1. Human Capital, Evolved
A CEO doesn’t wake up one morning with the realization that he needs to transform his organization and evolve into a social business. He has more important things to worry about, like increasing market share, revenues, shareholders, and board meetings. The transformation into a social business happens organically—often in silos—and in response to the social customer.
The social customer is nothing new. Since the beginning of modern business, consumers have been sharing their thoughts, opinions, joys, fears, and criticisms with their friends, family, community groups, and even strangers about the brands they love and the ones they hate. The difference today is that these opinions are now amplified on the social web and also making their way into the search engine results.
The social customer is forcing business to operationalize social media internally in an effort to be more human externally. A social business deals with the internal transformation of an organization and addresses key factors such as organizational models, culture, internal communications, governance, training, employee activation, global and technology expansion, team dynamics, and establishing a measurement philosophy.
First and foremost, an organization must focus on the internal fabric that makes up its business DNA—culture.
Driving Cultural Change in the Social Business
The evolution of a social business requires a paradigm shift. Employees at every level, starting at the very top, need to change their thinking, embrace new technologies, and shift their focus from sending marketing messages to building relationships. A social business is one that is open and transparent, communicates internally with stakeholders, and looks beyond organizational silos. A social business uses and adopts new tools and technologies to communicate with customers more effectively. It even changes business models, products, and processes based on collective intelligence of community feedback.
A social business forces cultural change. This happens when a company truly cares about the community and wants to meet the demands of the social customer. Why? Because social customers are voicing their opinions online on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and many other channels about the products they buy and use every day. These customers are influential and, in some cases, have large audiences.
Many times, cultural change is based on a “push” model. Business leaders want to change the organization (process, internal structures, behaviors, culture, values, and so on) and expect employees to follow suit. Resistance to this type of change is normal. Employees undoubtedly will rush to defend the status quo if they feel their security, job status, or function is threatened. This naturally creates cynicism and resistance and, in some cases, makes it difficult for senior management to move an organization forward in any capacity, much less fully evolve into a social business.
Companies that are using Enterprise 2.0 technologies (collaboration tools such as Yammer, Hearsay Social, and internal social networks powered by applications such as Lithium) are more likely to be open to a “pull” approach to cultural change. Change initiatives come from the top down and meet in the middle from a bottom-up approach. The great news is that these social tools are already becoming a driving force to change. The challenge arises in certain organizations when employees don’t know how to use these tools or, worse, are prohibited from using them because they’re against company policy.
The drive to become a social business requires a cultural shift that starts at the core of the organization, with the leaders who represent the brand. If the entire organization can be convinced that a smart business is a social business that builds processes, infrastructures, and programs with the customer in mind, it will begin to see positive change both internally and externally.
Figure 1.1 illustrates that people, process, and technology are the essential DNA to facilitate the evolution of a social business.
Figure 1.1 A social business deals with the internal dynamics of every organization.
A social business deals with the internal dynamics of an organization that can be grouped in three different categories. The first category deals with the company’s most valuable asset, the human capital of the organization. It addresses the need to drive organizational change in an effort to break down organizational silos and get internal teams to communicate. It also involves the importance of achieving executive support; either the CEO or someone close to him or her who will champion social media adoption from the top down.
The second category deals with process. This simply means that organizations need to put processes and frameworks in place to manage the chaos that exists from behind the firewall. Training, social media guidelines, moderation policies, and global expansion must be wrapped in various governance models that ensure message consistency, protects the organization, and also empowers its employees.
The third category deals with technology. Organizations have to invest in platforms that facilitate internal collaboration, community building, social listening, measurement, and social relationship management. Social CRM also plays a significant role within this pillar. The challenge is that there are so many technology platforms to choose from. Organizations need to think strategically before making the investment to ensure the technology can scale and integrate with applications that already exist in the enterprise.
Tearing Down the Silos for Organizational Growth
One of the biggest challenges of cultural change is tearing down organizational silos. An organizational silo occurs when employees within various departments or business units work in a vacuum without considering the impact of their actions or inactions on the entire organization.
