Over the past 12 months we have increasingly described what we do as “helping businesses implement social technologies” rather than stating we advise on, and implement, social media activities. Our experience has taught us that the implementation of social technologies can benefit multiple job, or business, functions – such as customer service, R&D, operations, HR and marketing.
In our experience, it was often a marketing manager’s curiosity and fear that led to an initial investment in social media activity. However, a growing understanding of the benefits of social technologies, and how those benefits can be measured, is making ‘social’ an agenda item for many other departments within a business.
As a result, over the last few months, we’ve been evolving a framework to guide our thinking on how each business function can implement social technologies, with what types of objectives in mind and with what types of tools to measure the effect. You’ll find an abridged version of this framework detailed and explained after the jump.
One important point to bear in mind is that the implementation of any social technology can, and often will, have an effect on multiple business functions. Much has already been written about the challenge, but necessity, of working across multiple business silos. However, examining the effect of social technologies on individual business functions can provide a useful starting point when addressing the many and various ways in which they might be of use.
Much of the consultancy work we perform for our clients now involves defining which of their business functions might benefit from using social technologies – and how these benefits might be realised. We apply our understanding of the business, its customers and the market-place to create a specific social technology framework for that company. We can then consider the people, tools and internal processes that might be required to support the integration of these technologies. This might involve defining a monitoring program, an activity plan or a data management solution.
You can find an abridged version of our framework here. To explain our thinking, let’s consider ‘customer service’ as an example:
The business’ customer service objective is to increase customer retention.
The related ‘social objective’ (i.e. the objective that social technologies would help the business meet) is to generate stronger and deeper relationships with its customers.
Potential ‘social activities’ that will enable the brand to do this include:
- Management of, and content distribution via, social platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter…)
- Management of a customer community
The ‘social metrics’ for these activities will include:
- Constructive customer actions (such as making a comment, casting a vote, making a referral)
- A positive shift in customer sentiment towards the business
We’ve been using and evolving this table continuously over the last few months. We’ll continue to do so and publish the updates. We’d welcome any thoughts and feedback.
Please note: This post has been updated as of 06/10/10 to include an updated framework
Image courtesy of ansik / Ansi Koskinnen.
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One of the biggest challenges I found when discussing the importance of implementing social technologies (when working in the management consulting industry) was their potential impact on the broader organisation, rather than just “something the marketing team might look at”.
Mapping the links between social technologies, the objectives which exist within each function and the potential impact across multiple functions, would have made those conversations much easier to start!
What’s important to note with this framework is that it provides a far more meaningful and robust measurment framework. It’s a nice guide to help clients understand what it is they’ve paid for when you report it back to them. Rather than quoting them a meaningless Twitter follower number you can begin to breakdown the number of activations per follower each day/week/month/year and link that back to an overall business objective. Moreover, you can then begin to map the social media metrics against the business metrics to map trends and understand where social media activity has had a direct impact in the brand or comapny’s business objectives.