Here is a quick summary of the slides.

The social customer is very influential. Companies realized this, saw the “bright and shiny” object of social media and jumped in head first with zero planning. This has caused organizational chaos on a variety of different levels.  Now today, companies are realizing that they must spend considerable amount of time focusing on internal social media objectives – changing behaviors, optimizing business processes, building communication/collaboration models, training, and overall social business planning. I have over simplified it but I think you get the picture. Hopefully you can extract some value. Enjoy.

According to a social media study sponsored by Performics of nearly 3,000 participants, moms are more versatile, more present, more active and more engaged users of social networking sites, than other women. Social networking and connecting with other women online rage among Moms. They use it to share their thoughts, experiences and feelings, ask for advice from other moms, look for deals and coupons, research products, communicate with brands and shop.

Here are some key findings, some of which really surprised me:

• Moms are approximately 61% more likely to own a smartphone than other women.
• They are more likely to be active on social networking sites, for example, they are 16% more likely to visit Facebook daily and 46% more likely to visit Google + daily.
• Moms are 75% more likely to trust information they receive from companies through social networking sites than other women.

Moms are also 45% more likely to make a purchase as a result of a recommendation on a social media site than other women which doesn’t surprise me much. They are broken down by vertical:

• Apparel: Moms are 54% more likely to make an apparel purchase
• Automobile: Moms are 64% more likely to make an automobile purchase
• Travel: Moms are 46% more likely to make a travel purchase

The data also shows that moms actively champion their favorite companies and brands on social media. These “mombassadors” are more likely than other women to:

• Recommend companies/brands via social sites (34%)
• Discuss companies/brands on social sites after seeing an ad elsewhere (48%)
• Talk about companies/brands they follow on Facebook (24%)
• Link to a company/brand ad (23%)
• Post a company/brand ad (53%)
• Post interesting or relevant content about a company/brand (50%)

I am normally a positive person but based on my experience, I hold some negative sentiment towards the concept. Influencers, the way its defined by many on the social web, are overrated. Most have an ego (thank you Peter Kim) and they offer ZERO value to any business or brand.  Truth is, I have been called an influencer in the past and it makes me feel uncomfortable. No one outside of my social media circle and family really knows who the heck I am and I am completely okay with that.

Last night I was chatting with Olivier Blanchard (yes, the infamous Brand Builder) on Facebook and asked him about the topic of influence.  He is someone I hold in high regard because of his smarts on the topic and he’s generally a nice guy.  I asked him to send me a few quick thoughts and of course he sent me a dissertation.  Here is a quick excerpt which reminded me of a book I read over a decade ago – Permission Marketing by Seth Godin:

Influence isn’t a Jedi mind trick. And there’s the rub: influence isn’t just contextual, impermanent and relative to timing, topics, channels and a whole bucket of persuasive traits and actions, it’s also as much about the influencee as it is about the influencer. The influencee has to give you permission to influence him on a certain topic. He has to be receptive to that influence. And that’s the piece you can’t control.

Influence is definitely a complex issue and there are certainly some fallacies with the way it’s defined today. In fact, just a few days ago, my friend Lee Odden wrote about the fallacy of influence. It reminded me of Klout’s Agency Insanity initiative last month whereby several “online influencers” were asked to participate in influencer “stand off” that turned into a voting/spamming frenzy. Yes, I participated and yes, I lost in the 3^rd round. It became very competitive with many of the participants begging for votes (and being completely truthful, I did DM a few people asking for votes.)

But true influence of others shouldn’t require outright begging, right? Just because someone get hundreds of votes, does that make him or her influential? If so, influential about what? I could be wrong and maybe I am looking at it the wrong way, I don’t know.

Going back to Lee’s post … in it, he wrote “Pursuing the “big influencers” alone, is probably one of the biggest fallacies on the web.” This is such a true statement and very powerful. I often try and talk my clients out of focusing to heavily on an “influencer engagement” strategy and instead focusing on those customers that already have a natural love for the brand. They are not hard to find.  They have zero expectations and there are no incentives needed. They don’t care if you send them the latest products or send them to the latest trade show either.  And the truth is, they probably don’t care whether you are “listening” to the conversation. They just love your product; love your brand and the way it makes them feel.