The end result is lack of communication and integration, displaced goals, and no clear vision. Naturally, this creates customer confusion and conflict between departments. For example, in many companies, marketing and PR teams rarely communicate with each other. And the irony of social media is that both of these job functions may require the use of external tools such as Twitter to engage with customers. If these two teams aren’t talking internally or aren’t integrated, they will confuse customers with multiple marketing messages. This is a common scenario in business today. Conflict and chaos arise when there’s no clear definition of the goals and no plan for who is actually responsible for social media.
Many companies today are not only incapable of communicating internally with each other, but they’re also unwilling and often refuse to share knowledge. It’s a form of job protection, ego, or simply ignorance because people normally resist change. It’s uncomfortable.
Yahoo! is one example of a company that operates in silos. Perhaps this is one reason why Yahoo! has been struggling over the last few years to regain relevance and search share, launch new products, and innovate with the social web. Each product group (Mail, Answers, Search, the Home Page, Groups, OMG, and so on) is its own self-sustaining business with isolated marketing and PR teams, finance, product management, and engineering. Rarely, if ever, do they collaborate or launch integrated campaigns in the market place. Even worse, most employees often hear news about product launches, corporate campaigns, and even layoffs from third-party sources such as Techcrunch. So it’s not just about silos but poor communication from senior management.
Of course, people aren’t always the ones responsible for creating silos. Isolated systems and old technologies, dated applications, and 20-year-old processes exist that keep valuable information, workflows, and transactions from moving freely and efficiently throughout an organization. Companies originally created silos to accomplish various tasks: sell products, provide customer support, advertise their products, and so on. The lack of knowledge sharing exists because there’s no governance or guidance on how these functions can work together to increase efficiencies, save money, and, more importantly, provide a more positive customer experience.
Now with the rise of social customers, who have no problem expressing their opinions online, it’s even more important for internal teams to communicate—not just to share knowledge and have a conversation, but to meet and exceed customer expectations. This is the core reason companies need to move from being merely a business that sometimes engages in social media to being a real social business.
Data confirms that consumers want to have ongoing conversations with brands. According to a study by Cone in 2009, 78 percent of consumers use social media to interact with companies in different ways, up 20 points from 2008. Unfortunately, some companies are not doing a very good job at it, especially the ones that operate in a vacuum.
For example, based on the above data and common knowledge in the space, there is a conversation happening between a brand and its customers. And as in most relationships, conversations need to evolve, grow, and add value. The last thing customers want to do is have a fragmented conversation with a company in which they must constantly reiterate their needs on social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, a company blog, and a toll-free customer service line. Different groups then end up telling the customer the same thing over and over again (usually because internal teams don’t collaborate), and the problem never gets solved. The end result is a very unhappy customer who usually tells others about her experience.
Silos create equally dangerous internal situations. In many large organizations, the corporate communications team is responsible for monitoring external conversations. Many of these conversations are related to customer support and products, and much of the feedback from customers never gets sent to the appropriate teams. How can a support department address customer issues—or, better yet, change processes to actually fix the problem—if it doesn’t know these conversations even took place? Just as important, how can a product organization use the collective intelligence of the community to innovate products if employees aren’t privy to these valuable conversations?
Plenty of upset customers have posted on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook about experiences dialing into customer service only to be told that there’s no record of their account or purchase information and then transferred from extension to extension without resolution. Unfortunately, this is a common scenario that leaves many executives shaking their head and shrugging their shoulders in amazement that they’re unable to satisfy their most important asset: the customer.
By tearing down silos that prevent communication, organizations can solve a multitude of challenges, including these:
• Customer frustration
• Customer retention
• Inconsistent marketing messages
• Multiple contests or marketing campaigns that address the same customer at the same time
• Multiple branded or unbranded Facebook fan pages and Twitter profiles
• Cost inefficiencies due to duplicated effort
• Multiple contracts signed with the same vendor
• Inability to scale programs because of a lack of integration and resources
Tearing down organizational silos isn’t easy to do. It requires a firm commitment from senior-level management across all business units (marketing, public relations, operations, engineering, information technology, human resources, and privacy) and a cultural transformation that empowers employees of all levels to do what’s already a significant part of their DNA: be social and communicate!
Part of an effective internal communications strategy is to be open, honest, and transparent about mistakes made in social media. This is the only way an organization can grow, learn, and adjust their external communication programs.
