Social Media Marketing

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c h a p t e r

3 :

BUILD A S

OCIAL B

USINESS

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chapters in Part III, “Social Business Building Blocks.” For now, focus on the attrac-

tion to social media by customers and how they use it to improve decisions and then

ask yourself, “What if my organization could behave this way and tap this collective

knowledge directly?” Digging into that question will lead right into the remaining

chapters.

Review of the Main Points

This chapter provided an overview of the considerations when moving toward social

business practices. In particular, this chapter covered the following:

•    A social business uses the same Web 2.0 technologies that power the broader

use of social media to connect itself (externally) to its customers and to connect

(internally) its employees to each other.

•    Social media marketing and the activities associated with social business are

fundamentally measurable. Because the activities are expressed digitally, inte-

grating social media analytics with internal business metrics produces useful,

valuable insights that can guide product and service development efforts.

•    Your employees can be connected via social technology just as customers already

are: Using a platform like Socialtext, for example, results in an internal, social-

profile based linkage that encourages and facilitates collaborative problem

solving.

With the basics of social business defined, you’re ready to begin thinking

through what this might look like in your own organization, and how connecting your

own working team together with customers through collaborative technologies can

speed and refine your business processes that support innovation, product and service

delivery, and similar talk-worthy programs.

Hands-On: Review These Resources

Review each of the following, taking note of the main points covered in the chapter

and the ways in which the following activities demonstrate these points:

•    Arrange a meeting with your CIO or IT leadership to review the social capabili-

ties of your current intranet or similar internal information sharing tools.

•    Create an inventory of your current social media programs. List out home bases,

outposts, and passports (see sidebar earlier in this chapter for definitions of

each) and then define the metrics and success measures for each.

•    Meet with the leadership of your customer service and product design teams,

and meet with legal and HR to review the requirements or concerns with regard

to connecting employees in a more collaborative manner, or engaging more fully

The Social Ecosystem