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BEST P
RACTICES IN S
OCIAL B
USINESS
In social business, there are external dynamics (customer, member, community.
or similar) and internal dynamics (between the people who make up your organiza-
tion) that can be made to operate in a more productive and more innovative manner.
Marketing is a part of it, especially so in organizations that include product develop-
ment as a part of marketing.
By connecting the internal efforts of your team, by improving the way in which
knowledge is shared, with the external marketplace dynamics—tapping conversations
and looking for competitive opportunities—the benefits of applying social media and
social technology to your business are most readily realized.
Best Practices in Social Business
In this final section, it’s the dos and don’ts (actually, the “do this insteads”) that get put
into practice. Following is a quick look into five specific examples of how social media
and social business best practices are being used now to build better organizations.
• Listening
Always begin with a listening program, and incorporate this into each of the fol-
lowing items. This provides the starting platform to keep you on track.
• Customer-driven design
Focus your listening, and invite customers to provide specific inputs. Use this to
evolve your product or service offering and to connect your customers deeply
It’s Still Your Business
• Crowdsourcing
Rather than trying to make sense of 10,000 ideas, let your customers sort out
the list. They’ll vote for what they want and pass on the rest. You can focus on
what they want.• Knowledge exchange
How much faster can problems be solved when everyone involved—including
your customers and your employees—work together to solve them? Collectively
solving problems is a great way to show your customers you love them.• Gaming: Incentive for sharing
What can you learn from a gamer? A lot, actually. Adding a game-based chal-
lenge to basic activities like content posting can turn spectators into participants.Threadless.com: Customer-Driven Design
What happens when you build your business around collaboration itself? For starters,
your customers get involved in your products and services right from the start, which
in turn can give you a continuous source of innovative suggestions on how to evolve.