Communicating Successful Failures
Companies need to get smarter. If they want to integrate social into every fabric of their business, they need to work through the silos, change their culture, and start communicating with each other, even if it means admitting that they screwed up along the way. From a pure social media perspective, successful failure at many large enterprises involves removing the fear of failure and replacing it with genuine encouragement to try new things, fail intelligently, and learn from mistakes.
Failing gracefully can bring about these benefits:
• Mitigated risk of duplicated failures
• Reduced anxiety
• Improved communication
• A more open intra-/cross-departmental dialogue
• More calculated risk taking in the future
Also keep in mind that failure, which will happen sooner or later, offers a unique opportunity to display the corporate character behind the firewall. For example, in early November 2010, rumors quickly spread across Twitter that a Qantas Airlines jet airliner had crashed on Batam Island in Indonesia.
Qantas Airlines: No Crash, Despite Lots of Rumors
After an emergency landing, rumors of a Qantas Airlines plane crash circulated unchecked. Tweets such as these left little reason to doubt what was being said:
@oneclammy: Plane crash off Indonesia, speculation that it could have been a Qantas jet headed for Singapore
@smillavtr: According to early reports from TV and Twitter it’s a Qantas airliner which crash at Batam
@3Newseditor: Reports that a Qantas plane may be involved in a crash in Indonesia http://ow.ly/349sJ. Images of the nonexistent crash also showed up on social sharing sites, with one Tweet reading:
@erincopp: Not liking photos of the QANTAS plane crash. Way to fuel my fear of flying
Despite the rumors, no such crash had happened. A Qantas Airbus A380 had experienced engine trouble and subsequently made an emergency landing in Singapore. The Qantas Twitter accounts remained largely silent, and PR teams issued no statement or release addressing the rumor. Qantas was obviously either unaware of what was going on or unable to act on it because of a lack of a crisis communication plan, escalation protocol, or both.
Obviously, either Qantas has a problem with its crisis communication process or it doesn’t take Twitter seriously enough to calm the public. The company eventually issued a statement about 12 hours after the first tweet, but that’s not fast enough in today’s real-time environment.
The question remains: Did Qantas learn from this communication failure? Is the company now listening to the social web and addressing small issues before they get blown out of proportion? Does it have a crisis communication plan in place in case this happens again? If it does, then this is an example of a successful failure because it forced the organization to change.
Generally speaking, most people are willing to forgive if they perceive understanding, transparency, and even repentance in a company. And often these mistakes serve a platform for changing brand perception, as with the case of Domino’s Pizza.
Domino’s Pizza YouTube Crisis
In April 2009, two Domino’s Pizza employees filmed themselves doing disgusting things to a pizza before serving it to a customer. Then they posted the clip on YouTube as a prank for the world to watch. In just two short days, the world did watch—and that video had more than a million views. The conversation created a groundswell of anger on Twitter.
This was a major crisis for the Domino’s brand, and the prank severely damaged the company’s reputation. According to a study from research firm YouGov, the perception of Domino’s food quality went from positive to negative almost overnight.
Domino’s didn’t respond for almost a week. Patrick Doyle, president of Dominos, USA, issued a sincere apology on YouTube and explained that the two employees in question had been fired and charged with a felony. Even more interesting, the prank caused Domino’s to change their business model. According to Doyle’s video, Domino’s is now reexamining all its hiring processes to ensure that the company is hiring quality candidates. Domino’s is also bringing in auditors more regularly to ensure that each franchise is as clean as humanly possible and that the food maintains high quality standards.
A few short months after this incident, Domino’s began to address many complaints about the quality of the food and openly admitted to millions that it had failed to deliver on its core value proposition: a quality pizza. In December 2009, Domino’s announced that it had changed its core recipe. And the buzz on the Internet is that it’s pretty darn good.
It’s safe to assume that Domino’s is an expert on communicating successful failures because it listened to the social customer, communicated those concerns internally, and then changed its business.
Motrin: Does Anyone Listen to Baby-Wearing Moms?
With a slick new ad campaign by Motrin targeting baby-toting mothers ready for launch in November 2008, the folks at Johnson & Johnson probably couldn’t have imagined the amount of free press they would soon get. Unfortunately, it was all negative. Despite efforts to reach out to moms and literally “feel their back pain,” Motrin put its foot in its mouth with the new ad (see Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2 Motrin had no idea that its ad campaign had inadvertently offended many customers.
