Social Media to Social Business

@RODINCoglinMil sent me an article on Women vs Men on LinkedIn.  She asked my thoughts about it.The report is from LinkedIn — looking at where Women are great Social Networkers and which industry they are not!

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/06/women-still-dont-get-linkedin-says-linkedin/39152/

Intersting to me — is that Women ReTweet Men more than women, and Men ReTweet Men more than women!

So the question I pondered, is how do you improve your Networking — both Virutal and In Person!

Tips for Women to More Effectively Network!

1. Make Time for it!   This is a big difference in men and women. I once asked my male mentor about networking and he said he considered it part of his job.  Most women consider it extra credit.
2. Select the Right Areas — whether the right LinkedIn Group, or beyond.   I think that you cannot do everything.  So for instance, I started with 3 LinkedIn groups about Authors but ended up selecting one of value.
3. Be interesting!  Showcase your compelling self!     On LinkedIn, have a great Photo, complete your entire Profile, and make sure you have  a great elevator pitch!  
4. Show interest!   Listen to people, ask Questions (you can do this in the Q session on LinkedIn).  Join great groups of interest.   
5. Follow up on the referrals you have been given and cultivate.  I recently met a group of 10 fabulous people but knew I couldn’t keep up the same with each.  So I prioritzed. While I followed up with all, I dedicated more time and more followups to a select few.

I have to work at networking daily.  I try to have lunch out once a month, connect with 10 new people each month, and provide value to 10 people each month either in connecting them to others, providing them information I think will value them, or just in general providing advice!

What do you do?    What should we do?  I’d like your active conversation.

Every Monday we will introduce a new “Social” word! 

Today’s word is Social Business Digital Council.   What is it?

A Social Business Digital Council is a cross organizational body (marketing, HR, product development, supply chain, customer service, and more).   In the most successful cases, it is co chaired by a line of business and IT.   The mission is to explore best practices to share and replicate in the company.  In addition, the Council should help to craft the Social Computing Guidelines,  set up a content activation strategy, create a Risk Management and Reputation Management plan, and provide guideance to the company.  It is not set up to be a blocker of social tools and techniques but rather a promoter of Social Business for competitive advantage.    It will also ensure that the right level of Social Business Education is provided.

I ran a digital council when I was the CMO of our IBM WebSphere division. 

What about you?  Do you have a digital council?  If so, share with me your best lessons learned!

I had the pleasure to meet with Lowe’s Andy Carusone at E2.0 and hear about the amazing results that they have achieved.  I loved his style and approach in his success case for Social.  400 Communities active and engaged!

How did they do it? Three key points from Alex Williams’s Blog interview!

• Discovery: The created a Web site at their big sales event. People sought it out. It was a way for the sales people to communicate. This is a critical point. The people wanted more. They were hungry for it. They were not force-fed marketing dribble. They engaged and began reaching out beyond the conference itself. Lowe’s provided the tools. The people used them.
• Transparency: People shared their success. Ideas spread. They cite one example where they gained an additional $1 million in sales. That’s small change, in our view, compared to the social capital gained but that’s a point for another post.
• Behavior: Lowe’s avoided the ROI trap. Hurrah! Instead, they looked at the return on behavior, not technology

And here is the PROUD IBM team wearing the IBM Connections Shirts.

Gang: I had a great standing room only Theater presentation this week at e2.0.   I love sharing our experiences both the great successes and what we learned from mistakes!

Since I’ve had a lot of requests, here’s my link to the slideshare posting!

I had the HUGE pleasure of meeting today with a group of 10 community managers along with Rachel Happe and Rawn Shah from IBM!  Read this great piece of work by Rachel on 2011 Community Manager report!

The bottom line is I believe firmly before of the important of Community Management and now am unquestionably sold on it!

Big quotable quotes!

   *  Everyone is a Community Manager!

   *  A Community manager is like a party planner!

   *  Community management is like a cultural translator!

We dished on  Three Major topics!

A)  Types of skills that made a GREAT community manager!

