Social Media sustainability in an enterprise is part of the value creation!

An increasing part of the enterprise value creation model is how sustainable the social media are. Both enterprise management and other stakeholders have numerous opportunities and challenges with the value creation and herby sustainability. The enterprise organization has a challenging job in creating a safe and controlled environment for the sharing of ideas and collaboration among its stakeholders. The whole idea is to improve the social and financial performance of the enterprise and creating more value to the organization.

To create a social media sustainable environment for the stakeholders, the enterprise will need to act and behave in a certain way to convince both internal and external stakeholders that the social media effort is real, honest, open minded and not guided and controlled in a specific way to enforce the enterprise values directly on the stakeholders.

When an enterprise want to create value using Social media it has to consider how it approaches all their stakeholders. Stephan Burckhardt wrote (Social Media and sustainability: Seven key lessons, May 8 2012) that there are 7 key lessons for social media value creation:

      1. Listen, Listen, Listen

To create sustainable value with your Social Media is less about managing downside risk and more about listening to your key stakeholders. Your stakeholders will bring emergent thought to the surface and tell you their truth if they experience reel collaboration. Listening to your stakeholders will create sustainable value to the enterprise business and make you stay ahead of the market.

      2. Be authentic

In the emerging social ecosystem authenticity is the key for making reel collaboration.  Feeding the enterprise line either falls flat, or worse backfires. Let the content and the context speak for itself, and create an open and honest collaborative environment.  Being authentic will also engage your stakeholders to give you the understanding of what questions to answer. (Source: Editor Matthew McDermott – Treehugger; Business, Politics & Energy)

      3. Be humble, self critical and willing to adapt

One thing an enterprise should not do is making self promotion which will be taken by the stakeholders as a social death-knell. What the enterprise should do is to show its humble attitude towards the stakeholders, this is when the social media model with the push/push effect is in use, that is collaboration and that is when you have the dialog with the stakeholders. The stakeholder can go all the way from awareness to interest to desire to action all in the same medium at the same time. The popular way of expressing this new communication style is mentioned in the  figure below.

This is when you as an enterprise should be willing to adapt and be self critical to get the best out of collaboration.

      4. Be a real person

What is real important when the enterprise want to be social, is when it has to have a real person to do the collaboration. Anonymous corporate voice with lingo and the occasional enterprise CEO quote do not get any hits nor engagement with the stakeholders. Stakeholders want real people to collaborate with, they want “to feel and have the picture and name of whom you are going to collaborate with.” Stakeholders want to know the personality they are collaborating with.

      5. Engage over time and on multiple platforms

It is important for any enterprise to engage social media on multiple platforms, as all platforms seems to serve stakeholders engagement in their own unique way. Some enterprises use Twitter for quick internal ping-backs and dialog uses YouTube and a wiki for prospective employees. An others uses Linked In and even Face book for checking on prospective employees.

      6. Be relevant

Stakeholders want value, especially in the B2B market. As an enterprise you need to be able to deliver a valuable content in an engaged context. What that means is that stakeholders seek expertise and want their problems and suggestions taken seriously. On the other hand the enterprise managers want to be addressed by specialists who know what they are talking about and can help solve their specific problems. What is important when  enterprises are working the Social Media they have to remember that they are “telling each other” which mean the enterprises have a dialog with their stakeholders and they have to find out how they can relieve their pain.  You have to be able to take your own and your stakeholders pain seriously and are able to use both suggestions and problems to solve the pain to the mutual benefit for both parties – then you can grow into an industry leader.

      7. Be fearless

It is important for the enterprise to dare do collaborate with its stakeholders. In the “old days” when the enterprise used the model of “Tell us what you think of what we tell you” approach does not make you fearless as an enterprise. With this approach you stay in your comfort zone and do not dare to engage with your stakeholders. We all know that it is risky business to start a dialog where you can get some critic from your stakeholders even some dislike which can make the enterprise internal shiver. It is easy to say that we should collaborate with our stakeholders but it is hard to convince the internal powers that be. But those enterprises who dare will suddenly feel rewarded with increasing reach, and value creation more leads and attention all the way up the credibility chain.  As social media are not a direct sales tool you as an enterprise will indirectly see the value creation in the sales funnel.

  

Following these basic guidelines developed in the trenches will get you on the right social path to credibility and relevance in fulfilling the enterprise social and environmental responsibilities, and create sustainable value to your enterprise.