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THREE T
HINGS TO D
O (
AND W
HY
)
organization so that when the time comes it is able to respond by measuring the volume
of conversations and sharing what you find within your organization. You can further
leverage this basic data to encourage interest and involvement across the internal pro-
cesses that span work teams or functional groups, again building the cross-functional
discipline that you will ultimately need to be effective in your use of social technology.
Getting your business ready to do business on the Social Web is a big part of the chal-
lenge ahead, and an effective listening program is one of the best starting points.
Encourage Collaboration Everywhere
Second of three “must do” activities that form the basis of this chapter is collaboration.
Collaborative activities sit at the top of the engagement processes. As such, moving your
customers, members, and employees toward collaboration is a definite “must do” in
your list of both marketing and (larger) business goals. Collaboration, whether internally
across functional work teams, or externally (involving customers in product and service
design, for example) is the inflection point on the path to becoming a social business.
As a basic framework for an organization-wide path toward collaboration
(meaning “driving high levels of engagement, as defined in the social context”), con-
sider the following set of steps developed at Ant’s Eye View:
- Define your objectives.
Begin with a clear view of your business objectives and an understanding of
your primary customer base or applicable segment of it.- Listen.
Implement a listening program to understand the specific conversations around
your brand, product, or service. Use this same program to validate the actions
you are considering, and then use it to measure or otherwise understand the
impact of those actions.- Organize.
Organize internally and externally around what you learn through listening.
Create cross-functional teams, for example, that respond fully to the customer
need rather than just the functional issues you discover.- Engage.
Engage the customer through participation. Respond in the channels in which
your customers are talking, implement the collaborative solutions that result, and
then give your customers credit as this will encourage them to participate more.- Measure.
Aggressively measure everything until you have adequate baselines to assess the
impact of the programs on which you embark. You can always discontinue the
collection of unneeded or uninformative data later. You can’t, however, make
decisions based on information you don’t have.