Everything that should be digital will be
To support the book launch, Dion and I will be speaking at events around the world. In the near term, we are available to speak at select conferences and private corporate events in exchange for a bulk purchase of Social Business By Design that you keep. We’ll do this, depending on location, in lieu of a traditional fee. Win-win.
For more information, contact us at sbd-at-dachisgroup-dot-com.
Dealing with detractors is par for the course when you participate in public forums, whether online or offline. Jason Falls offers advice on how to handle different types of people including “offended publics, disgruntled stakeholders, competition, trolls and turds,” with the additional insight that
The difference in a troll and a turd is that a turd identifies him or herself with a name and/or email address. They’re accountable, but still being a pain in the ass, mostly likely just because they like being a pain in the ass.
I’ve dealt with a lot of turds over the past nine years. Time and time again I see individuals attempt to build themselves up by tearing other brands and people down. These detractors seek attention and validation. They exhibit low self-esteem and will take whatever feedback they can get, positive or negative. Comments like “you’re so smart” are what they expect. Comments like “you’re wrong” are often interpreted as a lack of intellect of the commentor.
When you set raw emotion aside and think through a situation, sometimes surprising outcomes emerge when dots start getting connected. I’ve seen:
We’d all like everyone to be positive all the time, but the halcyon days of riding the social media cluetrain are long over. I don’t know if money is the root of all evil, but it quite often lies at the root of why detractors behave the way they do.
Next time you see a heated online exchange — whether you’re directly involved or not — be curious, not furious. What you discover may surprise you.
First, we need to understand how we got to where we are today. Although social business draws upon fundamental human nature, the opportunities we see for companies today were not feasible at scale until changes came about in work, society, and technology. In particular:
Businesses recognized these trends and saw opportunities emerging in the market. Outside the firewall, “viral” videos involving brands like Subservient Chicken and Campaign For Real Beauty got the attention of marketing and PR professionals. Inside the firewall, communications channels were evolving into social networks and collaborative spaces, where increased informal engagement started leading to greater productivity. Taking advantage of both internal and external opportunities is critical to social business success, as shown in:
[See this link for a list of 101 examples of social business ROI.]
We have started seeing meaningful social business results, but challenges still remain.
The social business era has arrived and although early, it’s clear where businesses must focus their efforts to build the foundation for future success. Eventually “social business” will just be plain “business” and the companies that win will be the ones who have addressed the fundamentals of what matters: acknowledging trends, uncovering opportunities with consumers and workforce, and addressing fundamentals including organizational model, governance, and measurement.
Let’s start with Facebook and free. From one perspective, this is true – anyone can start a brand page at no cost. However, building a successful page requires investment in media, social graph activation, and integration with large-scale marketing campaigns to offer custom experiences for fans and prospects. The world is learning more this week about the amount being spent on the Facebook advertising ecosystem – over $3 billion annually. That’s far from free – in fact, P&G’s remarks justify these investments.
What about brands that aren’t pouring money into the ecosystem? At minimum, companies need individuals to manage and moderate conversations. Although communities operating at scale may have members who engage each other with little company involvement, they aren’t free. Consider Wikipedia, a community that serves hundreds of millions of visitors every month – it takes technology and people to keep the site going – supported by donations. A company like Red Bull doesn’t get to over 26 million fans without engaging – which requires FTE/personnel expense.
P&G certainly didn’t pay for every one of the “1.8 billion in free impressions generated by the Old Spice campaign”…at least not directly. This is absolutely a success story and Dion Hinchcliffe and I talk about it in our forthcoming book, Social Business by Design. It’s important to keep in mind that this is an example of successful “big seed” marketing – plenty of money was poured into the initial mass media campaign and even more was spent to keep The Man Your Man Could Smell Like relevant with real-time videos. Free? No way – W+K grew 22% in 2011.
Not too long ago, I had a client who had a problem. He was the head of digital and emerging media for a consumer products brand. Recently, the CEO’s college-age children had come home for Thanksgiving break and showed the CEO this new thing called YouTube, where companies like Coca-Cola were having great success with reposting their TV commercials. As a result, the CEO decided to slash the digital and social media budgets; my client was laid off soon thereafter. Today, they are lagging far behind their industry competition and I have never seen anyone mention their brands or campaigns in social media.
