Implementing social media into an enterprise is that just plug and play?

When enterprise companies decides that they want to invest in social media, a lot of these companies  do not look into their own business structure to see if they are ready for going social and they forget to do the proper investigation of the company maturity is in before start using Social Media.

It is a fact that Social Media is a hit among consumers Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn is social platforms where consumers do everything from telling what they are doing right now to discussing brands and product performance. There is no doubt of the Social Media power, the collaboration among consumers can change the behavior of big enterprises and make them do things consumers demands. This is why the company has to do a proper homework before starting the collaboration within social media.

What is Social Media not about and what can it lead to!

Social media is not about starting a weekly or monthly blog from the CEO where there is no room for response or collaborative work, this is not social this is just changing media from one communicating platform to another. The proper way to embed social media into the enterprise company is about empowering the influencers and drive adoption of social networks and hereby secure the collaboration.

Social media is not just plug and play, social media can be disruptive to the established communication structure  and even to the entire hierarchies of thinking in the enterprise company if the company haven´t taken the proper precautions before just implementing the social media. Social Media can even start challenge company policies, strategies and governance. An example of preventing disruptions to company policies and strategies is how IBM Denmark implemented social media in the general communication. As IBM have a set of policies called business conduct guidelines the social media implementation and strategy had to incorporate these policies and not disrupt this structure. A dialog was established with the employees where the critical subjects where discussed to secure a properly collaboration.

What is Social Media about!

How do an enterprise company get success with social media? 

• Task no.1 is to get employees to use the social media in a proper constructive collaborative way. This is not done by force or by telling employees that the company will save cost by using it. The success of social media adoption often requires senior management  to lead by example. 

• Task no.2 is making social media fun and useful to every day activities  of employees. 

• Task no.3 is to secure employees time to be social, and emphasizing employees by giving them credit for sharing on the social networks. 

• Task no.4 is certainly not to get rid of other communication forms it is to secure the way that every employee should work together.

 

Will Social Media lead to no physical workplaces?

There has been a lot of guessing about getting rid of the physical office and let people be distance workers as the digitization and the social media platforms will allow this - but as predictions of the paperless office has been proclaimed several times and not yet happened. Enterprises know for sure that they can not attract young and visionary people if these people do not have a community where they can test their visions. Social media will be an important part of getting the visionary delivered to numerous employees by collaborating. 

The conclusion is that it is not just plug and play to implement social media, however the enterprise companies that doesn´t provide the social media tools to its employees will force the employees to use external services and hereby exposing the enterprises to even greater risk. It is not an option to modern enterprise companies whether to use social media or not. The issue is how the enterprises create the proper environment to appropriate the benefits and minimize the risk of using the new social media.

  

Why does US NSA watch our Social media activity – is the surveillance rely to prevent theorist attacks or do they have any other purpose with this snooping?

During the first months of 2014, all Social Media users did feel exposed to privacy interruptions from NSA and the increasing security investigations they have forced upon companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and many others, to look into your conversations and the information you send and share with others.

Is this snooping into the social sharing a real act of preventing a theorist attack, or is it just an easy access to get knowledge of what new things are invented and could be a profitable sell to an American corporation in the future?

One thing is for sure, the US president do not score high points from the voters by jeopardising the privacy of the individual by forcing access into peoples Social media conversations.

What is the actual purpose, for organizations like NSA to look into millions of conversations from numerous providers of social traffic?

The official purpose is it to prevent theorist attacks – or is it pure spying on its own and other citizens?

Taking into consideration that NSA and the British GCHQ are working together on the surveillance of our social media traffic makes it even worse if the agencies actually are in for even political/personal reasons such as Mr Snowden suggest that our smartphones and social wear about can support agencies with personal data, location information and details such as political affiliation or sexual orientation. [1]

This entire discussion of who is getting access to data and social activities, gives us the reason to start a much bigger discussion about privacy on the internet and reasons to make guidelines for enterprise employees, of what they are discussing on the internet through Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and other social media platforms. This is to secure as little vital information to go out of the enterprise organisation and herby diminish the possibility of trade with company data from big public organisations such as NSA and GCHQ

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[1] Source: Japanes Times, January 29, 2014

Social Selling is the 2014 challenge for the Enterprise Company

Happy social selling in 2014
Among large companies top management, it is a common misconception that all involved in social media and selling is either placed in marketing and or sales department. It is extremely important that top management is fully committed to communicating with customers and helps to bring value and Content into the dialogue with customers. The first step in this process is to have a social strategy, where working with social strategies are clearly defined and formulated so everyone knows what to do to ensure a successful social media/selling engagement. 

The traditional sales cycle process changes due to a number of factors.

·      First the decission makers in the B2B market changes, where it was the It-manager taking the decission when IT had to be purchased it is now the CFO who take the decission on recomandation of the It-manager.

·      When it in the past was mainly price and features which was the overall decission factors it is now the value creation towards the purchasing company which is top of the decission line.

·      When it was the marketing messages and the product catalougees that decided what the company should purchase it is now the experience of  other customers and their rating of the selling company value creation model which makes the customer take a purchase decission.

Enterprise Companies must fundamentally alter their marketing strategies and quickly adapt to the social selling ecosystem. To be able to take advantage of the new social dynamic environment the enterprise management must start to:

·      Gain real time knowledge of the customer decision behavior.

·      Understand the customer’s individual needs and engage in relevant communities creating valuable useful information.

Social Media has reached a new level

Social Media has reached a level where all the target-buying groups (prospects and customers) are freely offering information about themselves, their buying behavior and their communication with other potential customers. The customers are giving free feedback on their opinion of the products and services they want to buy or just have bought from any enterprise company in the same target group as your company are working in.  It is time for the enterprise company to be able to collect all the data being produced every minute of the day (Big Data) and process the data so it can be used to support the social selling.

Social selling has created a world where even B2B buying decisions start , progress and reach the closing point with little or non face-to-face collaboration. The Pre-Social Media selling where the B2B buying was governed by the face-to-face sale, the product catalough and the marketing communication sent out from the enterprise company is now beeing deminished and is under presiour from the social communication going on among customers.

The B2B sales force are feeling the presiour and know if they should keep their specialist position they need to participate in the conversation going on in the Social Media univers. The sales departments are seeing that a real shift in communication is taking place, and therefore they must urge their B2B sales people to take advantage of the power that social media content offer as a sales tool to create new prospects and keep into the collaboration with their customers.

This is where 2014 will force enterprise companies to adopt social selling in greater numbers.

Happy social New Year