A social business ensures community engagement is an internal activity; creates linkages from social media activities to their business goal; measures social metrics ROI; media monitors more than brand mentions; and is connected through social with employees. Does yours?

1. Articles of iGo2Group
5 Sure Signs You are NOT a Social Business
2011-12-13 11:12:53 WillB
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This post is inspired by someone I
met the other week who was seeking a role with @iGo2. We would have hired this person if we had an
opening and will as soon as we do.
The reason they wanted out from their current role at a well known agency around town was that the
agency was giving clients poor advice and was not working strategically with clients. The person felt that
the agency would take any task in social for the client; whether it was a good idea or not. And they could
see that sooner or later the lack of a social business strategy was going to damage the relationship with
the client.
The person came to us because they were aware of some of the work we are doing and our insistence on
making a strategic approach the heart of being a successful social business. And the conversation got
me thinking about what we see as the sure signs in an organisation that they have not grasped the
broader implications of being a social business.
Here are five warning signs:
1. Community management is completely outsourced to an agency;
2. No linkage to your business goals / objectives;
3. No social metrics beyond fans, followers and friends;
4. You are not monitoring more than brand mentions;
5. Social is a word connected only with those outside your organisation.
1. Community management is completely outsourced to an agency
Now, I understand you are busy. So outsourcing the set up of your social presence – check. Outsourcing
the monitoring and the intelligence – yip, probably more cost effective than doing it in house; plus good
insights across the data – and advice – can assist the business. Having an agency manage your
‘community’ by posting on your behalf?
What, you are too busy to communicate with your customers, prospects, members, followers,
supporters, employee’s?
Run that by me again – as an executive of a company communication should be your number one priority.
And we can tell – the stilted posts, twice a day, done to a schedule and a calendar agreed a month ahead.
If someone actually asks a question, there is a yawning gap whilst the agency checks with the company
as to the correct answer. No engagement, no spontaneity, no passion, no YOU.
If you do this you are not a social business and the agency that recommends or offers this to you – you
should think seriously about the advice you are paying for!
2. No linkage to your business goals / objectives

2. The use of social media should be bound to an organisations goals and objectives – just like any other
initiative. What are you trying to achieve – increased brand health, improved customer engagement,
revenue growth, increased marketing effectiveness, operational efficiency or greater product innovation?
Or likely, a combination of two or more of these objectives.
If you cannot link your social initiatives and programs to one or more business goals then it’s a sure sign
you don’t have an effective social business strategy. And at best, you will remain a social brand rather
than becoming a social business. For example, we are a relatively young and small company. Our
primary goals are revenue growth and increased marketing effectiveness. Our strategy to get to these
goals is to only focus on doing three things as a business – social strategy consulting, social business
intelligence offerings and social platforms. And everything we do in social is designed to grow revenue or
improve marketing effectiveness in one of these key offerings.
Think about the things you need to achieve in your business – leverage your network more effectively,
deliver good customer service, get your clients published and generate qualified leads your sales team
could work on. These are the more effective links and measures (see point #3 below) of success.
And even better, how about focusing on outcomes that “friends and followers” want, need or desire as a
business objective? Businesses often come across as self serving when it comes to using social media
– how about “simply serving” as Jay Deragon would say.
The development of metrics to measure the return on the use of social media, in support of business
outcomes, is not something particularly mysterious, although it still generates enormous debate and
emotion. Olivier Blanchard calls this out and makes the point that understanding social media as one
component of activity supporting the KPIs of a broader business strategy or activity is the key to
measurement.
If you can’t make an immediate connection from your social initiatives to your strategy and business goals
then you are not yet a social business.
3. No social metrics beyond fans, followers and friends
Don’t misunderstand me – these are valid metrics, but they are not enough. As Jeremiah Owyang said
recently Number of Fans and Followers is NOT a Business Metric – What You Do With Them Is, which
links out point #2 above with this point #3.
Here we enter the realm of ‘So What’ and ‘Who Cares’.
We had an organisation come to us with a request for proposal. They wanted a proposal to get to 10,000
Facebook fans as quickly as possible. They already had two proposals from agencies and wondered if we
would also like to propose. We asked why on earth you would focus a proposal on a meaningless metric
like this – why did they want them in Facebook and what would they do with them once they had them?
They replied that some of their competitors had this many fans. We politely replied that we did not wish to
propose to their business requirement.
We have also had occasion to have a client tell us; very strongly, that they have more than 500,000 fans
on a particular facebook page. And we said – so what? Which is an interesting conversation stopper, let
me tell you. We explained that we would rather have 10,000 really engaged fans on a community platform
collaborating on a specific goal and why that would provide them a better business result.
Here at iGo2 we all come out of operational roles – sales, development, operations, presales and
understand the value and need to have linkage of all investments to true business metrics. If you are going
to invest in social (generally at the cost of investing elsewhere) then it better be measurable in business
terms.
For example, according to the Chief Marketing Officer Council in “The Variance in the Social Brand
Experience”, their latest 2011 report:
Social consumers indicate they are looking for exclusive experiences, savings, and perks
from the brands they like. But marketers still believe that content and connection to peers are
the primary drivers to likes and follows.