• Relationship skills
• Energizer
• Social Skills
• Coaching
• Facilitation
• “Event” management skills (This came from Jamie thinking about this role as a party planner — getting the wall flowers to enjoy the party, making it fun but valuable, etc!)
• Business skills
• Host or Hostess

B)  How many community managers do you need? 

• The answer we came to is “it depends”  On what?
• Complexity, size of community, and goals
• In addition to community manager you need support from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• Can be done with part timers 3-5 people who spend 10-20% of their time

C)  Where do you find them or how do you grow them?

• Mentoring
• Recommendations
• New curriculum that offers certificate?

The bottom line is this is now a new skill that is emerging and will be a critical success factor for any Social Business.

This morning I had breakfast with the Dachis Social Business Council group sponsored by IBM at the Enterprise 2.0!  I am so excited with the announcement here from IDC.   IDC has named IBM the market share leader in social platforms for the second year in a row. According to IDC, the worldwide revenue for social software grew by 31.9% to more than $500 million in 2010 and is expected to grow to $1.8 billion worldwide by 2014.

The breakfast was great today and very relevant to myself and the council members were very active in our discussion!

We had great folks in attendence like Andy from Lowe’s who told me that the $50B retail chain based in my home state of NC!  had over  45 Million Page Views from Social Adoption and 400 communities internal. Sounds like he has done an amazing job there at Lowe’s! 

My key learning from Andy:   Make sure that you embed social in the workflow, that is natural for your teams.

I also met Kevin Jones.  I loved his comments on learning from mistakes.   His major focus is on culture.   He is a true believer that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” 

My key learning from Kevin:   Don’t be afraid of your social business mistakes!  Learn and move on!

Robert Eastman, from SMB Research, discussed the value of Twitter, especially to the small businesses.    

My key learning from Robert:   Twitter is valuable!   Leverage it!

And finally, I know there were so many others that I didn’t get your business card, etc but loved meeting you!  Overall, I also took away:

• Match culture to market
• Technology does make a difference.   However, without the right planning and culture, you will still fail!
• Value of location based services
• Regulated industries are different.     They have to have ediscovery, and beyond (by the way, this is why today we announced the partnership with Actiance today!)

 I walked the group through the Social Business Agenda and gave out the first preview of the book!  YEA!

A  – Align your goals and culture to be ready to become more engaging and transparent. Do not underestimate the task ahead of you.  Culture eats strategy for lunch.  Take a look atIBM’s Social Computing Guidelines as a way to get started!

G – Gain Social Trust focuses on finding your fans, friends and followers, and forming best friends from your tippers or most influential clients or outside parties. It dives into what social trust is all about and how you instill it.

E – Engage through experiences focuses on how a company can engage its clients and employees and dives into gaming, virtual gifting, location based, mobile, or other stellar experiences to drive that engagement.

N – “Social” Network your processes. Since this is about business, figuring out how to add social technqiues to your processes is critical. Think about customer service — adding in Twitter to address your customer’s concerns. Or Crowdsourcing for product innovation, or Communities for incrementing your marketing processes around Loyalty!

D – Design for Reputation and Risk Management! This is the #1 areas of focus for the C level — managing the risk of having your brand online, your employees being your brand advocates, and even your clients becoming your marketing department! I think the value outweighs the risk .. but see how to develop a Disaster Recovery plan as you plan for the worst, and expect the best!

A – Analyze your data! Social analytics are the new black! You need to see the patterns of sentiment, who your tippers are, and listen daily !

I am here at E2.0!  Moving around a bit slowly but meeting some great clients all day today!  Tomorrow I have a client breakfast, a community manager lunch, a session at 1:30PM  and a book signing!!

http://www.e2conf.com/boston/2011/speaker-list/?speaker=sandy-carter

I love that the conference this year is dedicated to Social Business!  But today I six clients ask me what a Social Business was!

So here’s my first post from E2.0!   What is a social business?

All!

