Sandy Carter Gets Bold at MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2011

I do enjoy listening to Sandy Carter, author of Get Bold: Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business. She spoke to us at MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2011 and definitely hads us thinking about new trends in business, and particularly social business.

[See my previous post titled Sandy Carter Integrates Social Media into the Marketing Mix.]

These new trends are IT driven. Think of the evolution from mainframes, to PCs, the Internet and now Social, the fifth IT era, which by 2015 will represent a $100K market. Organizations  that embrace social and become social businesses will leverage all processes to be more engaging, transparent and nimble, using insights to make decisions faster. Outperformers are also 57% more likely to be profitable because of social.

Social media used to be primarily for marketing and PR. Social businesses apply social media to all internal business processes.

Sandy used the acrostic AGENDA to communicate what makes makes social businesses unique.

• Align organizational goals and culture
• Gain 'friends' through social trust
• Engage through experiences
• Network your business processes 
• Design for reputation and risk management
• Analyze your data

Points that resonated with me:

Align organizational goals and culture
Culture eats strategy for lunch [example: BASF].

Gain 'friends' through social trust
It's critical to have a "trust plan" so you can pro-grammatically gain social trust from friends, followers and tippers [who impact 15% of friends and followers]. You need to identify trippers and influence them:

1. need to be responsive and consistent
2. be very transperant and open
3. need to have subject mattter expertise

Example: cars.com - dealers were tippers who didn't originally like the concept. Dealers were drawn into the plan.

Engage through experiences
You need a strategy to deliver exceptional experiences:

1. integrated across channels on/offline
2. interactive [need to engage and participate vs. observe]
3. identifying/personalized experieces

Example: LotusSphere 2011 included a social media aggregator that captured everything related to the event and significantly increased the satisfaction of participants.

IBM has created open source gaming engines that are easy to customize. This is where Gaming, Mobile, Virtual gifting, Video [the #1 medium for trust!] and location based services play a major role in created engaging experiences. I think we'll see much more happening here.

You can also engage through identifying and being personal, something that B2C companies do well. Example: Faberge will pick the right set of collectibles to show a potential customer based on responses to qualifying questions and online behaviors.

Network Your Business Processes
This means ensuring that all business processes - from marketing, customer service, product/service innovation, operations, human resources, etc. - are connected and communicating, and embrace social.

Example: Watson on Jeopardy - Reached tippers to talk about it. Those who developed Watson were available for questions; Watson had its own Facebook page and Twitter profile; customers and fans created their own  ebook.

Example: social product development - Coach: changed product development cycle and crowd sourced products. This generates word-of-mouth, engagement and leads - as IBM has noticed.

The value of social business is significant with

• 15% more revenue
• 20% increased time to market and more success
• 30% increased HR and talent management and increased speed to knowledge and expertise.

Design for Reputation and Risk Management
1. Have a plan and a team. Develop a disaster recovery plan.
2. Be proactive and fast.
3. Be transparent with 2 way dialog. Don't try to manipulate.

Example: Domino's Pizza

Analyze Your Data
1. Comprehensive analysis of words important to you.
2. Monitor sentiment about those words.
3. Monitor for Affinity
4. Predictive

Example: Gatorade command center. Listened online. Thought that only athletes drank Gatorade, but learned that gamers did, too. Picked up quickly from listening that Michele Obama had observed a linkage between Gatorade and obesity. Allowed company to react proactively.

Sandy definitely showed us the potential behind 'Get Bold'!

What's your reaction to 'social business'? Have you come across any? How do you see transforming your business into a social business? Let me know in the comments.