Shortly after launching the ad on a Friday, an outcry of anger against the brand arose on Twitter and YouTube. Somehow the campaign design had failed to consider message sensitivity; the video seemed to deliver a back-handed criticism of mothers who carry babies in backpacks and Baby Bjorn–style carriers. A quick search on YouTube for “Motrin Moms” reveals several videos posted by angry moms expressing their feelings about the ad.
To make matters worse, Motrin’s apology took about a week to deliver and appeared unauthentic and meaningless. The brand simply posted a page with a few paragraphs on its Web site. Nonetheless, the video was taken down and the online outrage eventually died down.
It’s easy to criticize Motrin for not having a crisis plan of action or for not monitoring Twitter for mentions of the brand. Many companies still struggle with this. However, when Motrin did find out about the online groundswell, the brand probably should have taken that opportunity to not only apologize to the community, but also attempt to get to know the moms it was trying to market its products to.
Listening to the social web isn’t hard to do. Marketers can use a variety of listening tools to get a pulse of the conversation. What’s hard is creating a plan or workflow so that when a crisis does happen, teams are ready to respond quickly, efficiently, and authentically to the social customer.
A referenced example of learning from the concept of successful failures is The Global Social Media Marketing Group within Silicon Valley networking company Cisco. This organization operates as a global social resource to Cisco and hosts a monthly Social Media Roundtable discussing, among other topics, recent successes and failures. Any failures and the learnings taken from them are examined, discussed, and shared in a nonthreatening environment that truly values the newfound understandings. The end result is a more intelligent organization.
Gaining Executive Sponsorship to Facilitate Change
As an organization changes and evolves—and topples its silos—it’s important for someone at the top to be championing this effort. Embracing social media internally involves more than simply saying “We want to join the conversation” and then investing a couple hundred thousand dollars on a Facebook application promoting the next product. It’s a cultural shift that starts at the core of the organization, with the leaders who represent the brand.
The most effective way to do this—and to get everyone behind social media—is to have one or more employees lead the way. It can be a midlevel manager, the CEO of a company, or someone close to the CEO’s office. As an internal spokesperson, this person needs to be passionate about customers and must believe in the prospect of an integrated social media plan that spans all business units and marketing channels. He or she needs to speak with authority and serve as the change agent for the company.
Ultimately, getting an executive to sponsor social media efforts both internally and externally can have a bigger impact than choosing a lesser-known individual. An executive’s built-in credibility and authority helps gain buy-in and support for new programs, culture change, collaboration, and often times budget. Even more important, this person can communicate program successes and failures to other business leaders, which might be otherwise impossible due to resource availability.
Gaining executive sponsorship sometimes happens organically. In many cases, business leaders are already personally engaged in social media and don’t need to be convinced that the company needs to shift its strategy to meet the demands of the social customer. Other times, front-line managers who are actually executing programs need to persuade, convince, and sometime coerce upper management to start thinking differently. They need to be equipped with case studies, program successes, quantitative and qualitative metrics, and return on investment (ROI) projections to actually build a case. A series of small wins might even be needed to fully convince management to make more of an investment in social media.
For example, the Cisco Global Social Media Marketing group was able to find an executive sponsor named Carlos Dominguez who believes in the value of social media for building long-lasting relationships with customers. Dominguez reports to the office of the CEO and is often face-to-face with John Chambers, the Cisco president and CEO. He attends many events with high-level exposure both internally to the company and externally to the industry. He uses Twitter and blogs, and one of the favorite things listed on his biography on Cisco.com is “social media.”
Dominguez is one reason Cisco is transforming the business-to-business (B2B) landscape with social media. He’s a willing evangelist and is passionate about changing Cisco from the inside out so that the company can communicate more effectively externally.
Activating Employees to Engage in Social Media
When management is committed to investing in social media and the company has an evangelist spreading the gospel of social greatness, it’s time to activate employees to engage externally with customers.