Social media marketing success comes at a cost. Executives must take a social business perspective instead, considering external and internal factors as well as designing for intended and emergent outcomes. Without a holistic perspective, businesses end up operating like blind men around an elephant and a lineup of digital tombstones in online brand graveyards.
Disclosure: my company Dachis Group operates one of the world’s largest Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant groups. P&G is a client and our recent work includes the People’s Choice Awards and Thank You, Mom. Red Bull is also a client and we launched their Facebook presence.
A few years ago, I put together a list of social media marketing examples. The list contains 324 examples of brands putting social media to use and at that point in the social media industry’s evolution, it was the best of what was around…but it was early days for social business and ROI.
Now that initiatives have been in market, any reasonable business manager would expect to see program results. However, quantified results in social business and brands willing to stand behind them are difficult to find. But the truth is out there…
…and here are 101 examples of social business return on investment, roughly 60% revenue generation and 40% cost reduction. Each example lists brand, activity, and source + year.
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Thanks in particular to Katy Keim and Paul Gilliham at Lithium, Gia Lyons at Jive, and Erin Nelson at Bazaarvoice for helping source much of this information.
These “rogue” activities are eventually discovered by corporate, one way or another. I’ve been in more than one awkward meeting where a team is presenting the results of a listening/conversation audit and starts discussing the client’s social media presences – only to be interrupted by a red-faced marketing VP who was unaware of these activities. More often, clients approach us and ask what do to about the proliferation of accounts, wanting to encourage participation but needing to manage for brand risk and reputation. Gaining control of these situations requires a straightforward set of activities, involving implementation of social media policies and guidelines and understanding how organizational structure and culture need to flex in order to support social business.
But then a new problem arises.
After an organization has established process to manage social media, accounts proliferate. Geographies, product lines, and business functions work through appropriate channels to request account creation. They work with agency partners to integrate social media into paid, earned, and owned campaigns. The organization buzzes with the sound of engagement…or is it more like a cacophony of voices, struggling to be the loudest signal to carry over the deafening noise in today’s social media landscape?
You see, most companies assume that a corporate wrangler – whether from digital marketing, corporate communications, or elsewhere – will round up the brand’s cats and orchestrate the movement of their individual cats something akin to this:
In reality, social media activity is still very much out of control at most companies. And the problem is getting worse as businesses now see the potential of social media, accelerating corporate adoption and usage. Handling “social media management” used to mean creating a content calendar and having a tool to publish – today the challenge entails that process and multiplying by 10x and adding in new languages, disparate local business goals, and varied skill sets. Let’s call this a “governance” issue.
The tools I’ve seen employed for governance are rudimentary at best. Most often, governance means that someone at corporate has an Excel spreadsheet that lists account names, URLs, and employees responsible. That’s like trying to drive a go-cart on the highway – you’ll get there eventually but run a high risk of being run over along the way.
As an offshoot of the Dachis Group social business platform, we’ve decided to help our clients address this governance challenge by creating the Social Portfolio Insight product. It’s beta and only available to client-side social business managers, containing a directory, account analytics, and a collaboration layer. And for now it’s free to Social Business Index participants.
I would’ve called the product “Lion Tamer” but it’s not my department. For more on Social Portfolio Insight and how to gain access, here’s more information.
We talk about change management. Change as a process. We tend to think of change in business as something that needs to happen once in a while, when the need arises. It’s uncomfortable, but necessary. There is a whole industry called Change Management that has built up over the years to help people through these inflection points. Change management is big business these days, because just about every organization knows they need to change. And the bigger the org, the harder it is to change.
But change is changing…
To read the entire post, visit the Dachis Group Collaboratory.
Last week I was at Web 2.0 Expo in New York. You can read a summary of the presentation at Portfolio.com and see the slides below.
I invite you to check out the proposals that sound relevant to your interests and appreciate your feedback as votes and comments.
And speaking of events, the Dachis Group Social Business Summit returns to Austin for a third year on Thursday March 8th, the day before SXSWi opens. Our after party typically kicks off the weekend as well.
See you in Austin next year!
Here’s a recap from a discussion I participated in last week in New York. Visit the Dachis Group Events page to learn more about where we’ll be in the near future to engage with you in person.