Recently, Google announced changes to their search results, incorporating Google+ Circles social data into an individual’s results, there have been many reactions and conversations about this new product “Search plus Your World”. However you view this move good bad or just confusing, it is the start of the change and merging of search and social data and it is just the beginning.
From a business perspective this is changing the game significantly and where a number of successful online businesses who have built their online business and revenue model based on an SEO strategy and played lip service to social, if they have not seen an impact on their bottom line, yet they will do so unless they acknowledge that the world is changing and SEO is no longer dominant and that the future is a combined strategy, with specialists in both areas, working towards the same goals.
In the diagram below, we show the 2 current silos and the way we envisage the Social Commerce Model to evolve with SEO, social data funnels merging to support the businesses goals.
As more organisations and their business partners look to develop social strategies in one or more areas of their business, the need for cases studies is increasing. We have compiled a selection of social business cases studies, which show the business value from an individual social media campaign, to customer service, social commerce, evolving business models and developing a new business model with social at the heart of the strategy.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it does demonstrate that social both in discrete projects or areas of the business, to disrupting business models. If you have other business cases, you can point us to please drop us a line or comment below.
The Altimeter Report identified 4 internal requirements common to organisations who they perceived to be advanced in the implementation of social business projects:
Baseline Governance and Re-enforcement: Established and reinforced a corporate social media policy that allows employees to participate professionally
Enterprise-wide response Processes: Defined processes for rapid workflow and engagement with customers in social media
On-going Education Program and Best Practice Sharing: Fostered a culture of learning through on-going social media education Leadership from a dedicated and shared central hub: Organised in a scalable formation, with a cross functional “center of excellence”
The full report is below.
The Purple Spinnaker Social Business Framework provides organisations with a social business strategy framework and an operational implementation process which helps organisations to:
Develop their first social business strategy
Provide a framework for existing social business strategies
Develop an internal education program for all levels within the organisation
As, with all social business strategies, the core of the framework is based on listening, learning, engaging and growing your business:
To support our framework, we have identified the key workstreams a business needs to manage to develop and implement their social business strategy:
Central to the success of your social business strategy is putting a team in place, which combines an internal social business leader with executive level support and the identification and engagemnt of external partners who can help you:
Develop your company and/or projects social business framework
Land the social business strategy into the operations of the business
Social business strategies are adding value to companies across all industries today, but we are in the infancy of this area of business and as we see more successes, then we will see the evolution of the framework and also more experienced and skilled professionals leading and managing these projects.
Today, it is still a bit of trial and error, but if you dont try you dont learn anything!
Altimeter Social Business Readiness: How advanced Companies Prepare internally:
