Social Media Marketing

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c h a p t e r

9 :

SOCIAL CRM

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At this point it should be clear that there is an order to the integration of social

technologies by businesses and organizations. There is also—as a direct parallel—a

steady raising of the stakes at each step up. Traditional advertising is the easiest from

a marketer’s perspective because it cleanly separates marketing from operations and

avoids the complications of customers who can “talk back.” Likewise, traditionally

structured businesses are able to operate in silos—and tap the effi ciency associated

with these industrial-age business process innovations—precisely because any defects

or shortcomings can be addressed after the fact, after the traditional advertising mes-

sages and promotional tools have done their jobs.

Social technologies mess this up, in a major way: They literally turn siloed busi-

ness processes on their heads, as customers are suddenly not only on an equal foot-

ing in terms of access to the information needed to make a smart choice, but are also

equipped with this information before the purchase has occurred, effectively short-

circuiting the traditional funnel. As you move from social-media-based marketing to

social business, consider in detail the impact of this type of reorientation on your cur-

rent business processes. Enterprise 2.0 can really help you in this regard.

Sun Microsystems: Web 2.0 in the Workplace

Sun Microsystems published a report on its own internal social platform, “The Estuary Effect,” in

2008. The platform is featured in a related post titled “Relevance of Enterprise 2.0 for HR” pub-

lished in 2010. You can read the post and download the original report here:

http://blogs.sun.com/vsehr/entry/relevance_of_enterprise_2_0

Firms such as Dell, Philips, and Sun Microsystems are using internal col-

laboration and knowledge-sharing applications to reduce innovation cycle times and

respond more effi ciently to customers. Sun Microsystems, for example, has created

its own internal platform, SunSpace, that supports rich content types—video, photos,

podcasts—and collaborative discussions between employees and across divisions. Not

only does this speed the conveyance of information, it provides ready access to the

employee-held knowledge that can facilitate the innovation process and customer/sup-

plier/partner response programs.

Internal connectivity and knowledge sharing is particularly applicable when

dealing with large numbers of customer suggestions: See Table 9.3 for some suggested

starting points in creating an internal platform for collaboration around customer-

generated ideas. Starbucks, for example, has received about 80,000 “ideas” from its

My Starbucks Ideas platform since its launch in 2008. Based on these, about 200 inno-

vations have been put into actual practice following internal discussion, as well as

Sun Microsystems: Web 2.0 in the Workplace

Sun Microsystems published a report on its own internal social platform, “The Estuary Effect,” in

2008. The platform is featured in a related post titled “Relevance of Enterprise 2.0 for HR” pub-

lished in 2010. You can read the post and download the original report here:

http://blogs.sun.com/vsehr/entry/relevance_of_enterprise_2_0