Social Business Planning for Enterprise

L E A D E R NETWORKS

Copyright © 2014 Leader Networks, LLC

Social Media Strategy Roadmap

Social Business Planning for B2B Organization

Vanessa DiMauro, CEO Leader Networks

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About Vanessa DiMauro

CEO & Founder of Leader Networks

Leader Networks is a highly specialized research and consulting firm focused on helping organizations build deeper relationships with key stakeholders, thus creating significant competitive advantage and outstanding business results. We produce strategic planning and business alignment for B2B social business and online communities.

In a nutshell:

• Founded and run profitable B2B online communities – 20 years experience.

• Clients include F1000 and Blue Chip companies, many have won prestigious awards for our work together.

• Ongoing research agenda – download our research and templates from http://www.leadernetworks.com.

• Research and client success stories have been published and covered by leading publications such as the The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com and CIO Magazine.

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http://www.leadernetworks.com/



Agenda

• Overview Of Social Branding For B2B

• Social Business Behavioral Evolution

• Developing A Social Strategy – Roadmap with mini-cases – Develop strategy

– Validate model

– Pilot

– Operational integration

• Guiding Principles

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Copyright © 2014 Leader Networks, LLC 4

Why Believe Me?



Social Branding Explained

Social Branding is…..

The persistent act of connecting key stakeholders* to each other and to the organization using social applications and approaches resulting in improved business processes and greater competitive advantage.

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* (prospective and current customers, influencers, partners, suppliers, employees



Social Branding Explained In Pictures

The past 3+ years: digital shout A new, better way: social business

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Social branding has evolved to become social business



And The Growing Need Is Driven By A Changing World

• Competition is truly global

• Customers’ problems are far more complex

• Innovative products have become table stakes

• Company missteps become known quickly via social media

• Competing solely on price against offshore firms is a losing game

• Customers need much more help to fulfill their business mandates

• Companies need to understand customers’ changing needs much faster and better and partners’ & suppliers ability to service them

• Lack of sophistication in social media is starting to hurt

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Social Business Changes Business As Usual.. For The Better

Deepen client

relationships

Build greater

brand equity

Provide better

customer care

Shorten product

innovation cycle

Deliver improved financial returns

Extend accelerate product & services delivery

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Social Capital In-person + online



“Socially Present”

“Socially Familiar”

“Socially Integrated”

“Socially Enabled”

Design for marketing presence

on the social channel to

communicate information and

ideas online and drive

awareness.

Design for leveraging

information and relationships

gathered through social efforts

in support of key business

functions.

Design for learning about cause

and effect online. “If I do this,

then that will happen….”

Design for operational scale and

efficiencies using social the

centerpiece of most customer-

facing efforts.

Fo

cu

s

- Organizational Complexity +

Social Business Behavioral Framework

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Source: The Social Business Benchmark Study – 2013 Preliminary Findings, Leader Networks LLC co-launched with

the Society for New Communications Research

http://www.slideshare.net/vdimauro/social-business-benchmark-report






Finding The Starting Line: A Social Business Roadmap

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1. Strategy Development

2. Model Validation

3. Pilot Initiatives

4. Operational Integration



Developing A Strategy

Questions Where to look for answers

What are we trying to accomplish?

Create leadership roundtable to vision – Sales, marketing, operations need to come together.

Which stakeholders are we looking to engage with?

Define reachable narrow audience first, than plan for scale.

What is the business case? Develop If/Then statements to identify value drivers for the business.

Which business processes will be enhanced? How?

Examine current offline initiatives and seek for ways that social can accelerate the processes.

How does this initiative align with our strategic objectives?

Social strategy must support or enhance larger organizational strategy to be fruitful.

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Who you seek to engage with will dictation the approach, platform and goals!



Understanding Stakeholder Values And Identifying How Social Helps Deliver On The Promise

1. Easy to do business with

2. Ability to co-create products

3. Clear communication

4. Access to developers or thought leaders

5. More….

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What do customers value? How can social advance the agenda? (Be specific)

Surface 1-3 strategic initiatives (increase stakeholder value or increase customer value proposition) and identify how social business can help advance the goals. Seek programs that drive top-line growth.



