social computing & social media

Mobile and social media – what it means for business

Mobile and social media have created a new business landscape

If you’re not already working out how to disrupt your business and your industry then you will be disrupted…

The web 2.0 revolution and social media changed the game for business. At a basic level brands discovered the notion of customer ‘conversations’. But for the most part this was not  strategic, rather it often consisted of random tactical efforts.

It is amusing to see that even in 2015 many brands are only just now discovering the notion of metrics and measuring their online activity:

“…many brands moving towards measuring audience impressions, clicks, and thinking cross-platform”

– Tania Yuki , Shareablee CEO and Founder

Then we often hear statistics like this:

“…Instagram delivered these brands 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.”

The real question to ask about all statistics like this is “so what?” What does that engagement translate to as business outcomes?

“There is no ROI in anything if you don’t learn how to use it.”

– Gary Vaynerchuk, Founder VaynerMedia

The simple fact is that hardly anyone is driving direct revenue from social media, and many businesses are not optimized to sell via mobile. And the big question for businesses is what is the goal for their social and mobile activity?

But now all business online presence must be mobile friendly – Google and customers will punish businesses that do not embrace this. Increasingly users are accessing digital  content via mobile devices, and this means that businesses need to ensure a good quality experience.

Social media was only phase 1

Social media was phase one of the new digital revolution, next coming is the collaborative economy and internet of things ( IoT).

The present of social is mobile. The future of mobile is IoT and wearables. and these offer huge  monetization opportunities:

Cisco [former] CEO John Chambers Values Internet of Things at $19T #CES2014

People

People, both customers and staff, now have a default position that assumes access to any resources they want. And they want it online, on demand, real-time, anywhere, and on any device they choose.

This is all part of the democratisation of communication enabled by the digital revolution. It leads to an inversion of power relationships and puts the means of production for communication in the hands of the populace.

It leads to opportunities and growth in peer-to-peer and mobile. Kevin Kelly sums it up nicely as:

“…a shift towards the individual as the centre of a network of relationships mediated and enabled by technology…”

The shift is from customer channels to a customer continuum mediated by social and mobile.

This means that businesses need to connect social media activity to purchasing activity, they need to make it work on mobile and tablet. And it must be friction-less.

Changes to team and organisation structure

In a fast moving context like this command-control management is dead. This is because the operational tempo of a digital business is not days or weeks or months; it is minutes and seconds.

To support this shift in operational tempo we need employees with skills to work in a social or collaborative context. We need team members who can deal with ambiguity and a fast pace.

To support customers who do not have patience with internal silos businesses need to move towards integrated teams. This means using ideas like DevOps and agile to support cross-functional teams to meet customer needs and deliver across organisational silos. To achieve this all parts of the business will need to bring together expertise:

  • Tech
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Operations
  • Customer service

Workforce changes mean that new ways of working will emerge, such as co-working and collaboration. These will lead to increased decentralisation of the workforce and be accompanied by much shorter change cycles.

And these changes will all lead to issues with boundaries between public and private; between personal and business. With this blurring between roles it will be increasingly difficult to establish role clarity. And this means that team members need to be able to manage through ambiguity and across functional lines.

Risk and governance

In the fast-paced world of digital business we still need to consider how to manage risk and how to enact effective governance.  Some factors to consider in this regard include:

  • Monitor your business online
  • Assign responsibility for online channels
  • Include social & mobile in digital strategy
  • Link digital strategy to marketing strategy
  • Ensure cross media planning in place
  • Develop mechanisms to track progress
  • Create and manage loosely connected networks
  • Grow a business in a networked world
  • Engage people and garner advocates for your business
  • Focus outward while protecting your brand

Top 10 checklist for digital business

  1. Digital strategy: is just part of it, includes websites, email marketing, etc.
  2. Tactical plans: For implementation of campaigns
  3. Resource plan: Social is not free, it needs people and tools
  4. Tools: Required to enable management, tracking and monitoring
  5. Metrics: Need to be decided prior to implementation to enable effective reporting
  6. ROI: Need to track investment and results
  7. Reporting: For good governance
  8. Roles & responsibilities: Defined and clear to all parties, in particular governance + cross-functional teams
  9. Cross media plan: Integration with other digital and marketing activities
  10. Risk management: Includes social media policies and procedures and crisis management process
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