Nov 26 2012

“Building a Social Media Community” Webinar Highlights

Attendee polling questions show that for most organizations social media communities are a work-in-progress.

By Kathy Barton, Senior VP of Social CRM

On November 13, 2012, Kathy Barton, Senior Vice-President of ISM, presented a Webinar titled “Building a Social Media Community: Who is Just as Important as What”. Highlights follow:

To get started in building a Social Media Community, ISM recommends you:

- Determine the objective
- Define the audience
- Create the governance structure
- Assemble the team
- Decide on the strategy
- Build the plan
- Execute

Tools such as Facebook and Twitter are great for building brand and driving people to specific landing pages. However, if you want use social media to increase customer intimacy and support specific corporate goals, you need a private social community, where you own the data and have some control over content. It is important to keep in mind that people want to have conversations with other people, not corporations. Organizations need to create a community personality, and understand how that relates to their brand. In understanding your audience, ISM recommends knowing the answers to these four questions:

1. What purpose does your social media community serve for community members?
2. Which constituency should we be targeting?
3. What do they care about? (e.g., Interaction, Access, Deals)
4. What are their techno-graphic profiles?

During the Webinar, participants answered four polling questions. As you can see below, two-thirds of participants either had their own community or were planning one:

1. Does your organization currently have its own private community?

Yes, for clients – 21%; Yes, for employees – 26%; In the planning stage – 16%; No – 37%

Despite this, only a third felt that their organization was culturally ready for a more open, engaged relationship with their customers, and very interesting disconnect:

2. Do you think your organization is culturally ready for this type of relationship with your customer?

Yes – 30%; No -30%; Getting there – 40%

Another interesting data point concerns the number of companies that have a social media policy, or guidelines, for the employees, the lowest number yet:

3. Does your organization have a Social Media Policy for employees?

Yes – 27%; No – 47%; Work in progress – 27%

This feedback seems to indicate that although a over 60% of participants have or are planning a private community, far less than that have the governance structure and cultural readiness to properly support these communities.

4. Does your organization monitor or ban social media networking at work?

Yes – 13%; No – 60%; Some restrictions – 27%

This feedback seems to indicate that social media networking monitoring/policies is still in the infancy stage and with the growth of social media networking, organizations will have to develop policies regarding social media networking in the near future.

Our next blog will address social media policies for employees as presented in the webinar.

If any readers would like to comment on the key highlights concerning the webinar, please post your comments on the ISM Blog.

To access an archived recording of ISM’s, click here and scroll down to the “Building a Social Media Community: Who is Just as Important as What” Webinar listing.

Tags: , , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 11:59 am

Jul 12 2012

The Beauty of Social Media/Social CRM

by Barton Goldenberg, President, ISM Inc.

Social Media consists of on-line communities that allow people to get information, opinions, solutions and ratings directly from each other rather than from organizations. It’s the new way for organizations to communicate with and relate to employees, consumers, partners and other stakeholders by utilizing a set of highly interactive technology tools that leverage the fundamental human desire to interact with others.

There are two types of Social Media communities: “public” communities like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and “private” communities that an organization sets up and invites customers/prospects to participate in. The ideal way to leverage Social Media and make it a part of your overall growth strategy is to have a presence on one or more public social communities and to entice participants to move over from your public to your private community where you are able to have a much more intimate and meaningful dialog with these customers/prospects.

Here’s the beauty of Social Media/Social CRM: current technology allows you to listen to what your customers/prospects are saying in your public and private communities, filter this social information for meaningful insight, and then integrate this ‘social insight’ into your CRM customer profile. This allows your organization to have a comprehensive view of your customers inclusive of both transactional information as well as sentimental insights regarding what that customer says about your organization. This in turn helps you to sell, market and service your customers more effectively via their preferred channel (social or otherwise). In a nutshell the integration of ‘social insight’ into your CRM profile is the future of customer relationship management.

Many organizations have successfully moved down the Social Media/Social CRM path with meaningful success. I look forward to sharing their stories with you at the Sales 2.0 Conference on July 23 in Boston and explaining how you too can make “social” a productive and critical component of your overall growth strategy.