Example: Building The Case For Social

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How can the company apply strategy best practices to examine the opportunity for social business leverage?

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Palladium Group is a consulting and conference firm whose founders invented the Balanced Scorecard measurement system (Robert Kaplan and David Norton) • They sought to help practitioners of the

Balanced Scorecard share knowledge and experience

• Increase customer intimacy and raise awareness of products and services

• Tap into leading trends in strategy execution • Create a new revenue-generating service line

for Palladium Group Many offerings means many markets Their audience is elusive – CSOs and CRO of top companies globally Their consultancy focused on a high-touch model, but scale was an barrier.

• Developed strategy at the C-suite level

• Created potential, varied revenue models

• Vetted model with customers and partners

• Identified internal thought-leaders to lead the charter.

• Beta tested with 500 strategy practitioners before launch.



Palladium Group XPC – What Happened Since Inception?

• Launched a global online community with more than 50% of the membership from non-US countries, deepening Palladium’s market reach

• Membership from over 3,600 organizations worldwide

• Drives conference attendance, consulting projects and publishing arm of Palladium

• Revenue-generating in first 6 months (subscriptions, partner programs)

• Over 15% of new members come from peer referrals

• Numerous private working groups (e.g. KPI library for Risk Professionals)

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Validating The Strategy and Managing Risk


How can we test our hypothesis before making a significant investment?

Speak with or survey a set of customers or partners about what they want or need more of from your company, and from their peer-relationships

What do we have to offer? Thought leadership? Assets, answers to product questions, access to executives? Define your “give” with equal gusto as your take.

How do we mitigate risk?

Starting with the target audience, select one area for social branding focus run an early experiment with defined goals & KPIs. Develop governance progresses early and often.

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Test, document, learn, evolve, scale



Example: Validation (Measure Twice, Build Once)

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How can they learn from their experiments to reduce overhead and increase efficacy according to clear business goals?

• Key stakeholder needs assessment

• Broad-based survey

• Research-driven examination of current social approaches

• Competitive analysis

All enabled them to refine and streamline their social strategy, reduce staffing redundancies, IT costs, and set a clear path to parallel ROI metrics.

Refined offerings and 25% of original plans were refined.

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A large industry association sought to use the social channels to engage on hot topics like genetically modified food and artificial sweeteners for business gain. They wanted a federated strategy and not a random collection of social efforts. Need to understand best-in-breed and standardize for greatest returns.

Through ongoing experimentation, they had developed a number of social approaches, each one with a unique strategy and discrete, un-related metrics. Different groups involved in various social approaches.

Thorough validation effort to surface best practices:



Launching Pilot Programs


Who should we “be” online? Define your online voice before starting and align it with your existing, offline brand.

What is the right platform for social branding?

Drive technology choices with business goals. Go to where your audience & convene on your site.

Who should run social (Staffing)?

Teams work. Identify staffing needs in accordance with the business goals. E.g. If customer care is goal, then customer service staff are best. • Seek internal and external thought leaders. • Be prepared to train and educate for best practices.

Don’t default to the millennial just because they have a twitter account.

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Test, document, learn, evolve, scale



Case Example – Pilot to Learn and Grow

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• Clients are not aware of all they has to offer • Entering a new market with recent acquisition

s • No digital “channel” to support customers

and partners

How can they improve its customer & partner engagement model and enhance its thought leadership platform to reduce costs and increase revenues?

• Develop / refine the business case

• Market test to validate customer need and assumptions as well as functional and content requirements

• Bring partners deeper into the conversation

• Identify select business processes to use the social insights to accelerate efficiencies (learn and grow)

• Potential to leverage the online customer community as a best practice to inform

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Customer Intimacy is core and central to how a B2B storage company sells and conducts business: • Strong reputation for excellent customer

service • Offers superior products and services to the

market • Strong culture that reinforces and rewards

customer intimacy • Desires a larger share of voice and thought

leadership position in the market

Scale, audience reach and persistent engagement currently place a burden on staff:

Developed a social business strategy pilot that is currently running


Copyright © 2014 Leader Networks, LLC 19 19

1. Product Development collaborates with Social Business team to:

- Discuss the current process for identifying problems / issues and new features including off-line venues (e.g. customer service,

customer advisory councils / boards)

- Establish guidelines and process for incorporating insights gathered from the online community initiative

2. Measures of success (e.g. business metrics) are established for identifying problem issues (e.g. quantity, quality) and new features

(e.g. quantity, quality)

3. Insights are gathered by Social Business team, per previously agreed upon guidelines, through discussions, polls, surveys, etc.

