Opening the doors behind the firewall to external people and being open to feedback is certainly one attribute of a social business along with operational elements like communication, connections and culture as Peter mentions.

I have always had this philosophy that a social business enables a brand to communicate more effectively with customers, partners, employees etc. and as Peter says “scale” programs such as Ford’s initiative earlier this month. That being said, a natural conclusion of Ford being a social business is that their external engagement initiatives are second to none.

However, a recent report by Visibli, a real-time analytics platform shows otherwise. Visibli analyzed  the top 5 auto brands to see which one of them is most engaging on Twitter, and how they do it. Some of the findings include:

• Honda is more engaging on Twitter than Ford and rest of ‘big auto.’
• Honda does it by targeting the right followers — 45% of their followers are interested in auto-related content, higher than any of the other brands
• Contrary to popular ‘best practice,’ almost 100% of Honda’s tweets are auto-related. Zero variety … but it works!

Other than owning a Honda Civic many, many years ago, I have zero visibility into Honda as a company. Are there social business initiatives happening behind the firewall? Are teams collaborating and engaging internally? I really don’t know and I don’t know anyone who works there. But here are a few considerations:

• This is one study from one vendor; and one could argue that a retweet is not an accurate measure of engagement OR at least the the only measure of engagement
• Perhaps Ford is still early on in their journey of social business transformation per Chris Carfi from Ants Eye View.
• It could very well be that Honda just has a stellar marketing team (or agency) and utilizes real-time analytics to provide extremely relevant content to the community – the right content, at the right time, in the right channel to the right customer.
• Increased customer engagement is only one output of a social business – other outputs include an increase in employee engagement, increase in employee productivity, efficiency and sales; innovation, collaboration, etc.

Image: StockFresh Speedometer

Before an advocate program is launched, a decision very early in the planning process needs to be made about which technology platform to use in order to manage and communicate with advocates. Many companies use private LinkedIn and/or Facebook groups to manage back and forth communication. This option is free but brands have to work within the technical capabilities of such platforms and customization is a non factor. Others use private communities built with very scalable  applications like Jive or Lithium. This option give more flexibility to match the look/feel of a corporate website as well as integration with other sCRM or online monitoring technology suites.

One company that I have been keeping a close eye on is Fancorps. Fancorps is a customer advocacy platform which enables organizations to activate and reward customers for word of mouth recommendations and reviews. – essentially transforming them from a friend, fan or follower to an advocate.

Here is a quick review of their back end platform:

The dashboard is a quick snapshot or representation of the community environment. It allows brands to quickly gauge the “who, what, where” of the program.

With all the hype about gamification and how it drives engagement, Fancorps has built a significant gaming experience within their platform via a leaderboard and advocate tracking interface.

The Fancorps platform can gauge how involved and influential each advocate is with Activity Points, Store Credits and Klout Score; and then rewarding the advocates based on these currencies for their time and effort.

Fancorps allows brands to manage and assign tasks to advocates.

Sort/Assign tasks based on demographics and Klout score

It saddens me that social media can be used to provoke behavior like this.  A case WAY TO CLOSE TO HOME in Livermore (20 minutes away from my house) has opened my eyes to the problem with social media in the educational environment. Unfortunately, it had to take the arrest of a Livermore teacher in a child molestation case to have school officials re-examine the social media policy between teachers and students. Investigators say 40-year-old Marie Johnson’s relationship with a 14-year-old boy began with text messages, Facebook postings and instant messaging. Video below.

This is not an isolated case either and I am sure there are hundreds more! In fact, several recent cases in West Michigan, people in authority — teachers, staff members, etc. — have been accused of sending inappropriate messages on social media sites to students.

In business, it’s about co-creation, collaboration and making sure that the entire organization is helping drive the business forward together. And in some isolated cases, social business initiatives are gray in terms of ownership, governance etc. There is no real black and white.

But in situations like this that involve children and an institution that I pay taxes to, it is black and white. There should be absolutely NO contact in social media between teachers and students under 18. No collaboration, no conversation, no negotiation, no committees and no center of excellence needed to make a decision. There are enough problems with the world we live in and with the educational system; and adding this to the mix won’t help parents, teachers, school officials, students and everyone else involved.

