By Ytzik Aranov, Managing Partner, Social2B

For those of you who’ve been through business school lectures on Michael Porter’s Value Chain Analysis this doesn’t come as news to you.  But when asked to implement social media practices, policies, platforms, tools, etc., in today’s corporation or enterprise, we throw out all of what we learned that makes the enterprise tick and elect to “surf” it through!

Attention – and I quote:

“Social Media (in the Enterprise) is a Business Process, not a channel, department, or vertical silo”.

End quote.

You heard it here!  Think about it.  Social media touches upon every department, every business process, every channel, every prospect / customer interaction, every investor, every supplier, in short, it touches the entire organization.

In today’s marketplace, social media and an enterprise’s’ online brand architecture and social media footprint is arguably, the most important business process affecting the entire Enterprise Value Chain.  Poor implementation of a solid online & social media platform strategy & tactics directly impacts a company’s ability to market, sell and extend its brand reach, globally.  Failure to effectively implement an integrated social media strategy & tactics across the entire Value Chain could potentially lead to lower revenues (read, shareholder value), slippage in market share, increased financial exposure, risk, and more

One of the most effective measurement techniques to measure enterprise social media effectiveness, both pre- and post-implementation, is to diagnose the “Social Media Maturity Index” (see graphic), which establishes a recognizable industry-specific metric with which to assess the social media value, influence, depth, and footprint of an enterprise’s value chain components – combining both departments and business processes.  Moreover, the social media maturity Index in its very essence is a barometer of how the value chain is capable of moving at the speed of (digital & social) business today.

So, when looking for added revenue stream, cost savings, internal value, constraints, and external interfaces with the world, then social media maturity acutely identifies the lack of, or plethora, of business excellence in sync with today’s pace of commerce.

OK, skeptics, How do we drill down into the Enterprise Value Chain and establish Social Value Chain Maturity & Scalability? Let’s break it apart into pieces.  Look at the following chart that defines touch points throughout selected departments throughout the enterprise, and their social media impacts.

The same goes for every other vertical silo, and, every business processes.  Each and every business process running across – horizontally – the enterprise has multiple social media touch points.

Social media maturity, coupled with an integrated online, SEO, SEM and Social Community Marketing strategy replaces one-way communication with dialogue. Participation by customers, suppliers, employees, the industry, the market, etc., and feedback from them all (!), must be listened to because it has the power to make or break your enterprise or enterprise function.  Social media tools allow us to observe the conversations, measure, monitor, track and quantify the online & social media reach and influence. It allows us to assess and re-assess the correct strategy & tactics from the bottom up to increase revenues, open new markets, capture greater market share, lower costs and in general, improve the bottom-line ROI.

So, what about ROI?

If done right — and you’ll have to come back for a later post on this subject — the Social Media Maturity Index is then mapped by those of you honored to be the “Keeper of the Social Keys” in the enterprise, to any existing enterprise Balanced Scorecard KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in use by the Executive suite (read CFO), in order to assess true ROI, Economic Value & shareholder value. And, by the way, to justify shifting dollars from traditional advertising / marketing into your online / social media marketing budget.

In Summary:

The value in executing a Social Media Maturity Index exercise, as the very first step prior to embarking on that “Journey to the Edge of the Social World”, includes, but by no means is limited to:

• Creating a more aligned and more cohesive internal organization (whether vertical silo or horizontal business process) involved with social media and its offshoots;
• Developing a cross-enterprise social media policy – let me guess, you’re thinking about it, while hundreds of employees across the value chain are uncontrollably blogging & Tweeting about the company without any filters – to manage the social media impact;
• Channeling the endless volume of Content across the enterprise that is not “curated”, re-purposed or managed effectively throughout the enterprise, thereby losing SEO and ranking power;
• Implementing a solid, instantaneous, Reputation Management process – what’s that? – more on that in another post …;
• Hiring – training – more targeted and experienced human resources to effectively channel the enterprise’s social media assets and better utilization of current ones;
• Mapping out a better-defined path to enterprise success by assessing the maturity of the organization and its readiness to embrace a new channel (SM) affecting the entire value chain – from customer service to distributor relations to marketing;
• Establishing a quantifiable and actionable ROI – well, we know what that means (Return-On-Ignoring, Return-on-I (me!), etc. – in short, how we justify the extra capital needed to implement targeted social media campaigns to accelerate products or services sales.

The Social Media Maturity Index provides an immediate snapshot of where every Value Chain component of the organization is today is with respect to social media & market acceleration and what can be expected in terms of performance based on the overall social media maturity of the enterprise. It also maps out where each Value Chain component is lacking and what can be done to accelerate it and better sync it to the other Value Chain components thereby creating a powerhouse enterprise that socially rocks!

By Marina Shapiro

‘Out with the old, and in with the new.’  The industry of Social Media Marketing is maturing and we are predicting a new dawn for the Social Media revolution. So, what will it mean to be ‘social’ in 2011?  What aspects of Social Media will be integral to the way businesses develop and grow?  How will this impact the technology? Who will ‘win’ at Social Media this year? We’ve compiled top 11 predictions for the world of ‘social’ in 2011.