Tags: , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 5:09 pm

Jun 12 2012

“Analyzing the Business Value of Social Media and Social CRM” Webinar Highlights

By John Chan, ISM Software Lab Director

Attendee Polling Questions Show Most Companies Don’t Measure Business Value of Social Media Programs

On June 5, 2012, Barton Goldenberg, president of ISM, presented a Webinar titled “Analyzing the Business Value of Social Media and Social CRM”. Highlights follow:

ISM defines Social Media as: A set of highly interactive technology tools that leverage the fundamental human desire to interact with others. It is a new way for organizations to communicate with and relate to employees, customers/consumers, partners and other stakeholders in a two-way dialogue.

Barton recommends a Social Media strategy based on a “Hub and Spoke” model in which an organization uses social media networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to  the organization’s website. The website is the best tool for driving traffic to a private social media community. The information gathered from the community participants, whether biographical, buying habits or “sentiments”, can then be integrated into the organization’s CRM system for more knowledgeable interaction with customers, sales operations, partners, etc.

Barton provided numerous Social Media ROI case studies ranging from AAA, IBM, Dell, Autodesk to Verizon, all showing that members who were participating in Social Media communities were spending significantly more than non-members on the company’s products/services and simultaneously bringing value to the company from their Social Media participation.

During the Webinar, participants answered three polling questions. Results are:

1. Does your organization currently analyze the business value of Social Media and/or Social CRM?

Yes – 17%; Kind Of – 44%; Not at this time: 39%

2. What type of metrics are you using for your Social Media/Social CRM efforts?

Visibility (# of impressions, click-throughs, etc.) – 36%

Activity (following, friending, etc.) – 45%

Engaging (registering, entering a contest, downloading info) – 36%

Increased revenue and/or cost avoidance – 5%

Not using metrics yet – 32%

3. What are your organization’s top two business challenges in creating a Social Media Community and/or Social CRM initiative?

Don’t know where to start – 32%

Initiative is not yet high enough on our ‘to-do’ list – 37%

Internal [mgmt] skepticism regarding the business value – 47%

Interested, but haven’t yet created our plan of action – 11%

Already created Social Media community or Social CRM initiative – 26%

“It is surprising that so few companies establish the business value of a social media program, which must support your business strategy, or set success metrics; it is difficult to know if your investment is wise if you can’t measure it,” says Goldenberg.

Barton’s key takeaways concerning Social Media communities are:

  • Yes, you can really make money from a successful Social Media community or from a Social CRM initiative.
  • Public Social Media communities are valuable to build your brand and to distribute content.
  • Private Social Media communities and Social CRM are valuable to enhance the business value of your customers & drive advocacy.
  • Business value must be identified and metrics set from the outset of your Social Media/Social CRM initiative; it cannot be an afterthought.
  • Because search engines now monitor social media sites, this is a critical link you need to get right.

If any readers would like to comment on Barton’s key takeaways concerning Social Media communities, please feel free to post your comments on the ISM Blog.

To access an archived recording of ISM’s, click here and scroll down to the Analyzing the Business Value of Social Media and Social CRM Webinar listing.

Tags: , , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:07 am

May 23 2012

Social Media as a Business Intelligence Tool

by Kathy Barton, Senior VP of Social CRM

For some time we’ve been talking about how slow B2B businesses have been to adopt social media. Well, after a slow start, big business is getting on the bandwagon. Forrester Research predicts that sales of social community software will grow 61% a year and be a $6.4 billion business by 2016. A survey by McKinsey & Co. revealed that two-thirds of large companies now use tools such as social networks or blogs, with the use of internal social communities up 50% since 2008. Heavy use of social tools has a statistically significant correlation to profitability, according to Michael Chui, senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute.