Every year, Edelman conducts its annual Trust Barometer, a survey that measures the level of trust that informed publics have in non-government organizations (NGOs), business, government, and media (see Figure 1.3). Not surprisingly. at the bottom of the list is advertising and corporate marketing. Individuals don’t trust marketing messages. At the top of the list, the most trusted resources are industry analysts and articles in business publications. What’s interesting, ranking at number three, was conversations with employees. Yes, individuals have a high degree of trust in employees of companies.
Figure 1.3 According to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, consumers put a surprising amount of trust and credibility in employees of companies (www.edelman.com/trust).
It’s important to realize that humans relate to other humans. It’s ingrained in the core of personal relationships. Not often can a brand truly build strong customer relationships without some level of humanity. And humanity means having real employees interacting with real customers.
A study facilitated by Cone Research, titled 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study (www.coneinc.com/content1182), showed that 55 percent of consumers want ongoing conversations with companies and brands. The study investigated how brands and consumers interact and how consumers want brands to engage with them. The results were astounding. In addition to the 55 percent who wanted an ongoing interaction, 89 percent of respondents said they would feel more loyal to a brand if they were invited to take part in a feedback group.
A year later, this number went up almost 30 points. A 2009 study titled 2009 Consumer New Media Study (www.coneinc.com/content2601) found that 85 percent of Americans who use social media think companies should have an active presence in the social media universe. Even more interesting is that those users actually want interaction with these brands. Not yet convinced? These additional data points clearly illustrate what consumers want from a brand:
Out of the 85 percent of people who want companies to be present in social media:
• 34 percent want companies to actively interact with them.
• 51 percent want companies to interact with them as needed or by request.
• 8 percent think companies should be only passively involved in social media.
• 7 percent think companies shouldn’t be involved at all.
The data is clear. Consumers want to have conversations with companies they care about. They don’t want to engage with corporate entities or logos, either—they want real, live human interaction and two-way dialogue with employees. And this can only be achieved with another person.
Fundamentals of Community Management
One way in which companies are activating their employees is through community managers. A community manager should be an employee of a company; in most companies, this person usually manages an editorial calendar for a blog/community, a Twitter account, and various third-party social media channels such as a Facebook fan page or a YouTube account. The best community managers usually come from the product or customer support organizations because they either know the product well or know how to resolve conflict well. Community managers play an important role because they are on the front lines of communication.
Community managers might also be responsible for managing a social listening platform such as Radian6 and for filtering/assigning conversations to others in the business unit for a proper response. They may even organize in-person events (or town halls) to get feedback from the community. Community managers are the face of the brand within social media, and conversations are at the core of their job.
Consider these top three best practices when managing a social business community:
1. Embed within the community.
Community managers must embed themselves within the community they serve and become integrated within the community.
The result is valuable data and insights collected from community members and reported back to management. This usually includes feedback on how to improve the company’s products, services, or business processes.
Community managers will succeed if they are authentic and leave their egos at the door. Community members are smart and can see right through egos—and many times they’ll voice their opinions publicly if they are marketed to.
2. Focus on community building first, monetizing second.
The biggest mistake a community manager can make is to start screaming one-way marketing messages at the rest of the community. The members will do one of two things: either leave the community or criticize the company publicly.
Unfortunately, situations like this do happen. Brands and small businesses create groups, fan pages, or communities for the sole reason of making money. Some sales might result, but these groups will find little to no long-term benefit, much less repeat sales. Remember the old saying, “It takes more to acquire a new customer than to sell to an existing one.”
The most effective strategy to drive revenue for a business is to build the community, earn their trust, and delicately ask for permission to communicate marketing messages—wise advice from entrepreneur, author, and marketing genius Seth Godin.
Twitter is a great example of a growing company that spent almost four years just building its community and improving its product. Not once did Twitter introduce new functionality or services with the sole intent of making money. Not until early in 2010 did the company begin introducing new programs for advertisers in the form of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.
3. Don’t just listen—act.
Yes, the hot topic today is listening, and tools for that are commoditized with new applications that launch about every month. Building strong customer loyalty isn’t just about listening, though—it’s also about acting upon community feedback. The challenge for every business in social media is to eventually “become believable.” And that means winning consumer trust.
