Set the Social Road Map for Your Company. How to use social media to get ahead.

how-to-use-socialmedia-to-get-ahead

A summary of the August 31, 2011 Dreamforce session, covering:

Why it’s vital to be a social business – the stats say it all
Social business stages – for beginners through experts
Steps your business should take to become a social success
How Dell turned a social nightmare into a social dream
Tips from social media guru, Gary Vaynerchuk

The speakers

Charlene Li
Founder and Analyst, Altimeter Group
@charleneli - Charlene’s blog

Scott Holden
Senior Director, Product Marketing, Salesforce.com
@scottiholden

Adam Brown
Executive Director, Social Media, Dell
@adamcb

Gary Vaynerchuk
Author and Co-Founder of Vaynermedia
@garyvee

Plus

David Alston, CMO of Radian6, Salesforce.com

Watch the full social road map Dreamforce session here.

Quick Summary

Are you just starting on the path to becoming a social business or are you well on your way? Whether you’re a novice or an expert, this Dreamforce session suggests next steps to help your organization reap the rewards of becoming more social.
By all means enjoy this summary – but don’t miss this session recording: it’s an inspiring take on the state of social business today.

Why is social media important for businesses?

50%
of people who follow a brand on Twitter are more likely to buy that brand.¹
51%
of consumers who like a Facebook fan page are more likely to buy that product.¹
57%
of companies have acquired a customer through their blog.²

¹ 2011 US study conducted by Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey.
² HubSpot, State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011

Social road map soundbites

Gary Vaynerchuk, Author and Co-Founder of Vaynermedia
”We are living at the beginning of the humanization of business.”

Adam Brown, Executive Director, Social Media, Dell
“It’s important to listen and have conversations with your customers. But you’ve got to change the business processes. And social media gives us the data and insight to be able to truly do that.”

Charlene Li, Founder and Analyst, Altimeter Group“
"As you’re thinking about the roadmap, it isn’t just the technology. It isn’t just the processes that are going to change. You also need to think of the human aspects, the social aspects that are going to change too.”

Gary Vaynerchuk, Author and Co-Founder of Vaynermedia
“Human context drives your wallet and that’s why you spend.”

Where’s your business on its social media journey?

	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced
Overview	Businesses just getting started have a small budget and an understaffed, centralised team	Formalised programmes and a cross-functional team that serves many business units with a larger budget line	Mature and advanced; slightly larger budgets but involving many more across the company
Average total budget	$66,000	$1,002,000	$1,364,000
Average team size	3.1	8.2	20.8
Typical organisational structure	Centralised – Typically starts with marketing or communications 37%	Hub and spoke – centres of excellence are established, and best practice is disseminated throughout the company 49%	Multiple hub and spoke and dandelion – more parts of the organisation involved. Example: in Best Buy, any employee can give customers advice using social media. 44%
Goals	Foundation – getting to grips with social	Skills – learning core skills	Scale – extending social throughout the company
Internal	Leader and education – being the evangelist for social media	Hub – Establishing coherent processes across the organisation	Empower – Helping employees get involved
Customer priorities	Responsiveness – replying to customers in a coherent way	Advocates and communities – making the customer relationship deeper and more profitable	Integrate – implementing social media throughout; example: socialised expense reports.
Tech	Monitoring – finding out what people are saying, and where	Media Management System to manage all relationships	360° social tools, so you can talk to customers the way they want

Source: “How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Spending,” Altimeter Group, February 10, 201
(Research based on asking 140 corporate social strategists about their company’s social media practices.)

Three destinations for social businesses

1. Share and discuss
Start connecting in a more dynamic way. For example, use internal tools like Chatter and external tools like Facebook.
2. Business process redesign
Optimise your business models. Example: integrate accounts, expense reports and hiring activity with social media, using activity streams and notifications.
3. Enterprise transformation
Strategically leap over other companies using social. Relate to customers differently or pursue market opportunities in a new way. Driven from the top.

Social media – threat or opportunity?

In the social business, suddenly every customer and employee has a voice. This can be massively disruptive to accepted notions of leadership and organizational structure.