Companies are moving beyond using Facebook and Twitter to build brand and drive awareness to using Facebook-type tools to build teams, increase internal communication and reduce time to market. It is hard to underestimate the value of a language, tool set and navigation that is constructed with the goal of sharing information. These tools and concepts now seem intuitive to users because they are accustomed to using them. One of the greatest obstacles to classic knowledge management and business intelligence systems has always been user adoption. Facebook has largely overcome that obstacle for social media tools through sheer ubiquity. B2B companies are suddenly achieving long-standing goals around knowledge sharing, team productivity and rapid product development by leveraging social communities internally. In addition, they are using social communities in concert with their customers to rapidly incorporate customer feedback into the product design cycle.

Whatever happens with Facebook long-term, the company has changed the way that people communicate with each other. Businesses are starting to realize that, far from being something to fear or guard against, this new technology may be the solution to long-standing company challenges. After all, companies are composed of people, and a technology that is designed to encourage and enhance communication and connections between people has business uses that we are only now beginning to explore.

Tags: , , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 10:33 am

May 11 2012

“Most Organizations Don’t Have a Clue …Regarding Social Media”

Says Leading Corporate IT/Channel Markets Specialist/Columnist

Elliot Markowitz applauds ISM and President Barton Goldenberg for “generating revenue and increasing customer engagement” for its Social Media clients.

By: Jean Young, Vice President, ISM Inc.

Known for his incisiveness and ‘getting to the point’ editorial approach, Elliot Markowitz, in a recent The VAR Guy column, states “most organizations don’t have a clue regarding how social media should be included in their marketing strategies”.

He points to one critical piece missing from most social media agendas: the direct connection it needs to have to customer relationship management. He attributes knowing about the “connection” to Goldenberg who analyzed CRM, Social CRM and Social Media Communities as a guest presenter in a number of e-seminars hosted by Markowitz when he served as Editorial Director of Ziff Davis Enterprises, recently sold.

Column Quote: As Goldenberg sees it, any social media initiative needs to be about generating revenue and increasing customer engagement, and if it doesn’t, it’s a waste of money. Social media is about bringing a company’s best and most interested customers closer. It’s about forming a community where information and ideas can be shared and better business decisions can be made.

To get more information on Goldenberg’s take on the future of Social CRM and Social Media Communities, view his video, Barton Goldenberg Speaking Excerpts, from a presentation at the recent Gartner Customer 360 Summit in Orlando.

Tags: , , Posted by - jennifermq @ 9:40 am

Sep 21 2011

Age of Social & The Customer Profile – How Organizations Should Gather Customer Info

Since 1986, I have argued that at the core of every successful CRM initiative is a robust customer profile that provides insight into your customer’s needs and wants.  Think of the profile as a daisy, with the customer in the center of the daisy and the petals symbolizing different information about that customer (e.g., name, address, email, activities, products/services purchased, financial value to your firm, customer service issues, operational issues, competitive products/services purchased, marketing opportunities).

The problem with this definition of the profile is that it is static or transactional-based.  It lacks the emotional or sentimental side of a relationship.  What does the customer think of us as a supplier?  Would he/she recommend us to their colleagues? What has this customer said on social communities about our company and about doing business with our company?

Enter the “Age of Social” where one can easily listen or monitor social communities that your customer frequents or forums where your company becomes a topic of discussion.  And here is the beauty of today’s social tools; they allow you to easily monitor and then harvest or scrape information off of social communities and attach them to your customer profile.  So now you have a customer profile that contains both static or transactional information AND dynamic, sentimental information that reveals additional insights into your customer’s want and needs and how they feel about doing business with you.

For the past several years, ISM has been helping our global, best-in-class customers to redesign their customer profiles, taking advantage of the Age of Social.  For example, we just completed an engagement to help Marriott create their 2012-2014 Marriott Rewards customer profile roadmap that takes into account information from social communities.

Needless to say there is an entirely new set of challenges with looking and gathering customer information in the Age of Social. For example which information from which social source is worth gathering?  How best to act on this information?  Is a response required?  How to train sales personnel to take this information into account when calling on the customer?

But not bringing social insights into a customer’s profile is like playing a sports game with one-hand tied behind your back.  And that’s a game you will never win.

Tags: , , Posted by - Barton Goldenberg @ 3:36 pm