Smart businesses aren’t only listening to their customers, they’re innovating and changing their products and services as a result of their feedback. For example, in late 2009, eBay (an Edelman client) launched PayPal Student Accounts, which stemmed from continued frustrations among customers who wanted family accounts. Also in 2009, Intel simply gave away T-shirts to a community that was begging for them. Starbucks (another Edelman client), one of the pioneers of this, not only solved a serious business problem of coffee spillage, but also changed the customer experience for millions by creating the Starbucks Splash Stick in 2008 which prevents coffee from spilling out of their lids. This started as an idea posted by a customer at the My Starbucks Idea site.
These three brands share more in common than just the fact that they’re listening to their customers. They were also cited in a recent study by Altimeter Group in conjunction with Wetpaint titled Deep Brand Engagement Correlates with Financial Performance. The report examined the top 50 brands and measured their depth of engagement with consumers on the Web; then it looked at their financial performance for the last 12 months. The analysis showed that the brands that were more engaged on a variety of channels grew an average of 18 percent in revenue during the reporting period. In comparison, the companies that were least engaged suffered an average 6 percent decline in revenue. Starbucks, eBay, and Intel were all listed among the top 10 brands. This isn’t an exact science, but consider it food for thought for brands that are considering engaging online.
In these examples, the noted brands listened to the conversation and then made actionable decisions to transform their organizations. The feedback has proven that those decisions were the right ones.
Establishing Continuity in the Global Landscape
In many large enterprise organizations, communicating is difficult without some level of governance. Global governance is a way to create accuracy, consistency, and repeatability in a process when teams are spread out far beyond just a functional group or business unit. The ability to work with global teams becomes imperative when establishing this governance and developing strategies to communicate with the social customer. In social media, this means establishing a formal set of guidelines that instruct sanctioned communicators on how best to represent the company externally. Guidelines and process documentation can include up-to-date lists of approved social media vendors, processes for being trained in social media or launching a new Facebook page, social media playbooks—including feature templates for building social media strategies, press releases. or even decision trees for crisis communication and PR disasters.
Some organizations are creating Digital Conversation Guides and distributing them to global teams in preparation for product launches, marketing initiatives, and in some cases events. A Digital Conversation Guide is a document that includes the following:
• A high-level overview of the product, event, or initiative to include important messaging; for example, product name, availability, functional specs, and featured speakers if it’s an event
• Important dates; for example, when the press release hits the wires
• A list of assets to include important URLS, links to videos, blog posts, and online FAQ tagged with a consistent URL shortener like Bit.ly
• Agreed-upon hashtags, the corporate Twitter profile, as well as any other Twitter profiles that may be relevant
• Sample Facebook status updates and Tweets
The following is an example of a digital conversation guide of a company introducing a new laptop into the global marketplace:
Hello Social Media Practitioners & Community Managers,
On Monday, October 23, we are bringing to market Gadget—our new, ultrathin laptop which will be available in North America, Germany, UK, Spain, and Mexico. The Gadget will be available in most APAC markets in 2012. The press release hits the wires at promptly at 9:00 AM EST. Please wait to share any product-related information until after the press release goes live.
ACTION: Please help and support this product launch by amplifying it across your social networks and communities. Please remember to use your own voice and personal experience with the product.
When communicating within your own micro communities, please remember the following:
• The Gadget is a high-performance and ultra-thin laptop that delivers a brilliant High Definition experience
• The Gadget outperforms all competitors with 12 hours of battery life
• The Gadget is perfect for the student, mom, and business professional who expects a high-quality video experience and long battery life
Assets:
• Blog post announcing the launch—http://bit.ly/jAoyR1
• Video Demos on Gadget.com—http://bit.ly/jAoyR2
• FAQ—http://bit.ly/jAoyR3
• Be sure to follow @gadget on Twitter and join/share the Facebook Fan
Page—http://bit.ly/jAoyR4
• Hashtag: #gadget
Sample Tweets (please use your own tone/voice):
• So excited that we just launched the Gadget! http://bit.ly/jAoyR1—now I can watch 12 hours of HD movies! #gadget
• I travel all the time. With the new Gadget laptop, I can work on presentations during the entire flight http://bit.ly/jAoyR1 #gadget
• Interested in the Gadget laptop? Watch these cool demos! http://bit.ly/jAoyR1 #gadget
Sample Facebook Status Updates (please use your own tone/voice):
• Friends and Family—as you all know I have been working heads down on launching this new product! I am so excited that we just launched the Gadget! http://bit.ly/jAoyR1—now I can watch 12 hours of HD movies!