What do you think? Am I way off base? Jumping to conclusions?  I’d love to hear from some teachers and understand your points of view.

Here is my attempt at reviewing Dr. Wu’s book, The Science of Social.

Chapter 1 is really about a brand needing a deep commitment to community building. Dr. Wu starts of the chapter highlighting 7 myths:

• Myth 1 – Being there is enough: a brand needs to do more than just “be there” for the sake of “being there”. Community building is a commitment to listen, to engage, to act – just like a marriage.
• Myth 2 – Social channels are an opportunity to broadcast direct, outbound marketing campaigns to a massive audience: most brands start off with this mindset but learn really fast that broadcasting marketing messages is grounds for community abandonment, lack of trust, and complete failure in social media.
• Myth 3 – OMG, going social means I have to make every customer my BFF: finding a small set of “superfans” or advocates is the key to driving community growth and meaningful conversations.
• Myth 4 – I am the authority on my company, products and services: the recent issues with Netflix, Bank of America and Verizon Wireless prove this time and time again to be false.
• Myth 5 – If we go social, we must be on every channel: brands need to be smart and prepared to scale before they create a multitude of social channels. Listening to the online conversation will help determine which networks a brand should spend time in.
• Myth 6 – Influencer campaigns don’t work: they do work if they are a part of a meaningful community
• Myth 7 – Social media are all the same: social media encompasses more than just Twitter and Facebook; and Dr. Wu breaks down the difference between communities and social networks.

Chapter 2 is about cultivating superfans and influence. Much of this chapter explores what makes superfans tick; and the underlying nature of influence, trust and relationships. According to Wu, superfans account for 1 – 2% of the community and can create real business value:

• Lower support costs by answering questions from the community
• Helps a brand scale and manage a multitude of fans
• Helps with marketing because superfans will serve as evangelists and tell others
• Contribute to ideation, co-creation and constructive feedback
• Spend time with the brand, in the community (essentially becoming the brand)
• Generate content on the site (articles, tutorials, Q&As)
• Quantify ROI

Dr. Wu continues to analyze the 1% (or superfans) and examines their behaviors, the way they interact, act and influence others to act. He then goes into detail about the six factors of influence:

• Domain Credibility
• High Bandwidth
• Content Relevance
• Timing Relevance
• Channel Alignment
• Target Confidence

And, he points out that it’s not enough for someone just to be popular. It’s not even enough to have a big, influential, talkative following. Someone who is truly influential for the brand needs to have all six factors listed above.

The chapter concludes on the basis of trust and Dr. Wu even cites Richard Edelman, “Trust is no longer a commodity that is acquired but rather a benefit that is bestowed.”

Chapter 3 is about gamification and motivation. The biggest takeaway for me was that people buy products and services.  But they crave experiences and that’s what gets them to come back time, and time and time again. Throughout this chapter and the entire book, Dr. Wu gives quick nuggets and case studies that validate his thinking.

What also stood out for me was the concept of motivation; and Dr. Wu’s explanation that the goal of dynamic gamification is to create lasting engagement. And, that the job of game mechanics is to reliably, predictably and repeatedly drive customer behavior.

Chapter 4 is about a deeply engaged community. This is where Dr. Wu starts to bring all the points from the previous chapters together in one cohesive thought process – the power of the 1%, what motivates them and the altruism principle.

Dr. Wu also illustrates the characteristics of a well designed community:

• prioritizes and ranks good feedback
• acknowledges the most useful contributions
• allows anyone to earn a good reputation
• awards privileges to community members who have provided value to others within the community (i.e. writing blog content, early visibility into new products, co-creation of products, processes, etc.)

On the contrary, Dr. Wu also illustrates the problems with siloed communities:

• offers little incentive for members to engage with others
• decreases overall participation levels
• prevents the influx of superfans

This book was very enjoyable to read. It’s full of insights, wisdom and key learnings that will help marketers, support professionals, executives or anyone else wanting to learn how to create meaningful communities on the social web. Dr. Wu is the ONE social media scientist and yet too humble of a man to even admit it, much less put it in his Twitter bio.

