Social Business: Analysis – Part 3A: As-Is And To-Be Considerations

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Internal considerations
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided the reasons to participate in social business into two categories:

1. As-Is and To-Be
2. Company Readiness

Today, we’ll look at a company’s As-Is and To-Be considerations for getting into social business.

The first step of the analysis phase should already give you a solid idea of where you stand in the social web. Let’s revisit two key points that relate directly to your organization:

• Current Activity Are people gathering online to talk about you, your brand, your products/services, your employees, et cetera?
• Platforms Where do the people go to online to talk about you? Are they being influenced or are they the influencers? Find out whether and how they would welcome your participation.

Most importantly, really ask yourself why you’d want to participate in social business. If you’re getting into it just for the sake of doing it, you’re going to have a hard time. I’m not saying you won’t be successful, but your efforts will be less focused.

There are some that claim that if your consumers aren’t active on social media, neither should you. I don’t necessarily agree with this. That your consumers aren’t actively involved with social media now doesn’t mean they won’t in the (near) future. Part of the game of social business is being able to anticipate the future direction of your consumers and being prepared to capitalize on their movements.

To get a better idea of what your social business mileage will be, it’s important to give brutally honest questions to the following questions:

• Interest Can you tie into people’s interests, passions and/or hobbies?
• Community Are (the opinions or facts about) your brand or your products/services compelling enough for people to form or participate in a community?
• Niche Are there existing communities where your consumers are gathering right now that you can tap into?
• Showcase Can social media offer you a way to demonstrate the value or quality of your products/services?
• Expertise Does social media offer you an (extended) audience to demonstrate your knowledge, thought leadership or other innovative qualities?
• Coverage Are you already being talked about online? For example, if there are major blogs talking about you, this offers opportunities to post comments or write guest articles.
• Value Are you able to provide your consumers with information—directly or indirectly related to your products/services—that is helpful or entertaining?
• Influence Can your consumers actually influenced by social media to make purchases?

You don’t need a resounding “Yes” to all the above questions to get success in social business. However, asking yourself these questions give you an idea of how far your brand could stretch in social media.

We’ll talk more about value and effectiveness as we roll on in this series, but next week, we’ll look at assessing company readiness for social business. In the meantime, all your feedback is welcome!