BUT WHY????

BUT WHY???

If you have children or have had the luxury of spending quality time with a three year old, you probably have encountered the "Why Stage". Every statement, question, and sentence, regardless of how silly, is answered by a sweet young voice asking, "WHY!??!??"  Enterprises need to harness “their inner child voices” while developing their social strategy  The first rule and milestone to agree upon is the "WHY". This is your primary goal for establishing a multi channeled conversation. This "WHY" will identify also the first audience you also want to impact. It will set the table for some of the milestones and metrics you as a company want to accomplish with this journey.

"WHY?" is a nagging and grueling question. "WHY?" can drive you crazy. One answer is never correct. It is a typical answer from adults… "BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!. You see, this answer, doesn't satisfy the audience. The three year old hates this answer. You can already see the resentment and tears forming in the eyes of the cherub. That cherub is your intended corporate audience. Whether that audience is your employees, customers, prospects, partners, or OEM's… the last thing any company needs is a social effort that brings tears to your stakeholders' eyes. It is crucial to be able sit down and clearly articulate the "Why" in terminology that anyone (even the three year old) can understand. A clear message on why will help:

• Internal staff responsible for the effort to understand their role
  
• Stakeholders understand the purpose and what they will gain from collaboration
  
• Clarify the metrics and the message
  
• Reach the ROI potential
  

Some samples of corporate whys:

• Increase online sales and support our franchise network
  
• Customer support and retention
  
• Increase our place in the XXX listing of our competitors
  
• Reduce product innovation and time to market costs
  
• Improve employee collaboration and institutional memory
  
• Increase fan loyalty during the off season
  

If you are having trouble selecting one or formulating this, it may be time to reach out to someone to assist with this. I encourage you to share either your corporate "WHY" or comment on what challenges you faced determining the "WHY" your enterprise entered the social conversation.

Is Your Company Silo'd or Social ??

One of the largest challenges any company faces in being successful with a Social Marketing or Networking Strategy is becoming a “Social Company”.   For many, this is a huge change to the corporate culture.  It takes a virtual axe to the tried and true chain of command and corporate communications channels.   What most companies fail to fully accept is these types of connections and communications already exist.   The smart company is now choosing to embrace and explore how they can be beneficial to them from a profit stand point.  

Many of the enterprises today candidly admit to having a very silo’d approach to communication and knowledge sharing.   There are invisible force fields around valuable information being shared among employees that do similar jobs but are separated by product line or geography.   The forward thinking institution is thinking about ways to better connect and incentivize employees to collaborate and peer educate.   What can be gained by dropping the force fields?

·         Product Innovation

·         Subject Matter Expert training

·         Leveraging a Successful team to help a new or underperforming department

·         Better understanding of customers by connecting the customer facing staff with support individuals

·         Employee Engagement equates a higher retention

·         Employees armed with knowledge and access to wisdom

·         Decisions made in public increasing adoption support and uncovering potential pitfalls prior to implementation

·         Better sense of corporate pride

·         Employer of choice

What else can be added here?  Whether it is creating a crowdsourcing site for innovative ways to increase sales, new products or cost saving measures or a community to discuss topics and collaborate on projects a socially connected company breaks down the silos and operates at a higher level of transparency and productivity.    There are many out there that think opening up a community will actually decrease productivity as employees’ waste time.    These are the same arguments posed by companies in the late 1990’s regarding email.   Social communication is an evolution of email.  79% of Global Fortune 100 companies are using some sort of social channel to communicate with stakeholders.   Why not what so many say is their most valuable asset, the employee. So, two questions I will leave you with today.  Are you a leader in your industry or a follower?   Are you ready to be a Social Company?

Social Measurement

On the bell curve of social strategy adoption, there are the early adopters and those that want so much proof of a roadmap of success they will forever being playing catch up to their competitors. If you are one of these companies, I ask you to answer this question. Do you know what every customer is worth to you over their lifespan? I am guessing the answer is no. Even with customer loyalty programs and CRM systems, I am positive most rank and file employees do not know this number. 
In a case study in "I Love You More Than My Dog" by Jeanne Bliss, she highlights Zane's Cycles. They know that each customer is worth $12,500 over their life span of purchasing bicycles and associated products. (More in our case given my husband and I are avid cyclists) As a result, they are rabid about service. Ms. Bliss isn't the only one to notice this as Zane's is also a featured business in American Express' OPEN Forum. This is a community targeted at the small business owners with OPEN cards to interact with each other to share best practices. Getting noticed and having the over the top success is a wonderful achievement for Zane's. Let's be honest, they are located in Connecticut. Our winters are as conducive to year round cycling as say a shop in Texas.

If you want to know if a community is going to drive and product ROI, understand the worth of a community member (insert happy customer or valued customer). Also, by understanding what a well educated customer worth to you walking in the door, you can understand the importance of a welcoming and nurturing first impression is to your business. Your first impression is often what they see on the web. Think about how many times you "Google or Bing" a business prior to purchasing an item or walking in the door. A community for your customers discussing your business is a wonderful way to welcome existing and new customers looking to verify prior to trusting you with their hard earned capital.

Let's do some math. I am going to use some base line numbers. A new community is a first year investment of $75,000 - $100,000. An average customer spends $600 a year with you. This is $50 a month. (I drop that easily at a local nail salon.) This means a social community must produce an extra 175 customers to be profitable a year. How is that for an ROI number?


If you are a large enterprise, that is an easy number to commit to achieving. Say your average customer is worth $5,000 a year. That is only 20-25 customers you have to secure. A more realistic target is adding 100 more customers. That is ½ million in gross profit. Have I got your attention yet?


More math (sorry), add this to the number of community members that will increase their annual spend with you or not be as swayed by the competition because of the relationship and value you are expressing to them. Let's get scary… So your biggest competition deploys a robust uber friendly community and lures 200 customers away from you. What is that worth?


If you are looking for ROI, seek no further than the worth of one customer and divide it by the cost of deployment. It really is peanuts. I will ask it again... Do you know what every customer is worth to you over their lifespan?