3. The social business has moved beyond “likes and follows”, and in fact beyond the “social brand”, to
business KPIs and business linkages.
Yes, it’s ok to have non financial metrics (improved sentiment for one) but you have to be able to answer
the ‘So what’ and ‘Who Cares’. If not, you are not yet a social business.
4. You are not monitoring more than brand mentions
We will assume you understand the importance of monitoring (listening). But it’s a long way from social
media monitoring to social business intelligence. And social businesses don’t just monitor. And they
don’t just monitor for mentions of their brand and then put some artificial ‘value’ on it – for example “this
is how much it would have cost you if this was advertising space“!?
What? Don’t start me on this one – you wouldn’t pay for most of this copy anyway so why kid yourself.
In our own analysis work for clients we find that around 80% of mentions that interest you never contain
your brand name.
If you wish to apply social business intelligence, you have to work at it, for example:
You must track key terms that are of interest to people who may need your products or services;
You must continually refine this;
You must track competitors; and,
Key partners if they are a large part of your value chain; and,
Key customers: and,
Location data if you are a brick and mortar retailer; and,
Then sift through the data, piece by piece:
Correcting sentiment;
Adding tags; and,
Refining searches in the context of your region/country/language/culture/market/segment;
Continually!
And then you look for the gold by seeking trends, opportunities to engage, subtle shifts in channels.
This is what social businesses do. Social brands just focus on brand mentions and sentiment.
5. Social is a word connected only with those outside your organisation
If your organisation is only focused on how to utilise social to connect with customers, markets,
prospects and partners and not with employees – then it’s not a social business. If it is not equally focused
on how to make internal processes more collaborative; if it is not seeking to unlock productivity internally
through social initiatives then it’s not a social business.
See for example our recent post 360 Social Business Engagement Consumer AND
Employee
And if the organisation blocks your access to social networks at work – what do you think – is it a social
business? Do you feel trusted? Empowered? Included?
Many others have said it better than me, but you can’t be an effective social brand and engage with your
customers in today’s world if you do not have an equal focus on becoming a social enterprise internally. It
shows, in the great gaping holes in the process or the communications when a response is required and
it has to go into the organisation – which is acting in the same old ways.
You need to enable what Jay Deragon calls the Voice of the System: “The voice of the system is the
people who work within the system and expressing how well the system enables them to serve the
customer“. He adds,
If people within the company cannot speak to the issues that constrain their ability to serve
the end customers then management cannot hear what needs to improve. If you’re not
listening then how can you hear the issues of critical importance to the people? …If your
system is designed to not enable voices to speak the truth how do you really know what is
going on?

4. going on?
Every organisation that we know who is on the journey to becoming a social business is equally focused
on their employees and their internal process, and the “voice of the system”, as much as their customer-
facing ones.
Summary
An organisation on the positive journey to becoming a social business will be addressing the following
positive issues:
1. Ensuring that community engagement is an internal activity;
2. Creating linkages from social media activities to their business goals / objectives;
3. Measuring or at least establishing social metrics beyond fans, followers and friends;
4. Monitoring more than brand mentions;
5. Connected through social with those inside their organisation.
What about you? What do you think are sure signs you are not a social business?