I wnt to start doing a new Social term each Monday for posting!   Mark those calendars to check in!

We are beginning our Social Business Glossary!

Tippers are very important people because they influence everyone else in your network.   Tippers vary by category. For instance, I could be a tipper in Social Business but not in cars.  Knowing who these people are is very important.  In my SOA days, we knew these folks and previewed product announcements, sought advice, and relied on them for shaping our business that grew in share each year.   Much of our success in SOA and BPM came from this strategy!

Tools like the Social Analytics that IBM uses can be used to identify these folks.  Also companies like Deep Mile!

Tell me your favorite way to find your tippers!!

I’m one in 300.000 plus giving back to communities around the globe today on IBM’s 100th Birthday for the IBM Centennial Day of Service. I love giving back!  The event today was sponsored by Ginni Rometty and I invited all the women from IBM’s Super Women’s group!  

The event I was at was done with the WEDC.  The Women’s Enterprise Development Center, WEDC, is a not-for-profit microenterprise development program, formed in 1997 to help women achieve economic self-sufficiency through small business development. IBM is partnering with WEDC to help small business owners, most of who are minority and economically disadvantaged women, in a “speed mentoring” session. We’re seeking IBM volunteers with different areas of expertise to act as mentors.

Speed mentoring provides small business owners with an opportunity to gain business knowledge from professionals like you through brief interactions with several IBM volunteers in 60-90 minute time slots.  

I mentored three great women!  The owner of a jewelry design business — KMC Designs; the owner of a Social Reputation Management Company – WriteMinds, and a realtor who specializes in an astrology newsletter.

The three top questions these women entrepreneurs asked me were:

1)  What’s the value of my business being on Facebook or Twitter?  I went through 2 great stories — Richard Scott Salon, my salon in Westchester County who uses Facebook to market his business and does not do any more advertising and hasn’t for 1.5 years!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Richard-Scott-Salon-and-Day-Spa/54521034706

The value that social brings a small company is the feel of a large company.  It equalizes the playing field!  That’s why small businesses doubled their investment in social for marketing in 2010.  50% of Small Businesses Say Lead Generation is Biggest Benefit of Social Networking.

2)  Is my value proposition right?  This question is the real meat.  In each of the mentoring sessions, we talked through product positioning.  For instance, for the jewelry, we talked about the value proposition of jewelry being “hand made” (perhaps a video showing how it is made on Facebook?) where the inspiration comes from (“nature and outdoor experiences”) and the uniqueness!    The busines WriteMinds is really about Reputation manager but has been struggling positioning around content management. Reputation management is more opportunity, sexier, and more of what she really does!

3)  How do I start if I am not tech savvy?  With all the women, we talked about easy ways to get started.  Using WordPress for blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn classes to get familar quickly, and the important of learning Google Analytics even if you are not technical.   We also talked about hiring a web designer as well as an option.   In all cases, I recommended looking at something like Constant Contact as well.    We also talked about Search Engine Optimization — SEO, and how a web designer could help you do that optimization.   

This is an ongoing relationship for 100 days!  I’ll keep you posted and small business owners, what advice would you give ??

I was here today in Boston (yes, in person!! but with my purple paisley cane!) to keynote at MarketingProfs B2B Conference.

  This conference is an exciting one as B2B marketing is using more and more social technqiues.  There were over 30 sessions having lessons learned and case studies on uses in real companies today.   There are over 300 great marketeers here learning and eager on these areas.

Roy Young kicked off the day at breakfast.  Do you know Roy ? He is brillant and has a lot of insight!

Key points of far!

• Culture eats strategy for Lunch!
• 15% of your followers are your tippers!  Find them, share with them, and make them your best friends!
• Engagement requires interactive experiences.  Consider mobile, gaming, location based, video, and virtual gifting.
• Embed social into your processes for impact!  15% revenue increase on average for adding social to marketing and sales.
• Have a risk migration plan.
• And don’t forget the Analytics!  Social Analytics are the new black!

More later!

Sandy