I highly recommend reading this book.

The goals of the program are to help students:

• understand the tenets of a smarter Social Business through the use of social networking software;
• build business skills and real-world experience by assessing the social business capabilities and business challenges of an IBM partner organization;
• develop teamwork and collaboration skills;
• better understand how to use IBM social networking technologies;
• deepen relationships between faculty, students, IBM, and IBM business partners.

Here is a video of SJSU students discussing  social business and the skills they have developed through this program.

This initiative is a part of IBM’s, The Great Mind Challenge, a global academic initiative focused on providing students with an opportunity to develop their collaboration and problem-solving skills while working on real-world business challenges submitted by global corporations, entrepreneurs, community leaders and nonprofit organizations.

Now here is the cool parallel.

Starting this month, I will be working as a part time Adjunct Professor at San Jose State teaching an evening class on social business to journalism and public relations students.  The class is also open to business students as well.  I will be using my book, Smart Business, Social Business as the course text book and the curriculum (which I am still developing) will focus on:

• Organizational culture, design
• Technology adoption
• The social customer
• Social CRM
• How to create a social media strategy
• Analytics

The reason I decided to pursue this opportunity (thank you Professor Bob Rucker) is because there is a disconnect today in college curriculum. I interview several candidates every week coming straight out of college and the lack of social media/social business proficiency is obvious. I am hoping to change that, starting first with San Jose State.

More IBM Social Business News.

Image: Big Stock Photo Professor

More specifically, what I found interesting are the five use cases that Altimeter identified for social media management. The use cases are also opportunities for companies that are unsure of how to use social media to connect with customers. They are the following (descriptions are in my words):

Intense Engagement: The social customer is highly influential. A quick review of the recent  events with Netflix, Bank of America and Verizon Wireless prove that social customers are forcing business to change. Much of that change involves engaging in two way dialogue i.e solving customer problems, engaging with influencers and advocates, managing online crisis, or just listening to the vibe of the conversation.

Social Broadcasting: While I don’t necessarily agree with the term “broadcasting”, having one central CMS to post to multiple social channels is certainly a scalable advantage. Many of the platform vendors listed below all have similar capabilities like the ability to schedule posts, real time analytics and a content library, which is good for global teams.

Platform Campaign Marketing: The ability to customize a Facebook experience is excellent, especially for product launches and marketing campaigns. Many of the vendors listed below allow users to create customized Facebook tabs that can house various content buckets like RSS feeds, images, videos, contests, etc.

Distributed Brand Presence: For companies that have multiple teams globally, in various geographies and in different languages (also a franchise), governance should be a focal point with customer engagement.  Vendors like Hearsay Social, Spredfast and Sprinklr have built in compliance capabilities that allow for content to be approved prior to being published.

Tailored Customizations: There are many companies that have internal CRM systems that require very specific customization to bridge the gap between external social data and internal customer data.  Having a vendor not only with open APIs but the ability to customize their product is important.

The following is a matrix of the social media management systems/vendors in the report broken down by capabilities of the above criteria and their ability to support small business or the enterprise.

Other interesting findings from the Altimeter Study include:

• While 70% of respondents said that their social media programs map to overall business objectives; only 43% of them have a documented plan of record
• Only 26% of respondents offer social media training and educational services to employees

Here is the full report for you to read, download, embed, print and share.

Photo Credit: Big Stock – Social Network

I said this before but it’s worth repeating.

Social Business transformation will only be successful if employees at all levels change their behaviors. Communication with colleagues and customers, opening purchases orders and other operational functions, team meetings, working relationships with partners through the supply chain and all the processes and workflows in between; and yes, all the marketing messages, campaigns and tactics need to change. A change in behavior happens only after we change the way we think.