• Interested in the new Gadget laptop? Watch these cool demos on and join our fan page to get exclusive video content! http://bit.ly/jAoyR1
This simple email communication is an excellent way to communicate with global teams and get everyone on the same page for a specific product launch. It ensures a level of message consistency and also empowers employees who are sanctioned to engage externally with social media to communicate using their own voices.
To establish global continuity, it’s important to facilitate bi-weekly or monthly social media integration meetings. It’s imperative that global teams come prepared with case studies and programs to share best practices, key learnings, and successful failures, as well as discussions to improve collaboration and communication between the teams. Social media integration meetings also present an opportunity for corporate teams to pass down important messages that involve corporate governance initiatives. An email is effective; but an email, a collaboration forum, and consistent communication is more effective.
Standard Organizational Models for the Social Business
The external nature of social media is causing organizations to change the way they are organized internally. Entire textbooks, case studies, whitepapers, and dissertations have been written on this subject.
Two standard organization models exist in many companies today: centralized and decentralized. Figure 1.4 illustrates a centralized organizational model. This type of organization often operates in silos with the social media function usually reporting into corporate marketing along with corporate communications and marketing (web, channel, and retail). In this case, the strategy and execution is managed and governed without much collaboration with other business units, such as product organizations, customer support, and various geographies.
Figure 1.4 A centralized organization operates in silos and reports into corporate marketing.
Organizations such as this usually are without social media guidelines or governance models, and rarely share best practices with other functional teams.
This puts the teams outside of corporate marketing in a bind, especially if they want to use social media to engage with their customers. Centralized marketing organizations wrapped around silos and without governance models are bad for business because corporate marketing is silencing the teams that are closer to the product and customers.
A decentralized organization has other challenges. Figure 1.5 illustrates that the social media function reports into various business units and geographies. Depending on the company, there may or may not be a social media team reporting into corporate marketing. Many decentralized organizations are a natural result of silos; various business units, namely product organizations and customer support, start using social media to communicate to their customers, troubleshoot customers’ support issues, and even find sales leads. Because there is no governance, training, or internal communication, many of these business units are engaging blindly and some are making mistakes. Internally, this is causing a confusion of roles and responsibilities, with little to no collaboration. Organizations conflict because there is no clarity on who actually owns social media as a job function.
Figure 1.5 A decentralized organization also operates in silos and social media is managed by a variety of different business units.
Externally, the end result is that the messages are often inconsistent with the company brand, and fragmented messages cause customer confusion. Also lost is the opportunity to partner with other business units to amplify the messages.
The best-case scenario is when an organization realizes the importance of social media and creates an effective model internally to address it. Figure 1.6 is an example of a fully collaborative social organization.
Figure 1.6 A fully collaborative social organization empowers all business units and employees to engage and also has a governing body.
In this case, there is a Social Media Center of Excellence (COE) team that reports into corporate marketing. The COE serves as a governing body and is responsible for creating governance models, facilitating best practice sharing, and training. Many times the COE is creating the brand strategy for social media. This type of organization is empowering and amplifying employees to engage externally regardless of their job function or what business unit they report into. In many cases, the business units (product organizations, customer support, human resources, sales, and various geographies) are responsible for the execution of social media programs, leveraging best practices, strategic support, and guidance from the COE.
Many COE teams are hiring global leads to ensure that there is global continuity and that regions are staying consistent with messaging, integrating with corporate, utilizing online assets, translating content, and driving other governance initiatives—for example, creating processes when a region wants to launch a Facebook page, Twitter account, or regional blog.
Intel has an excellent model that shows how an organization with close to 100,000 employees has addressed organizational silos through governance. Its Social Media Center of Excellence, which is responsible for creating and driving the global social media strategy, has the following tasks:
• Providing guidance and support for employees, product teams, and geographies when they want to engage externally with customers
• Managing, hiring, and recommending social vendors and agencies
• Facilitating biweekly and monthly meetings (the Social Media Integration Forum), with a goal of sharing knowledge across the organization
• Providing social media policies for the entire organization
• Providing, sharing, and governing social media best practices
• Training employees on new social tools
One example of the COE in action comes into play when a new employee joins an organization and wants to Tweet on behalf of the company. The COE should already have a process in place that addresses this particular scenario. The process might include a certain number of training hours before the employee starts. He or she might also get added to various communication forums, such as internal community groups and email distribution lists, in order to collaborate with the COE and other employees who are engaging with customers in social media.
