Have you ever been sure you understood something, only to find out there's a whole universe of ideas to be explored? That's been my experience with social business.
Until recently, I thought "social business" was limited to social marketing and customer service. The stories are familiar: Companies offering discounts when people Like their Facebook page, and responding to customer complaints and praise on Twitter.
But that's really just the beginning of social business, which is entering a new era. It's going beyond simple marketing to enable worldwide collaboration in real time.
We think of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and the rest as central to social business. But they're peripheral. They're just platforms -- tools. Social business is much more than the platform.
Social business involves employees collaborating with each other in real time, over geographic distances, and across corporate silos. An engineer in New York can connect with a counterpart in Taiwan, and they can help each other on projects without having to go through the normal, calcified corporate channels.
Social business involves organizations doing the same thing with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
It speeds up time-to-market, flexibility, and customer satisfaction.
Sure, social media, social marketing, and social CRM are part of it. But they're only a small part. And social business is just getting started.
Excellent profile of the changes in business due to social media, Mitch. I agree that ad agencies will not go away, mhhfive, but I agree with Mitch that they will no longer be the middle man, as much as an advisor as to how to craft and deliver the brand message of the company.
These changes suggest totally new dimensions, connectivity and real-time assessments of customer response and relationships. That is an entirely new ballgame with transparency and authenticity.
I imagine we will have to go through much discovery before we really fully understand this addition.
Heh. Do you see ad agencies going away any time soon? Even with Google cutting out some middlemen and more and more "real time bidding" ad markets popping up... I think ad agencies aren't in danger of dying out in the near future.
mhhfive - The agency model for marketing is a problem, as is the campaign mentality -- do something for 90 days to get the word out, then after 90 days you're done and forget about it. That's not a way to build long-term customer connections.
Brands might not even want to really hear from its customers... or perhaps I should say that ad agencies might not want to deal with the feedback process?
The advertising/marketing industry has changed a lot since the "Mad Men" era -- and there are a few more middlemen between the consumer and the consumer good seller. Maybe when technology gets a bit more advanced, we'll be able to bypass Twitter/Facebook/etc... and interact directly with brands?
Yes, but just because a consumer can answer back to a brand doesn't mean the brand will hear you.
Brands using hashtags in TV commercials -- such as at the Super Bowl -- hints at a significant shift. A few years ago, brands told consumers, "Check out our online ad!" Now, brands are asking consumers to check out the hashtag online, which is another way of saying, "Join the conversation about us."
The big change, of course, is from being addressed as an audience to being able to answer back. Sure, we've always had face-to-face conversations, or conversations by letter, but the audiences once addressed through newspapers, movies, advertising, books, and so on, were passive.
No longer. And of course, the phenomenon is platform agnostic.
Hmmm... I hadn't really thought about a connection to that comment and this, to be honest.
For those of you who don't recall that conversation -- or didn't read it -- I said that social media is a process, not a platform. Or something like that.
What I meant at the time is that social media is about sharing information and having conversations. We focus so much on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., that we forget that social media doesn't require a social media platform. You can do it on email. And it's just an extension of the same face to face interactions we've been having since the invention of language. Journalist Tom Standage argues that 17th Century coffeehouses were the social media of their day. He makes a good case for it.
But now that you mention it, this infographic is indeed a related idea. Social business is about the process, not the technology.
Aha, Mitch, now we understand your somewhat coy remarks to "Don't Just Support Social Media, Use It." Thanks for (finally!) explaining! And for sharing some very interesting stats n' facts.
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