Section II: Setting the Stage for Social Business Transformation
This section is about building the infrastructure and foundation so that as you focus on your content operations internally, you can prepare for your transformation externally.
The first step in this type of change management initiative is to build a centralized editorial team, often referred to as a Social Business Center of Excellence (CoE). This section gives you a step-by-step plan of attack to help you build your CoE and show you how this team should integrate with other groups within your company.
All media companies have one great asset—several hundred journalists and freelance writers who are creating content day in and day out. Most brands also have a similar asset—employees and customers who love the products, the company, and the brand. It’s imperative that you empower “brand advocacy” and enable internal advocates (employees) and external advocates (customers) to help you feed the content engine daily, help tell your brand story from a trusted source, and influence others.
Additionally, it’s important that you build an infrastructure of listening. Most companies today are launching Social Business Command Centers that allow them to listen and engage online whenever someone mentions the brand. Command centers can be used one of two ways. First, and the most common way, is from a reactive standpoint, responding to customer inquiries and managing crises. Others are using command centers to spot trends that might be relevant to the brand and then creating real-time marketing content to capitalize on the news cycle. If you are a fan of NFL Football, you might remember what Oreo did during the halftime show of Super Bowl XLVII. As a 49er fan, unfortunately, I missed it.
Chapter 3: Establishing a Centralized “Editorial” Social Business Center of Excellence
This chapter describes the first step of transitioning your brand to a media company, which is to establish a centralized team that will drive content operations and other forms of governance within your company:
• Building Your Social Business Center of Excellence (CoE)
• The Responsibilities of a Center of Excellence
• The Organizational DNA and Team Dynamics
• Considerations for Building a Social Business Center of Excellence
• How the Center of Excellence Integrates into Your Organization
Chapter 4: Empowering Employees, Customers, and Partners to Feed the Content Engine
Consumers trust each other and “people like themselves” more so than they trust people like you, me, or marketers. This chapter is all about mobilizing your brand stakeholders (employees, partners, and customers) to serve as brand journalists and content contributors that can generate game-changing content and help tell your brand story from a trusted voice:
• An Overview of Employee Advocacy
• Advocacy, Trust, and Credibility Are Synonymous
• An Overview of Customer Advocacy
• How to Scale and Plan an Enterprise Advocacy Program
• GaggleAMP Helps Scale Employee Advocacy
• Napkin Labs Helps Scale Customer Advocacy
• Pure Channel Apps and the Channel Partner Content Opportunity
Chapter 5: Building Your Social Business Command Center
Listening to customers is important. Listening to customers and then taking action is game-changing. This chapter is about becoming a listening organization that uses technology to respond to brand mentions and conversations; as well to leverage trending topics for real-time content marketing purposes:
• The Strategic Importance of a Social Business Command Center
• The Social Business Command Center Framework
• How to Build a Social Business Command Center
• Social Business Command Centers in Action
• The New Form of Command Center Operations: Real-Time Marketing
• Vendor Spotlight: HootSuite, Mutual Mind, PeopleBrowsr, Tickr, and Tracx
Chapter 6: Understanding the Challenges of Content Marketing
While content marketing is the new buzzword today, most companies struggle with creating meaningful content. This chapter provides an overview of the challenges of content marketing taking into consideration both quantitative and qualitative data and then drives home the importance of thinking about content more strategically:
• Examples of Brands Taking Content Marketing to the Next Level
• Content Marketing Challenges: What the Experts Say
• Content Marketing Challenges: What Does the Data Show?
• Moving Past the Content Marketing Buzzword