Regardless of the organization model that a company adopts or naturally evolves into, there is always the question of “who owns social media?”
Who Really Owns Social Media?
One area of mass confusion and conflict is the functional ownership of social media. Marketing, public relations, and customer support teams might all think they should own it. Doing a quick search on Google for “who owns social media?” yields results from Mashable, Adage, Adweek, and hundreds of other blog posts. The short answer is that everyone in the organization owns a portion of social media. Jeremiah Owyang, partner at the Altimeter Group and former Forrester Analyst, often says, “Customers don’t care what department you are in—they just want answers.”
The job function of social media may well be governed beyond marketing or public relations, in the form of a COE to create the strategies, train employees, and write the policies. But it makes sense for some portion of social media to be executed and managed by the teams that are closest to the products. In some companies, social media responsibilities for a given product are the job of the product organization. This is an important factor to consider because these teams are the most familiar with the product, understand the value proposition for their customers, are familiar with the messaging, and usually have a higher degree of passion for it.
Unfortunately, the term ownership has negative connotations and normally prompts organizational conflict, resentment, and a decline in productivity. This is one of the challenges in working for a large company. However, it is important that today’s business leaders adapt their organizations to better manage customer relationships even with the growing pains that result.
Taking the Next Steps
It’s easy for someone to say, “Hey, you have to evolve your organization and tear down those silos.” It’s much harder to implement that change.
To start, business leaders need to think about the social customer and then begin transforming their organizational models and culture to best meet their needs. Starting slow is important, both because change like this doesn’t happen overnight and because it will most likely be met with some opposition. The key is to start having those conversations today and get everyone involved. From marketing and public relations to IT and customer support, evolving to a social business requires a comprehensive change movement from every department.
Companies need to be prepared to fail, because it will happen. The important point to remember is to learn from those mistakes and avoid making them again. Document the failures, package them up like a case study, and share those experience across the organization. By doing so, it will help other teams understand what not to do in social media and increase the organizational intelligence at the same time.
Additionally, it’s imperative to find someone in the organization who is willing to support the social movement. Send this person a meeting invitation, get on his or her calendar, and come equipped with data and case studies that will make it easy to support your initiatives and buy into social media.
In large organizations, it may seem impossible to find employees outside of PR/customer service who are willing to engage externally with customers. And for those who already are doing so, the challenge almost becomes an impossible task. Partner with the internal communications team and get on their editorial calendar when they send out company wide emails. Leverage the intranet, fight for home page real estate, and ask the question. Old-fashioned word of mouth doesn’t hurt, either.
To establish global continuity, launch monthly social media integration meetings. Demand that the global team come prepared with case studies and programs, and be ready to share what corporate (or teams in the United States) are doing as well. Make it a point to find opportunities to share knowledge so that social intelligence can transfer easily from region to region. Leverage internal social networks or email distribution lists, and share articles, case studies, blog posts, or interesting Tweets. Use the regional leads to help amplify marketing messages in support of product launches, if applicable.
Organizations will always experience conflict, especially when it revolves around roles and responsibilities. It’s important to address this challenge head on and document social media ownership from the beginning. Identifying roles, responsibilities, and ownership should be done in a collaborative environment in which all stakeholders are part of the decision-making process. Finally, be open to change. Customers, behaviors, products, and organizations all naturally change; be prepared to shift the balance of power and ownership of social media to others if it becomes more efficient and productive to do so.
In conclusion, it’s been established that organizations need to evolve and change to meet the needs of the social customer. A portion of that change involves tearing down the silos that cripple a company’s growth and innovation. At the core of this change are the people of the company. Change absolutely must start at the top from the CEO and work its way down. Employees from every department at every level from every group in every region need to feel empowered to try new things, talk and share internally, and apply best practices when they interact with customers in social media channels. Real evolution will happen only when everyone is aligned with this vision and is executing it daily. The next chapter discusses the technology that will aid companies in the quest to become a social business.