While I am not a fan of the term “influencer”, I believe that everyone on planet earth has some degree of influence, regardless of community size (friends, fans and followers).  How many times have we been influenced to fly on a particular airline based on someone else sharing his or her positive experience with us? Or better yet, how often have we NOT booked a reservation on an airline because of a friend’s negative experience? It happens all the time. It’s in our DNA.

About two and a half years ago, I first met Jason Aplin. He was just a random guy, nothing special. I liked him from the get-go mainly because of his sense of humor. One of the first things we talked about was his new android phone. He was flashing it in front everyone at dinner bragging about how big the screen was and that it was slightly bigger than an iPhone blah blah blah. And then he started showing me all the multi-tasking features. He loved the product so much and I distinctly remember the passion in his voice. I was certainly impressed and two weeks later what did I do? I bought one.

Now to be completely honest, it was one of the worst purchase decisions I have ever made but that’s a different story.

The point is that Jason is not an influencer (the way most define it) yet he influenced me to make a purchase decision. Situations like this happen ALL THE TIME.  Jason was an advocate of the phone and through organic, real life conversations, he was aiding and influencing others through the purchase funnel. Since then Jason has become a dear friend. He’s a great guy and we often joke about the first time we met.

The second point is this. Advocates drive real business value to the brand. They indirectly sell your products and services without you even asking. They are trusted among their micro-communities because of their authentic voice. The relationship between a brand and an advocate is not build on incentives, but rather an emotional attachment.

In my book I have a chapter exclusively on this topic. Here is a sneak peak in case you are interested.

Image: Big Stock Business Profit Growing

While I agree that culture change is more important than a business strategy, I also believe that culture change must be a business strategy.

In my view, it needs to be the driving force for any and all business strategies, specifically for social business initiatives. They cannot be separate. Process and governance are certainly important. Technology is imperative and will help facilitate collaboration; but it’s behavior change that is the foundation for adoption.

In the following study, “The Economics of A Fully Engaged Enterprise” (their definition is close to that of a social business) by PulsePoint Group, 32% of senior executives report that an unclear strategy for change is a roadblock for social business adoption:

I would also argue that most of the other reasons suggested above all revolve around the cultural norms, behaviors and values that live behind the firewall. When something needs fixed, changed or persuaded, many times it helps to start at the foundation of the business – organizational behavior (culture).

Here are some additional highlights from the study:

• The average return on social engagement was calculated to be between 3-5%. The most engaged businesses are reporting a calculated 7.7% business impact specifically from social engagement, which is four times the performance of the lowest performers who only achieved a 1.9% estimated return.
• The top two areas where executives thought social engagement had real value were  improved marketing and sales effectiveness (84%) and increased sales and market share (81%
• Executive advocacy is critical, now and in the future. Two-thirds of the organizations  achieving the highest returns reported that their C-suites are active advocates– that is, they commit to social engagement as a strategy and they reallocate resources to make it happen.
• Executives defined social engagement today as online listening (28%), blogging (24%) and building relationships with online influencers (21%).  But the top performers have a different view – they will be more focused on ideas and action in the next two years. Big-return companies crowdsource new products (57%), or let customers participate in developing ideas — they are predicting a significant portion of new products will be derived from social engagement insights.

Image: Big Stock Photo – Overcoming Barriers

While many think that “community management” is a tactical job function, I am a firm believer that those on the front line (community managers) are actually driving social business adoption, whether they realize it or not. If you read the report in detail and also between the lines, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that community management is very strategic and certainly a business imperative.  Rachel wrote an outstanding post on this topic a few weeks ago.

Community managers do more than just manage a content calendars and tweet all day long. The truth is, many community managers today are already driving fully robust social CRM programs.  They are engaging day to day with the customer. They are working with technology platforms and sometimes making critical technical decisions.  They are gathering and reporting analytics. They are creating workflows and feedback loops with other, internal teams (which almost always requires change management initiatives and cross functional/geographic collaboration.) And, a strategic community manager advocates on behalf of the social customer back to the business; and on behalf of employees back to management for internal community initiatives. They are doing it all and it’s not easy.

Below is the Community Roundtable’s Community Maturity Model. The eight competencies on the Y-axis are those that must be addressed in order to build a successful community and social business. The X-axis are stages of maturity that organizations go through as different competency levels are reached – clearly a very strategic model with community managers in the drivers seat. I hope you enjoy the report as much as I did.  Previous reports can be downloaded here: (SOCM 2011, SOCM 2010).

