CSRA Integrates Its Blogs & Websites On WordPress: New B2B Features

To kick off Q3 2012, CSRA unveiled a new web presence that introduces new features to educate executives about social business—and creates one source to access CSRA thought leadership and to interact with us. Existing blogs will remain up, but their roles and functionality have been tweaked. Read on for a summary of the changes and how you can use them to raise your game in social business.

Consolidation

CSRA was founded in 2006, and we’ve witnessed, used and advised clients in using emerging all manner of social platforms and tools. We launched our first blog on Serendipity in 2005, although we’d been online since 1994 (sitelog covers 1998 on). As we have always been focused on serving risk averse execs and organizations, we gravitated toward LinkedIn and launched the Executive’s Guide to Linkedin in 2007, which was followed by other platforms. The Social Network Readmap (SM) was a corporate strategy offering that launched in 2008… Of course, all these sites had their own Twitter feeds, and some had Facebook Pages and Groups.. well, you get the idea. Imagine having a slumber party for your teen—but no one goes home! We had so many properties that it became tough for people to know where/how to interact with us, and we had a lot to manage.

As of today, the main site is this one, which is on WordPress. It contains all the core content of the html site rollyson.net, as well as the thought leadership from the Global Human Capital Journal, The Executive’s Guide to Social Networks (guides to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Google+), the Social Network Roadmap(SM) and Social Business Services. One URL. One main RSS feed.

This is the consolidation part. But there’s way more!..

New Features: Social Business Thought Leadership

We have tested numerous technology tools and social business workflows in our various sites, and we’ve ploughed our learnings into this site.

Thought Leadership Navbar

Most of our clients don’t care about the intracacies of social business, platforms, technologies, workflows, etc. Rather, they want to know how relevant it might be to them and what kind of business results they can produce. The main navbar, front and center, responds to this.

• Enterprise is the main category for the transformation of enterprise functions (sales, marketing, client/customer service, HR, IT, product/service development…) as well as “Executives” and “Social business,” a catch-all category that refers to general social business transformation.
  • Executives is key for us and our readers because we remain committed to advising executives as individuals and enterprise leaders. Our clients are CxO level people, but most of them want to know how they can become more competitive individually (yes, the average CxO job is 2-3 years) and as enterprise leaders and examples. They want to know how to lead with social business. These posts are focused on leader and individual roles.
• Industry is completely new. “Social business” as we define it is applying social technologies and workstreams to enterprise business processes, thereby transforming them. This proposition requires in-depth appreciation for enterprise functions, an area in which CSRA excels (as we have a Big Four sensibility born from experience).
  • As the market moves along the social business adoption curve, “domain knowledge” becomes critical (we don’t recommend hiring “social media gurus” to help you reinvent your sales, HR or product development processes). B2B sales is foreign to B2C advisors who are often focused on promotion and advertising, not relationship.
  • Knowing the difference between “B2B sales” and B2B marketing in financial services or manufacturing becomes critical. Therefore, we have organized our thought leadership according to “industry,” which is in accordance with social business’s current and immediate future adoption.
• Market Drivers contains the focus of the Global Human Capital Journal. In our experience, you’ll rarely find social business advisors that can have lucid discussions about BRICs, multisourcing, the fate of the Eurozone, and what all these might mean for your business. Although it’s de rigeur to talk about disruption, we’ve swum in these waters for almost three decades. Our current disruption is political, economic and social, so we add value by maintaining an original “macro” point of view. These are big picture posts, real game changers, at the level of corporate scenario envisioning.
• Social Platforms covers the Executive’s Guide to Social Networks. Popular platforms, depending on your focus, will probably be part of many of your social business initiatives. We cover the major platforms: even though most of them are known for B2C applications, they are almost always very relevant to B2B as well. It contains most of our “how-to” posts, as well as career-oriented thought leadership.

Main Navbar

This contains the core information of the old html site—with some notable additions. Here’s a partial list:

• Clients are case studies that highlight some of our breakthrough work; they are useful for showing the enormous scope of enterprise transformation work we do.
• Resources will continue to expand, but it contains core “tools” for DIY aficionados and others who want practical thoughts and tools.
• Opportunity is new; each of its pages outlines key areas in which we perceive breakthrough opportunities for social business-led transformation. These are CxO career-defining opportunities. Along with our point of view, they contain a summary of our thought leadership and our interactions with other thought leaders in the social ecosystem. In many cases, they have links to our in-depth reports.

Sidebar

We are sweetening the pot for subscribers (people who subscribe to our monthly email digest). Several times a year, they will receive in-depth thought leadership that will not be available on any of our sites. You can get in on the action here. Note that you control your information and subscription through Feedblitz, and we will never abuse your email.

What About the Other Sites?

The Global Human Capital Journal, the Executive’s Guide to Social Networks, the Social Network Roadmap(SM) and Social Business Services will remain live at their current URLs. However, observe these changes:

• All thought leadership is created on rollyson.net, but it is syndicated into the other titles according to category and tag specifications. Continue to use those sites to get our thought leadership if you have a very specific focus (i.e., you are interested in enterprise adoption from a corporate strategy perspective, you don’t care about function transformation or platforms or economics, so you focus on the Social Network Roadmap). Most readers will benefit from the holistic approach of the main site.
• Interactivity (i.e. commenting, asking questions) is disabled at all titles except rollyson.net, but posts in all titles link back to the original on rollyson.net, where you can ask questions and post comments.
• Other sites retain their special features. For example, the Executive’s Guides to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ have feeds of our curated posts in the ecosystem.

What About Twitter Feeds and Derivative Properties?

All our blogs had their own Twitter feeds and Google+ Pages, and two had Facebook presences. We are consolidating all of them to CSRA presences on these platforms, but we will try to leave the others intact when possible. We won’t interact on the siloed presences, so the model follows the blogs. Some readers will find value in only following platforms on Twitter (“execguide”), etc. Look for these to morph over time, but our general approach is to leave the old properties up, but to scale back their interactivity. They can be useful as RSS feeds.

Although we doubt that anyone’s interested, in case you’re an outlier, the old html site is still live. You can find it under the Museum menu ;^) – we’ll probably stash other things there, too, over time.

Please share your thoughts and wishes for features and thought leadership; this is a particularly appropriate time for suggestions!