In my opinion, a few outputs of a social business are the following:

• More innovative thinking
• The birth of new and improved processes and products
• Closer employee and partner relationships
• Increase in morale and job satisfaction
• Faster “go to market” strategies
• Faster crisis management response times
• Better and more scalable customer engagement

Olivier first describes what a social business isn’t.

• Having a social media presence isn’t a social business
• Having digital content doesn’t make you a social business
• Chasing followers doesn’t make you a social business

And, then he explains the core principles of social business:

• Social is and always have been a core business philosophy
• Social must be a mindset before it can become an operational model
• A CEO who doesn’t care about creating a social company will not accidentally create one
• Social is something you are not something you do

And that’s just the first 10 or so slides.  These are gold and I highly recommend spending time and extracting the insights. The key takeaway for me is that social business absolutely requires a culture shift. One company that is doing that today is clearly IBM.

Enjoy the learning.

This is up from just 67 percent of consumers who said the same thing in 2010. Additionally, positive information has a similar effect on consumer decision making, with 87 percent of consumers agreeing a favorable review has confirmed their decision to purchase. However, the survey suggests that negative information is gaining traction and is now just as powerful in tipping the scales against a recommended purchase.

Additionally, customers are viewing blogs as a credible source of information when researching products and services online.  This is up almost 20 points from 2010.

What’s interesting to note here is that only 8 percent of consumers say a source is trustworthy and credible when “he/she has a lot of social media followers”.  Of course, recognized experts with product/service expertise are the most trustworthy online resources.  This certainly makes sense for high value products like televisions or new vehicle purchases.

The net net of this is data is that the social customer’s opinion matters a great deal! And, whether they know it or not, they are aiding and influencing other customers  (or not) down the purchase funnel simply through organic conversations about the experiences they have with products and services.

Americans are nearly 25 percent more likely to verify recommendations for high-cost purchases, such as cars, today than they were in 2010 (89% today vs. 72%), while moderate- and low-cost purchases did not experience the same jump.

Lastly, consumers spend time online verifying a product or service recommendation for a variety of reasons. At the top of the list is when they will own that product for several years.

There are two key takeaways of this study:

1. Brands need to create kick ass product that add some level of emotional or utility value.
2. Brands need to make a strategic attempt at transforming the social customer into a brand advocate.

A social brand is any company, product, individual, politician that uses social technologies in order to communicate with the social customer, their partners and constituencies or the general public.

Social business is the blueprint for the transformation of an organization—bridging the external with internal, resulting in a more connected way of doing business which creates shared value for all stakeholders. A social business is built upon three pillars – people, process and technology. All three need to work independent of each other, yet need to be completely integrated into the DNA of the organizational culture. It requires employees to actually communicate — processes and governance models that help shape employee behavior online — and technology to facilitate collaboration across the organization.

Here is an infographic created by my colleague David Armano that illustrates the differences visually.

The graphic illustrates some really significant points. First, it’s clear that social business planning is internal and a social brand is external. But more importantly, there needs to be consistent alignment between both internal and external programs/initiatives in order to see true business results for the organization. Now, I have always been a firm believer that an organization cannot and will not have meaningful conversations with the social customer unless they can have meaningful conversations internally first.

Here is my logic and one example that illustrate my point.

Chris is irritated because he dialed in to a customer support department and was on hold for 30 minutes. No one ever answered his call. He goes to the brands Facebook page and leaves a comment expressing his anger. No response. He then tweets at the brands Twitter profile. No response. So he writes a blog post criticizing the heck out of the brand and shares it all over the social web. Still no response.

In most organizations today, a corporate Twitter handle is owned and managed by someone in PR; and due to organizational silos that still plague business today; most likely they aren’t talking with their colleagues in customer support.

So, here is a situation where a social brand is being unresponsive and pissing off the social customer because there is no internal communication. Now, let’s take a different angle. Assume the PR person did send an email to customer support and let’s say that they took care of Chris’s issue and he is happy now. And then the same thing happens with Mary, John, Steve and several other customers; and the support team realizes that they need to shift internally in order to address all these online inquiries. Good progress for sure. After all, happy customers are a good thing.

