How Brands Cut Their Exposure to Facebook Business Risk shows how brands can reduce the risks of depending on Facebook too much.
In the Facebook As Investment trilogy, I have analyzed several dimensions of investing in Facebook and raised my doubts about the company’s management and direction. In Part Three, I’ll address how brand executives can insulate themselves from Facebook’s—or any platform’s—fortunes by moving to make their relationships and networks portable. By making and managing investments carefully, brands’ relationships will endure regardless of platforms’ destinies.
By the way, Part One examined how Facebook’s trust gap would make it difficult for Facebook to fully monetize its considerable assets. Part Two analyzed Facebook as a social platform and revealed that it had no competitive threats from other pureplays; rather, the risk was that the whole pureplay category would lose its dominance in 3-5 years.
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Based on numerous executive conversations I’ve had over the past few months, I’m struck by the staying power of 20th century “communications” rules, which still govern many brands today. Therefore, I’ll reveal hidden assumptions that lurk in too many boardrooms in the desire that you root them out before your rivals, so you can outmaneuver them before they disrupt you.
ZDNet reports on “research” that finds that websites provide 7 times more sales leads than “social media.” Unfortunately, the writer doesn’t appreciate the self-irony in the second paragraph: “A company’s corporate website was found to be the top source of new sales leads online — second only to personal referrals..”
Google Plus Disruptive Potential Reflected by Conference Audiences summarizes insights from audience reactions to Google+ presentations. CSRA launched the Executive’s Guide to Google+ because we thought it had significant disruptive potential for many of our clients, and our recent conference appearances (link to presentation below) have only underlined two of Google+’s unique attractions: your competitors don’t understand it and Google is managing it as a completely different animal, not a social network. Here I’ll share audience reactions to my recent Google+ presentations at public social business conferences and private corporate meetings.
B2B Early Adopters Move on Social Business in 2012 predicts that 2012 will see significant movement toward social business among B2B pioneers. This prediction is based on CSRA’s recent research as well as my twenty-five years experience with guiding B2Bs’ adoption of disruptive technology. First, a critical mass of B2B executive leaders are familiar enough with social technologies to consider them for the first time. Second, the business driver will be the economy. During the past 4-5 years, enterprises have continue to cut costs wherever they could, but few are performing at the level they want to be. B2B marketing and sales are under more pressure to perform very efficiently than ever, and some leaders will enlist social business because they have tried everything else.
While preparing to launch Social Business Services for B2B Sales in January 2012, I have been engaged in its Ecosystem Audit. I have plumbed online conversations about B2B Sales and Marketing adoption of social business (erstwhile social media). I have been struck by a recurring realization: a large part of Marketing and Sales as we know them is significantly out of alignment with B2B customers. Social business is permeating customer networks throughout the economy and changing customer behavior and expectations. This has created a rare opportunity for B2B marketing and sales people who understand and respond ahead of the market. If I’m right, this could be one of the most important posts you read this year.
Social Business: How Firm Size Affects Strategy and Execution outlines differences firm size presents in social business initiatives. I recently participated in a discussion in which we debated how size of brand or firm should affect social business strategy, so I’ll dive deeper into the issues here because they are an excellent opportunity to show how strategy and execution are connected and how they differ. I’ll compare how startups and enterprises approach four areas of executing a social business initiative: team, collaboration, learning and scaling.
Social networks can help organizations, whether commercial, nonprofit or government, to significantly improve their efficiency in business processes like recruiting, sales and service. This is what we call “Enterprise Process Innovation” because, by using social networks to create and nurture relationships with alumni, your employees can diminish the time required to accomplish tasks within these processes. It’s well known that most alumni, former employees, move to firms that are related to your business (adjacent in the value chain) or complementary in some way. Yes, some move to competitors, but they are usually in the minority. Social networks, by significantly reducing the cost of having relevant, quality conversations, make robust employee-alumni networks actionable as never before.