1. “…next year is really going to be about paring down to the essentials based on proven successes and strong metrics.” http://mashable.com/2010/12/21/small-business-predictions/ 2. “Outsourcing social media such as blogs, writing e-mails, answering customer service inquiries, writing web copy, social media, ghostwritten blogs, tweets. People don’t always have the availability to write, tweet, research and post their own content.” http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2011-big-ideas-for-small-businesses-0835/ 3. “All signs are pointing toward a multicultural Web. By 2015, a billion people in BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China] will be using PCs. Thus, 2011 will mark the year that businesses either adapt to these changes or get left woefully behind.” http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2011-big-ideas-for-small-businesses-0835/ 4. “If you don’t have a mobile version of your site today, you are already behind.” http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1934793/21-social-media-predictions-trends-2011 5. “B2B companies will catch up to B2C companies in using social media.”           http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1934793/21-social-media-predictions-trends-2011 6. “The Rise of the Marketing Technologist – Marketers for the last few years have been closet techno geeks and it’s time for them to rise up – companies need digitally fluent marketers who can apply technologies to help make marketing more measurable and scientific. Then we can really change the dynamic from marketing as a cost center to marketing as a profit center!” http://socialmediatoday.com/pauldunay/250079/11-b2b-marketing-predictions-2011 7. “Marketing and sales alignment continues to be the #1 issue impeding marketing’s ability to be perceived as a major driver of B2B business value.” http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/strategy/b2b-marketing-predictions-for-2011 8. “Consumers’ increasing concerns over noise and privacy will decrease the relatively open access marketers have enjoyed in social channels. The easiest tactics will be the least effective, forcing marketers to bring the same kind of creativity, audience differentiation, and strategy that they bring in other channels. www.forrester.com/rb/Research/2011_now_social_media_marketing_gets_tough/q/id/57771/t/2?cm_mmc=Forrester-_-Blogs-_-Related%20Research-_-5583 9. “Social media measurement will mature rapidly now that there is real money being spent by marketers in the social realm. http://marketingmeasurementtoday.blogspot.com/2011/01/predictions-for-social-media-metrics.html 10.  “Commerce happens in communities of interest — not social networks. First, I’d like to distinguish between a social network and a community of interest, though the terms are often used interchangeably. Social networks or, more aptly, social networking is how we connect with people.” http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=147897 11.  “In 2011, those brands that truly embrace “social content generation” will build themselves a kingdom. The connections between brand, art or skill and visual communications in a socially connected world can create powerfully authentic appeal for brands.”  http://www.fastcompany.com/1712634/2011-back-to-the-future So there you have it- the 11 ‘social’ pointers set to make big news in 2011.  All of which tell us that the future of Social Media is changing and evolving into a force that no business large or small can afford to ignore.   The future is bright. The future is Social (albeit a new hybrid of ‘social’). Are you ready for it?

By Alex Romanovich May 17th, 2009 ===== Oh no! I don’t want to scare you – this is not yet another post about whether Social Media Marketing (SMM) can be outsourced or not. Instead, it is a brief decomposition of what exactly I think can be, or cannot be, outsourced. Later on, I also provide a few examples of tools and techniques, which can be used to guide yourself into the world of Social Media.  First, let me say – Social Media Marketing, like any other service, can be decomposed, broken into smaller tasks, and yes, outsourced. Let’s also agree that, in reality, outsourcing, is not about ‘shipping jobs overseas’, but rather a fairly old process of off-loading a set of processes and tasks to a qualified professional, hopefully with knowledge of the subject matter.  Secondly, if we were to break Social Media Marketing into components, tasks and functions, we could come up with a very long and interesting list, similar to this one:

• Social Media Marketing Strategy
• Social Media Marketing Blueprint or Action Plan
• Social Media Channel Strategy (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube or a slightly different combination of the previously mentioned social media channels)
• Online Reputation Management, or set of reputation and brand related tools and services
• Social Media Profile Creation, Integration, and Management (Maintenance) – most of us know how to set up Twitter and Facebook accounts, but some of us don’t like to do it
• Blog creation, marketing, and optimization
• Online video marketing (video blogs included)
• Blog and Twitter (‘listening devices’) data collection, analysis, interpretation
• Action, related to ‘what to do next’ in the terms of marketing or communications response or maintenance
• Data mining and text analytics
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Copywriting and Creative Writing

…and many other tasks and functions that we can list above. In reality, depending on how, when and what you are trying to achieve with Social Media Marketing, an organization can decide whether to outsource any of  it or not. Certainly, if you are going to blog about the aviation industry, you would have to know something about it. Or if you are developing a strategy for small and medium size retailers, who are looking for ways to survive,  and potentially grow, you’d better know something about catalog management and eCommerce. Truthfully, organizations need to decide what they can do internally, and what could be outsourced, out-tasked, crowdsourced, and ‘expert-sourced’.  Social Media Marketing opens a number of opportunities for improvement if companies honestly assess their capabilities and admit their weaknesses, one of which could be their inability to manage projects successfully, or political undertones of their operations, blocking progress. In the end, Social Media Marketing is a ‘recombinant set of tools and services’, capable of assembling and disassembling upon need, to deliver tangible results – measured, tracked, and explained. Once the results are well understood by the marketing organization, changes, tweaks, and enhancement can be made. Most importantly, whether you outsource any of the above functions or keep it tightly interwoven within your marketing and technology organizations, one thing is absolutely clear – you,  as an organization, need to dedicate yourself to a long term Social Media Marketing strategy and execution. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.