But a true social business will go above and beyond addressing isolated customer support issues. They will take that feedback (because they are communicating and working together internally) and fix the root cause of the problem. One example is Comcast. They have excellent customer support on Twitter and are solving customer issues day in and day out. But a quick search of Comcast in Twitter still surfaces the same issues – technicians not making it to their appointments within the guaranteed window. In this case, it’s not a support problem; rather a process problem that needs to be fixed.

Of course, I am over-simplifying the issue because situations like these takes time,  a commitment to change, process creation  and the establishment of governance models.

Here is why a social brand and a social business are completely different:

• A social brand is focused on external communications. A social business is focuses in internal communications
• A social brand is all about engagement with the social customer. A social business is all about engagement with employees
• A social brand is owned by marketing. A social business should be owned by the entire organization.
• A social brand is measures by clicks, impressions, reach, likes, comments, RTs, etc. A social business is measures by organizational change
• With a social brand, budgets are usually allocated towards agencies, community management, Facebook applications, blog development, etc. Most investments into social business initiatives revolve around internal communities, social technologies, and training

And here is the one reason why they are exactly the same:

• They serve the same purpose and underlying goal – value creation for the social customer.

The social brand provides value to the social customer simply through two way conversations. Many customers don’t need incentives, they just want to know that the brand is listening. And even then, some customers don’t even care. They just have a natural affinity towards the brand regardless if the brand is engaging with them or not. Also, marketing programs like contests, give-aways and product discounts are a huge driver in value creation. Lastly, providing relevant content to customers like solving customer support problems delivers value, long term business value.

The social business creates value to the social customer and also to its external counterpart, the social brand. A fully collaborative social business will enable a brand to scale through governance, process creation and technology enablement. In other words, a social brand and a social business need to be in complete alignment to see true business results and also to close the loop of the value creation model as illustrated in the above graphic by Armano.

If the processes and relationships are working effectively internally, the social business will undoubtedly provide value in the form of customer satisfaction to the social customer through product (or process) innovation that happens as a direct result of the social brand listening and engaging directly with the social customer.

A more simplified way to look at is that real social business transformation enables an organization to deliver more value to the social customer via  social brand. One thing this post does not cover is how a social business can deliver value to internal stakeholders and partners. That’ll be coming in a different post.

A few years ago, Frank Eliason did something awesome.  He started monitoring Twitter for Comcast mentions and he quickly realized that there was an opportunity for him to solve customer problems. And he did just that. A quick scan of the ComcastCares proves that this channel has been effective for Comcast as a customer support channel.  To this day, I still see case studies, white papers, blog posts and even examples in books of Comcast and their effort to engage with the social customer. Bill Gerth, who is now the face of Comcast Cares is carrying on the legacy day in and day out – hats off to Comcast, Bill and the entire support team for this amazing effort. It’s not easy.

But here is the problem. And, I am not picking on Comcast but this is a lesson for all business.  Look what I found when I searched for Comcast in Twitter.

Of course, if you searched for any brand or product in Twitter you would undoubtedly get similar results. Customers on Twitter are not afraid to speak their minds; and often times they do it a little too much which is certainly irritating at times.

I am confident that Bill and the Comcast team addressed each and every one of the issues highlighted above. They are doing what a good “social brand” should be doing … listening to the customer and solving problems. But there is deeper issue here.  The Comcast Guarantee states that “We will always be on time within your appointment window or we’ll credit you $20 or give you a free premium channel for three months.”Judging from the above, Comcast is having a hard time living up to their own guarantee and I have to ask why?

Because I am customer and “pulling” for Comcast since they were one of the early pioneers of customer support via Twitter, I am going to assume that they have already hired some consultant or six sigma brain wizard from Stanford who is looking to eliminate waste internally. If they really want to address these customer support issues, they need to tackle the “root cause” of the problem. If a technician can’t make the 3 hour appointment window, they need to understand why and fix the process.

This is one attribute of a social business -  which is gathering the collective feedback from the community and changing a business models or process, if it makes sense of course. In this case though I think it does.