Image: Big Stock Cut Out People

The goal of the Center of Excellence should be more than just driving social media adoption, governance, technology (community, social CRM) deployment and training.  In order to achieve true business results, they have to succeed at changing organizational behavior. In doing so, they must adapt and change their own behaviors at the same time. They must be change agents if they truly want to see social business transformation. Below are 4 considerations to keep in mind when building such a team:

1. What Is The Vision And What Message Will Be Communicated To Others?

Having a clear and articulate vision of the goals and objectives for the Center of Excellence will determine its success. And the message to the rest of the organization must articulate the value of “what’s in it for me” and answer questions such as:

• Can I do my job better, more efficiently if I buy into this vision?
• Will it make my job easier and will I be happier?
• Is this the right vision for the company to achieve its business goals and does my role play into that vision?

One crucial factor that plays a key role in determining whether others will buy into the vision is what Malcolm Gladwell calls “the stickiness factor.” This refers to a unique quality that compels a message to “stick” in the minds of others and influence behavior change. After all, that should be the goal of the COE – influence and change behaviors.  The message must dig much deeper than just “collaboration” and “innovation” too. It must ultimately correlate back to the needs, wants and desires of employees.

2. Find The Willing Participants (Change Agents)

It’s one thing to have smart strategists and business leaders as a part of the Center of Excellence. But it speaks volumes if the team members have the ability to influence others within the organization. Call it the Law Of The Few.

Borrowing an analogy from Malcolm Gladwell again, the COE should consist of “Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople.”  Connectors are the employees who know everyone in every department and have the ability to serve as conduits between each group, helping to find connections, relationships, and “cross-fertilization” that otherwise might not have ever occurred.

Mavens are “information specialists” and are the people within the organization that many rely on to learn about new information.  A maven is someone who wants to solve other people’s problems, generally by solving his or her own. According to Gladwell, Mavens have the ability to start “word-of-mouth epidemics” due to their knowledge, social skills, and ability to communicate.  Even with internal change management initiatives, the ability for a message to spread word-of mouth (from employee to employee) like an epidemic could mean the difference between success and failure. Mavens are information brokers; sharing and trading what they know with whom they know. The goal of social business transformation requires an epidemic of change.

Salesmen are those within the organization that have a natural gift of charisma to be extremely persuasive in inducing others’ behaviors. They usually have powerful negotiation skills; and tend to have a unique quality that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them.

It’s also good to have employees from different job functions on the team, not just marketing.  Because social will touch more than the communications function of an organization, it’s important to bring in other point of views from customer support, legal, product, IT and maybe even finance.

3. Defined Roles & Responsibilities

It should be made very clear from the beginning what the Center of Excellence’s roles and responsibilities will be, whether it’s strategy, change management, technology deployment, etc.

Unclear roles can quickly give birth to organizational conflict and unnecessary silo creation between internal teams that may have social media as a part of their job responsibility. This is where the “soft” skills of the Center Of Excellence team can make a difference since much of their jobs will be to evangelize and educate the rest of the organization about their vision. One way to avoid push back and general conflict is to co-create the roles & responsibilities with the team as well other internal stakeholders who have a vested interest.

4. Celebrate Short Term Wins

Social business transformation can take years, and a renewal effort risks losing momentum if there are no short-term goals to meet and celebrate. While keeping laser focus on the long-term strategy, it’s imperative to try and establish smaller scale tactical objectives that the Center of Excellence can meet within a reasonably short period of time.  Examples can include:

• Establishing social media policies
• Determining a social media measurement framework
• Creating and/or rolling out social media training curriculum
• More effective/collaborative team meetings

These are certainly tactical in nature but having tangible outcomes of the team’s change efforts are important. Consider the following:

• What do you want your team to accomplish this week/month/year?
• What do you want your team to accomplish in 2 – 5 years?

To track the progress, it’s important to pay attention to very small, identifiable changes in the day-to-day business operations such as:

• New ideas/innovations proposed from internal meetings
• Technology vendors (communities, social CRM, online monitoring) are selected, contract signed and deployment schedule finalized
• Social media training started, completed or certain milestones reached

When these positive changes have been observed, its important to keep the momentum going and celebrate by:

• Publicly recognizing their work
• Monetary rewards (bonus, promotion, etc.)
• Just saying “thank you” also goes a long way

A few small wins does not mean that the change has been successfully completed. There will surely be road blocks in the future if they haven’t already surfaced.  Using these victories as a stepping-stone to the next achievement will keep the momentum going strong. Organizational change doesn’t happen overnight.

