Social Business requires a holistic approach, in which all business components are naturally intertwined. Collaboration, with the interests of the customer first, must be the starting point. It is extremely important that the same “faith” is shared in an organization .
The way of leadership largely determines how social an organization is. Social Business requires open leadership. No instructions and control, but “ empowerment ”: connecting people, facilitating their collaboration and creating space for new initiatives. This means that the board and senior management must hand over the reins. If the board wants to be open to this, you will have to come up with hard facts and numerical substantiation.
Not only is it important to get the board level on board for the transformation, but it is at least as important to get the rest of the organization and stakeholders on board. Social organizations transcend department levels. The functioning of the individual departments separately becomes subordinate to the functioning of the departments together. Social business concerns all departments and certainly not just the marketing department. According to the Gallup 2010 study (research into employee engagement, Gallup, 2010), organizations that have optimized the engagement of their employees have 26% more profit and 85% more growth than their competitors. The study also shows that the customers of these companies buy more, return more often and remain loyal to the company longer. Engagement therefore generates results!
Last but certainly not least , you need to get your external relations on board. Doing market research and opening your doors literally and figuratively to your stakeholders and potential customers is crucial to the success of the transformation.
Step 2: Listen and Engage
Research by AIIM Market Intelligence shows that the most important driver behind social business is sourcing and sharing knowledge. The road to Social Business starts with listening, observing and entering into dialogues. A monitoring tool is a good aid for this. But that is not enough. What do you do with what your customers tell you? Is your company able to switch quickly enough and respond quickly to wishes or dissatisfaction? How quickly is your organization able to develop or improve processes based on customer feedback? These questions indicate how important it is that the entire organization is involved. The diagram below (source: IBM) shows examples of how organizations use social activities to connect with their customers.
Step 3: Build communities
Bringing together both internal and external individuals with shared interests, ideas and experiences can create added customer value. If you want to build a successful community of your own as an organization, there are a number of critical factors that you need to meet:
All parties must see the added value of the community. Especially B2B organizations and organizations with a fixed, involved customer base use their own community. The greater the interests on both sides, the more chance the community has to succeed.
Creativity and innovation should be the driving force. Learning from each other and being open to each other's vision and knowledge determines the strength of the community.
Effective deployment of employees. Every employee has a story and an expertise.belgium telegram data Use the strength of all employees. The video below gives a good idea of what you can achieve if you dare to be open to initiatives from all levels of the organization. An employee can really make a difference.
Connect relevant experts to community topics.
Connect your own community to existing social media platforms.
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Step 4: Manage the risks
The use of social business tools also entails risks. Research by IBM (IBM The business of social business) shows that many organizations express the necessary concerns about attacks on their brands, legal issues, data security and privacy protection. It is therefore extremely important to appoint a social team that is responsible for getting 'customer-oriented thinking and doing' into the DNA of the entire organization. They are responsible for creating and complying with the social policy, optimizing the required processes and systems, providing internal training and giving internal and external presentations.
There are many more tips to achieve a successful social business. Reading tip: Social business step-by-step plan: from social junior to social guru . In this article you will find 20 practical tips to become a social organization.