To ensure that social media is an opportunity, not a threat, you need to remember it’s not just about new technology, it’s about the human beings - the social side of social media.

For example, you may need to give managers who feel threatened a clearly defined role or they may become obstructionist. You also need to give all staff clear social media guidelines and, possibly, training.

From “Dell hell” to social media heaven

In 2005, an American blogger named Jebb Jarvis gave Dell hell, complaining about a “lemony laptop and torturous service.”

Michael Dell listened. And he acted. The result? Dell has become the world’s second largest commerce site. In March 2011, Trendstream also awarded Dell the accolade of the world’s number one social media brand.

Here’s what Dell did:

1. Made social media pivotal
Dell decided to make social media a crucial part of their customer service, tech support, sales and marketing.
2. Set up ideastorm.com
using the wisdom of crowds, Dell gained feedback on how to improve products and services. But listening is just the first step; they took action.
3. Exploited 26,000 daily opportunities
Dell is mentioned 26,000 times a day on social media. Using their Social Media Listening Command Center, they don’t just monitor these conversations. They decide which are most important and delegate to the best people to respond in an authentic way. They also put processes in place so customers’ needs are met.
4. Trained its employees
So far, Dell has trained 35,000 of its 100,000 employees in social media. It has also certified 5600 employees to be spokespeople for Dell online. Download Dell’s social media policy at DELL.com/socialmedia
5. Established social radio
Dell has empowered employees, including engineers, to listen to the conversations that are relevant to them.
6. Set up social telephone
Experts inside Dell can now get involved in conversations with consumers.
7. Created a Net Advocacy score
The business impact of social media isn’t just measured in clicks, calls and conversions. It’s measured by the favourable buzz that often yields sales. Dell calls this Net Advocacy, and measures it.

Adam Brown, Executive Director, Social Media, Dell
“Some of our folks might not say the right thing all the time… We’ve got to take this risk. The world is changing and the way that we communicate about our brand and the way we communicate with our customers is changing.”

Adam Brown, Executive Director, Social Media, Dell
“Internet years and social media years are like dog years. You multiply by seven… This time… next year the landscape will again look completely different.”

Adam Brown, Executive Director, Social Media, Dell
“Experts will become our best marketers (inside and out).

Social Media Tips from Gary Vaynerchuk

Five ways to get more from social

Gary Vaynerchuk is the rock star of social media success. His tips:

1. Social media is the new e-commerce
In 1995 and 1996, people said no one would put a credit card into a computer. Like e-commerce, social is a game changer. You need to be in the game to win it.
2. Context is all
‘unbelievable’ social tools only get unbelievable results if you’ve built the right relationships with people. You need to battle on context… on something that really matters, like customer service.
3. Search is going to be disrupted
SEO will matter less and less. Instead, more and more people will reach out to people they trust, their community, for endorsements of products and for information.
4. TV is not dead
In fact, social media is boosting TV’s popularity. Interesting Tweets, for example, make people tune in.
5. You must be interesting
Just because someone likes your brand, it doesn’t mean it will show up on someone’s Facebook newsfeed. Only brands that you, or your friends, are engaging with will come up in your newsfeed.

Gary’s social media soundbites:

“You could feel good that you’ve answered a bunch of people but why haven’t you answered everyone?”
“What’s the ROI of a piano? For me it is 0 dollars and 0 cents because I can’t play it. For Elton John, it’s a lot.”
“I don’t care about how many followers you have. How many of your followers buy your products? The only way to really accomplish that is to have real relationships.”
“Social’s tough for all of us… because it’s a marathon and we live in a sprint world. We’re trying to hit quarterly numbers, we’re trying to show results, we’re trying to sell it up.”
“Search is going to be so disrupted.”
“Your aunt’s thoughts on pasta matter.”
“If we don’t have the DNA internally in our companies to care about the end user, social media will squash you."
“People aren’t looking at outdoor media, people are so busy texting they aren’t even looking at the road anymore.”
“Traditional media is bad cop. Social is good cop.”