4. These are then forwarded to Product Development for evaluation and potentially incorporated into the product roadmap

5. Product Development provides feedback to the membership and outlines next steps

Product Development Product Roadmap Social Business Team

Problems / Issues

New Features

Potential Scenario – Continuous Product Enhancement

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Building A Social Pilot

Create

Participate

Lead

Measure

Evolve

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business goals: What is the anticipated business goal or concept being tested?

Timeframe: How long do you think the initiative will take?

Milestones: What mini successes do you hope for along the way?

Audience: Who you want to engage?



Operational Impact


How will we measure success?

Develop business-focused metrics, leading and lagging indicators.

How can we carry the social insights through to make an operational impact?

Identify 1-3 business processes to be improved through social business. Solicit and secure buy-in and support for a beta project with 1 business process. Document current examples of the ways community positively impacts operations (e.g. marketing or sales). Provide roadmap of operational process improvements over time.

How will we meet expectations on an on-going basis?

Develop programs for scale – editorial calendars, engagement strategies and programs, integrate social into existing offline activities (e.g. events, publications, website).

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What’s The Big Deal About Measuring Success?

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Source: Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing? MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Report 2012 (in collaboration with Deloitte), by David Kiron, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Nina Kruschwitz

Source: Social Business: Shifting Out of First Gear MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Report 2013 (in collaboration with Deloitte University Press), by David Kiron, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Robert Berkman



While Social Business Performance Measurement Is In Place, It Is Often Disconnected From Strategic Objectives

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Source: The Social Business Benchmark Study – 2013 Preliminary Findings Leader Networks, LLC (co-launched with the Society for New Communications Research - SNCR)



Sample Operational Integration Points For Social Business

Example Success Measure Shared Accountability

Raise awareness of products or services Marketing

Visibility of company, products, services or thought leaders

Marketing

Increase sales Sales

Event attendance Marketing

Customer questions about how to use a product or service

Customer Service

Learn from Customers (e.g. feedback into product development)

Product Management / R&D

Customer retention / satisfaction Sales

Call center reduction / Improve customer’s ability to get help from each other

Customer Service

Increase utilization of the products Product Management

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Source: Leader Networks Blog “Social Media Manager vs. Online Community Manager: Same or Different?” September 2012



Current Target Outcome Delta / ROI

Performance Metrics

Engagement Metrics

Business

Metrics

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Corporate Objectives

Business / Functional Unit Objectives

Online Community Initiative (Business Case / ROI)

– Financial – Customer – Process – Learning & Growth

Social Business Metrics Should Be Aligned With Business / Functional Unit And Corporate Objectives



Social = A Business Process Redesign for Online Collaboration

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Strapping new tools onto an old process won’t yield the desired results



Guiding Principals For Successful Social Business

• It is important to integrate interactivity into the business model

– Companies need to examine how to bring interactivity into their business models in ways that serve the business and the customer goals alike.

– People’s expectations are changing.. They no longer want to be passive recipients of information and experiences.

• The human process & trust factor can not be overlooked

– What works in the face world will work in an online environment

• Create programs with beginnings, middles and possibly ends

– Determine the goals, measure returns , revise and evolve

• Communicate across departments

– Share information, findings, efforts, plans.

– involve legal and IT- before you act online

• Build relationships & be valuable

– Connect people with each other and with insights

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Get In Touch

Questions, comments and keeping the conversation going…

Vanessa DiMauro

CEO, Leader Networks

617 484 0778

[email protected]

www.leadernetworks.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessadimauro

@vdimauro

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http://www.leadernetworks.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessadimauro