Social media thought leader Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter explains most businesses organise for social media in one of five models

• 1. organic 2. centralised 3. coordinated 4. dandelion 5. honeycomb

I’ll go over the first three which are the most common.

1. Organic (decentralised)

Social media accounts are run inconsistently and potentially operated in silos to one another.

An example could be different departments start their own social media accounts because they “have to be on social media” to communicate with customers.

This ultimately leads to a fragmented customer experience by the business where one account may be run well by a department with social media experience and another account run poorly by a different department with no social media experience.

2. Centralised

In this case, social media accounts are operated by one group on behalf of all departments.

This leads to a more consistent customer experience compared to the organic model.

However the drawback is that efforts can’t be scaled up as they’re restricted to the amount of resource available in that one department.

3. Coordinated (hub and spoke)

This is where a central group aka Social Media Centre of Excellence helps other departments be successful with social media through training, education and support.

By enabling and supporting multiple departments through centralised resources, a consistent customer experience is provided by the business.

Efforts can be scaled up as needed by enabling more of the business.

The drawback is that it’s costly, requires executive support and cross-departmental buy in to make it work.

Watch video of Jeremiah Owyang explain the five models.

What is a Social Media Centre of Excellence?

Once again Jeremiah Owyang provides the following definition for a Social Media Centre of Excellence:

“This is a program deployed by companies trending in the advanced levels of social business maturity. The Social Media Centre of Excellence (CoE) is a centralised program that provides resources, training, and strategy to a variety of business units (departments) that are deploying social media in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and provide standardisation. This team is often run by the Corporate Social Strategist, who’s the business stakeholder and program champion.”

The following diagram explains the key duties:

Why consider a Social Media Centre of Excellence?

• Provide customers with a consistent social experience
• Obtain efficiency throughout the business
• Foster accountability across departments
• Coordination among departments

Intel, Adobe, Dell and Ebay are all examples of businesses who operate with a Social Media Centre of Excellence.

Social Business Hierarchy of needs

As a social business grows and transforms, there are certain needs that need to be fulfilled. The following diagram demonstrates the social business hierarchy of needs.

• Foundation
  This phase is all about developing a business plan and putting governance in place.
• Safety
  The safety phase is about getting organised, choosing the team and getting processes in place especially to deal with crises.
• Formation
  Implement the Social Media Centre of Excellence and connect with departments (business units) to increase coordination and reduce duplication.
• Enablement
  Grow by giving departments (business units) the support and flexibility to reach goals.
• Enlightenment
  The holy grail where real-time market response can be fed into business processes and planning.

Final thoughts

Transforming into a true social business requires a serious level of commitment, investment and readiness that not all businesses may be ready for. For further information on how advanced businesses prepare internally, read the Altimeter report on Social Business Readiness.

Which model (organic, centralised, coordinated) should a business adopt?

Jeremiah Owyang says the following at 36:10 in the following video:

“If social is not a function you want to scale in your company, focus on centralised, it’s a safe bet but you won’t scale … I recommend to scale you go for coordinated hub and spoke.”

Here are the 5 types of followers and the ones you really want for you business:

• The early adopter
• The social sharer
• The born follower
• The popular powerhouse
• The basement-dwelling hater

The following infographic should provide some food for thought the next time you want something to be a viral sensation.

I met various celebrities.

Witnessed Hollywood stunt drivers.

And rode some cool rides.

That evening I found a street with an interesting name.

I saw this unusual sign at Windsor train station.

Got to Sydney airport and boarded my Virgin Australia flight to Brisbane.

Landed at Brisbane airport about an hour late due to delays.

Finally got to the Surfers Paradise from Brisbane airport on public transport 2.5 hours later, apparently it’s only an hour driving. Weather wasn’t the best but I had a pretty decent view.

Later that night I went for a wee wander.

After that I drove out to the Blue Mountains, enjoyed the amazing views and learnt about the Three Sisters.

Bullet For My Valentine drew a massive crowd at stage 1 when they performed early in the day.

Slayer are one of the longest running and most respected metal bands in history and it’s become pretty standard to hear someone shout out “Play some Slayer!” at any rock/metal gig these days.

I found it amusing when the lead vocalist Tom Araya asked the crowd “Are you ready to have some fun?…WAR ENSEMBLE!”

Linkin Park, I think, played to one of the biggest crowds on the day.

Also caught full sets from Anthrax, Stone Sour, Killswitch Engage, Blink 182, The Offspring, Paramore and partial sets from Dragonforce, Fozzy, Tomahawk, Kyuss Lives and Periphery.

Paramore were one of the bands affected by the floods on stage 2. Their performance time got reshuffled and ended up playing last or headlining stage 2 while Metallica headlined stage 1. They were truly surprised at this and thanked the crowd repeatedly for being there.

Kavi introduced me to his 4 years old pet python, Sapna and I learnt that she’d live to around 30 years old and eventually grow to over 8 feet in length. At the time she wasn’t very sociable as she’s getting ready to shed her skin.

Later that day, Kavi lent me his car and I drove to the airport to pickup my mate Val who was joining me for Soundwave tomorrow. While I waited for Val to clear airport security, I picked up some light reading from the airport WHS store.

After picking Val up, I heard that fireworks are let off over Sydney harbour on Saturday evenings so we drove through central Sydney to find them. Navigating central Sydney streets was such a mission we ended up calling it a night and headed back to Kavi’s place in South Windsor.

The international terminal then greeted me with the biggest Air New Zealand check-in queue ever. Thankfully a staff member was pulling people out of the line who were going to Australia so they could use the kiosks to check-in and leave the ‘other’ destination travelers to fume in the massive queue.

Did my good fortune ened there? Hell no! The Smartgate at security failed.

After such an ordeal, it felt really good to relax into my somewhat tight economy seat for the next 3 hours.

My mate Kavi, who I’ve known since my uni days, picked me up at Sydney airport and we headed to Windsor, about an hour away, where he and his family live, and where I stayed the next 4 nights.

Once settled in, I eventually ended up going to the Penrith league clubrooms later that evening where I was greeted with pokie machines and cocktails.

The Toblerone cocktail (left) was especially tasty that night, the Havana Night (right) was alright too.

Teller shares there are only two permanent aspects to the music business:

• Artists who create music
• Fans who want it

And the challenge of the business is two connect those two constituents in the most efficient and effective way.

Source: billboard.com