be reflected in the organization too – with social technology and insight being built into the business. It is no longer acceptable to have a “digital strategy” when consumers no longer separate the two. A business isn't viewed by a consumer as multiple departments and third-party agencies – it's seen as a single brand, and we should endeavour to convey this – our employees shouldn't be putting forward a mixed brand message, and this is inevitable when “digital” is separated from business strategy.

There are two key steps to take when trying to build a single brand message:

1. Integrate online and offline strategy – creating a truly integrated strategy, and
2. Ensure that your internal communications messaging is clear. The same brand message should reach the human resources department as the message that reaches the marketing team.

Complexity

With the rise in technology we're also seeing a massive influx of data – data that has, so far (apart from a few exceptions), been kept within the marketing function of many organizations. Sentiment, share of voice, spread of messaging, complaints, queries – all of this data is usually circulated within the marketing department in a beautifully designed PowerPoint document at the end of each month.

However, what if this was circulated around the entire organization? What if different departments could ask for different sets of data to be collected? What about market data? Competitor data? Information from influencers on potential product or service developments? How can we use data to become more intelligent and responsive – across the whole organization? The obvious problem that this throws up is the sheer volume of data. Big Data.

The challenge with this new data is the complexity that surrounds it. How do we utilize the information in the most efficient way, without misinterpreting it? The major challenge at the heart of this issue is the quality of data – sentiment being the best example of the somewhat shaky quality of data that the social web throws up. With automated analysis of sentiment come error rates – sometimes as high as 60% – which is not reliable enough to base business decisions on. The key is to manually track data over long periods of time, conducting a balance of micro and macro analysis, and trying to spot emerging trends.

In The Social Media Manifesto, I suggest that this should be the responsibility of a new role within the organization – the Chief Data Officer. This position would look to pull social data into the organization, review and weight that data accordingly, then collate it with other business data, feeding it into the rest of the organization as appropriate.

On top of this external social data, there is also the internal social data that should be recognized and understood. Traditionally, businesses have “brand guardians”: people within the organization that are responsible for shaping brand perception and reputation. The social web has blown this apart, and now within a couple of minutes a disgruntled employee could have published content that spreads the globe – overriding any “positive spin” that may have been built.

Many organizations have responded to this by issuing totalitarian “social media guidelines”, but a more social way of approaching this issue would be to improve internal communications using social media, giving every employee an understanding of how your organization treats social technology, and understanding where the pockets of influence sit within your organization (outside of hierarchical structures). Combine this with your organization's external networks (say, if an analyst has a personal friendship with an influential journalist) and you can begin to build a bigger picture of your organization's “influence eco-system”.

Overriding this complexity isn't easy, however, setting up an internal working group that bridges the whole organization should help to begin to overcome the silos that exist within traditional business structures. In time, this working group can meet less and less frequently as the responsibility for social dissipates across the organization – eventually leading to it being an inherent part of everyone's roles and responsibilities. This type of cultural shift is incredibly important, but it won't happen overnight.

Becoming a social business takes time and, more importantly, leadership. While individual departments can push their thinking forwards, it remains siloed, and (eventually) causes more problems when your organization is trying to create the single brand impressions that are so valuable to consumers. With strong leadership and a thorough understanding of the implications of what social business actually means and entails, the whole business can work together to help create that sort of culture.

As promised at the start of this chapter, I believe that there are five key steps to becoming a social business. While they are by no means the entire process, they are five stages and should begin to prepare your organization for becoming more social and innovative.

1. Appoint someone within the organization to understand the data – the job title doesn't matter, but the responsibility does. Understanding the validity of different types of social data and the impact its insights have is incredibly important – and moving that data between departments. As Craig Mundie, head of research and strategy at Microsoft, said in a recent Economist article: “data are becoming the new raw material of business: an economic input almost on a par with capital and labour”.239 This data shouldn't be overlooked or assigned to a graduate or intern.
2. Create a working group across the business with a senior member of staff from each department involved. This will allow the social data collected to be fed into the appropriate departments and used as efficiently as possible. This needs to be led by a senior member of the leadership team and, ideally, involve the entire c-suite – this ensures that the transition is being taken seriously, and that its impact is being measured based on business results, rather than meaningless “vanity” metrics such as “buzz”. This team should have regular (weekly) meetings to assess the progress of each department, share best practice, and help to then produce a case study for communicating this process to the rest of the business.
3. It's important that everyone within the organization understands that in a converged world, “social media” is not the responsibility of a single person. It is everyone's responsibility and your consumers expect your organization to behave that way. As part of the working group's responsibilities, communicating to the wider organization is key. If your business is to create a single brand impression, then providing every member of the organization with an understanding of “the vision” (I hate myself for writing that phrase, rest assured) is part of that process. It also allows employees outside of the working group to contribute ideas – always remember that innovation doesn't come from a job title, it comes from experience and secondary knowledge.
4. Allow people to make mistakes – an organization that is scared of failure won't break any new ground or become innovative – but provide a framework (think Google's 20% time). Innovation isn't limited to a single department. While this tends to conjure images of bean bags in reception and all-business paintballing, it shouldn't be viewed as an activity to appease Generation Y – it's an important culture to create that facilitates ideas, engendering innovation, rather than encouraging people to wear novelty t-shirts and high-five each other every morning. Innovation is an integral part of any business that wants to sustain itself and grow beyond the first three years – encourage your employees to listen to your consumers (using social technology) and not be afraid to make suggestions and you'll have the whole organization thinking about the future of your business, not just the CEO.
5. Create an open framework for using your network – both inside and outside of the organization. Influence doesn't spread from one department or one consumer group – it's everywhere. So learn to listen to it, and use it appropriately. This is not intended to be a Big Brother exercise – far from it – instead this is about understanding the power of your employees, giving them access to your consumers (and potential new consumers) and helping them to spread the brand message. This works in a number of stages: (1) understanding how your employees communicate with each other outside of the hierarchical structure of the business, and (2) understanding how they communicate with those outside of the organization (this sounds more difficult than it is – it could be a simple Facebook application that allows you to view the secondary and tertiary networks of your business).

Becoming a social business isn't limited to having a Twitter account (just take a walk around Burberry's Regent St store), and it's certainly not limited to having “buzz” around your products and services (just ask the O2 social media customer service team). It's about true integration with your consumers; it's about producing better products and services, and being more reactive to the needs of your consumers. Becoming a social business isn't a short-term process, but it will certainly reap long-term rewards. From becoming more engaged with your employees, to over-delivering on product and service development – and all this combines to drive down costs and drive up profit.

Biography

Jed Hallam (@jedhallam) is the Head of Social Strategy at Mindshare, and author of the best-selling Social Media Manifesto. Amongst Jed's clients are Three, first direct, and Mazda. Prior to joining Mindshare, he was the Social Director at VCCP, working on O2, Coca-Cola, Unilever, and McDonalds. Jed helped to launch and build Wolfstar Consultancy (one of the UK's first social media consultancies) where, in his capacity of Head of Innovation, he worked with global clients such as GlaxoSmithKline, Discovery Channel, PayPal, and Sony Ericsson. Jed is recognized as one of the most influential marketing bloggers in the world by AdAge, and he regularly speaks at conferences around the world on social business strategy. He has been awarded many PR and Marketing awards, as well as contributing numerous essays to popular marketing books.

Notes

238J. Hallam, The Social Media Manifesto, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, ISBN 1137271418

239Data, data everywhere, Kenneth Cukier, Economist, 27 February 2010

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