Once these four considerations have been discussed, communicated, agreed upon and documented, the Center of Excellence can then proceed to programmatic and planning initiatives, outlined below by Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter.

Image: Big Stock Target

The report also makes the case that there is a rise in female buying power (in my home there is for sure) and that Pinterest is a place to reach this very influential demographic. It also cites a 2012 study by Shareholic, that shows how Pinterest has surpassed content sharing power players LinkedIn, YouTube and even Google+ (not sure I believe that but ..) The Pinterest community is now at 10 million strong (January 2012) and growing, which is smaller than most social media sites, yet they have achieved a high rate of referral traffic with a user base far smaller than that of LinkedIn and the others. Here are some additional highlights from the report that you might find useful:

Where do pins come from?

• User uploaded content: 59.05%
• Etsy: 9.36%
• Google: 8.25%
• Tumblr: 5.88%

What are the most popular board categories?

• Fashion: 2.76%
• Desserts: 2.21%
• Plain: 1.92%

Where are people pinning from?

• New York: 22%
• Los Angeles: 15%
• Minneapolis: 10 %

The same is true for business or what we call social business today. But it goes beyond just the organization.  It’s just as important for their agencies, vendors, consultants and partners to change and adapt as well.

Jay Baer, a friend, intelligent guy and leader in this space brought up a subject a few months ago. He asked … “Should Your PR Firm Be Your Social Business Advisor?” Lots and lots of folks chimed in with some saying yes, some saying no and others unsure. I, then, wrote somewhat of a rebuttal which was pretty much ignored by everyone.

Enough of the history and pity party, I’ll get straight to the point.

If you or your agency aren’t learning the ins and outs of social business, you will become irrelevant in this space. Here’s why. The fundamentals of social business planning enables an organization to scale and have more meaningful conversations with customers, partners and more importantly each other. It is the infrastructure that enables a brand to listen to the collective intellect of the community, solve customers problems, and change the way it communicates and does business. Stay still if you want but I guarantee your clients will expect some level of proficiency in this space. Most won’t call it social business but they will look to your agency for help in several areas.

I’ll take it one step further and say that you are only adding to the problem by not learning social business and counseling your clients to make smart decisions. One reason why there is so much chaos in organizations today is because of that “bright and shiny” object called social media, and the agency promise to grow friends, fans and followers.  Years ago and even today, brands and agencies jumped right in without proper planning – internal alignment, no vision, inconsistent business objectives, lack of a content strategy, measurement consistency, moderation & governance, training and the list goes on. Now they are all scratching their heads in wonder because anarchy reigns.

Change is inevitable. When a client asks for something that is not part of your core proficiency, you can only say no a few times. If multiple clients ask you multiple times, you better change your business and adapt. And if you don’t have the expertise in house, you go out and hire the right people to fill the gaps. It doesn’t mean that you have to build an entire social business practice but its important to have keen understanding of what it is and why it’s important.

Is this not the same reason why many traditional PR and creative agencies now have social media capabilities? It’s an effort to stay relevant and provide value to their clients.

Let’s stop questioning each other about “who” should be in charge of social business consulting. Let’s stop taking “subtle” jabs at each other and instead learn. It will benefit everyone in the long run.

Promise this is my last post on the subject.

Image: StockFresh Change

We, in this space, talk a lot about the need for business to become more “human”, preach the humanization of brands, throw the “trust” word around carelessly and beg for transparency. But the truth is a brand or business will never completely reach humanity; unless employees within the organization first change their own behaviors, starting from the CEO on down to the customer support agent. And even then, it’s still just a business and marketing program.

This means that the business leaders have to do more than just say, “hey, we are a social business” but actually exemplify the behaviors they are preaching to the rest of the organization. In other words, they should:

• put their money where their mouths is
• write their own blogs, tweets
• stop having the department admin write important team memos
• hold teams accountable for collaboration
• get out of their offices and collaborate with everyone
• trust employees

One thing is for certain. Behaviors travel across the organization through copying and imitation. And when business leaders change the way they work and communicate, it’ll hopefully spread like an epidemic and everyone else will eventually follow. Then, we can have a more meaningful “humanize the brand” conversation.

Read Humanize by Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter. It’s a fantastic read that brings this all into perspective. Highly recommended.

Image: StockFresh Mannequins