{"id":3803,"date":"2009-05-29T06:41:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T13:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/?p=3803"},"modified":"2009-06-01T08:24:50","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T15:24:50","slug":"as-social-technologies-become-pervasive-prepare-your-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/29\/as-social-technologies-become-pervasive-prepare-your-company\/","title":{"rendered":"As Social Technologies Become Pervasive, Prepare Your Company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this job a year and a half ago, my coverage was simply over  social networks and community platform vendors. On occasion I would speak to  brand monitoring companies, and of course pure play social media sites (blogging  software, microblogging, etc)<\/p>\n<p>But now, I spend talking to companies from a variety of spaces as social  technologies creep into their space. It&#8217;s increasingly difficult to monitor as  it spreads, but expected as the era of social colonization takes hold. \u00a0Social  technologies become pervasive and spread throughout the entire company.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Vendors that are currently ramping into the social space:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>CMS vendors are gearing up and offering social features, much to the chagrin  of the community platform players.<\/li>\n<li>Customer support departments are quickly moving outside their defined  support domain to where customers are supporting each other.<\/li>\n<li>CRM vendors are connecting to social networks, serving up social content in  their dashboard. We&#8217;re discussing<a href=\"http:\/\/johnfmoore.wordpress.com\/2009\/05\/28\/twitter-is-not-now-or-ever-going-to-be-a-valid-crm-choice\/\"> how far this will reach<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Web Analytics firms are starting to scan social sites and partner with  others, they know influence has spread beyond server analytics alone.<\/li>\n<li>Customer reference programs <a href=\"http:\/\/b2bmarketingpost.com\/2009\/05\/27\/customer-reference-programs-time-to-embrace-social-mediaweb-2-0\/\">recognize  that unfiltered customer opinions<\/a> are happening beyond their control.<\/li>\n<li>Agencies of all sorts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Vendors that will become increasingly important in the social  space:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Affiliate marketing will become an increasingly important as more brands  start to act on word of mouth programs.<\/li>\n<li>Email marketers are starting to recognize that the social network inbox is  where eyeballs have shifted to. \u00a0Given <a href=\"http:\/\/wave.google.com\/\">Google&#8217;s evolved email<\/a> platform looks more  like a social network or operating system than an email &#8216;inbox&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Advertisers want to think beyond banner and IAB ads to more engaging or  social ads.<\/li>\n<li>Large consulting firms are preparing to offer million dollar packages to  enterprises for change management and social integration systems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Companies as a whole  beyond marketing  must prepare as social cascades  the enterprise<\/strong><br \/>\nSocial technologies are creeping into nearly every  aspect of business, making this incredibly difficult for brands to manage as so  many systems  and therefore stakeholders  are looped in willing or not. Having  spoken to some brands that are tackling this change, here&#8217;s some practical  advice that I learned the top firms are doing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>1) Recognize the trend that social technologies are crossing over to  all aspects of the business<\/strong>: If you&#8217;re responsible for social media  leadership in your company, recognize that this technology is pervasive beyond  corp comm and marketing as we saw in the last few years.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2) Yet, as things start to get complicated, simplify: <\/strong> Rather than focus on the all of the distinct arenas that social  crosses, focus on the <em>trend <\/em>that customers and their opinions will be  part of nearly every aspect of your business  even if you don&#8217;t choose for them  to be present.<\/li>\n<li><strong>3) Start the culture change now with internal education:<\/strong> The internal culture change is the biggest hurdle for companies. I spoke to a  traditional media company yesterday that is quickly migrating away from print to  online, and is conducting internal &#8216;show and tell brown bag sessions&#8217; across the  enterprises where people can come from any department.<\/li>\n<li><strong>4) Rather than build a strategy focused on technologies, build  around customers and employees: <\/strong>Above all, don&#8217;t focus on the  technologies themselves, start to train yourself to start and end a discussion  with customers (and\/or employees) rather than &#8220;Twitter&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li><strong>5) Organize your company for social:<\/strong> There&#8217;s an innovation  curve here that your company must jump, but to be successful, you&#8217;ll need to  change not technology (only 20%) but culture, strategy, process, roles, and how  you measure (the other 80%). I&#8217;ll be publishing a report in the near future  (with data from a recent survey to brands) that discusses how companies are  organizing for social technologies, and what some best practices are in the near  future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of <a href=\"..\/2008\/06\/20\/list-of-social-computing-strategists-and-community-managers-for-large-corporations-2008\/\">social  media strategists<\/a> that are reading this blog, and vendors who support them,  I&#8217;d love to hear from you the changes in the last 12 months we&#8217;ve seen, as well  as some practical advice to brands to be prepared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I started this job a year and a half ago, my coverage was simply over social networks and community platform vendors. On occasion I would speak to brand monitoring companies, and of course pure play social media sites (blogging software, microblogging, etc) But now, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/29\/as-social-technologies-become-pervasive-prepare-your-company\/\" class=\"more-link\"><span>Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">As Social Technologies Become Pervasive, Prepare Your Company<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}