Social Value As A New Business Consideration

The purpose of a business is to make a profit. To do that, a business must constantly innovate and market itself. To date, a business has not had to think about it’s “social value” to it’s market or community. I argue that is about to change. Is changing.

There’s enough cases of companies facing corporate culture changing crises from the impacts of Social Media and citizens new power of expression. No industry, no public sector organization is immune. None.

It is an illusion for any business to think it a) can control the message and b) that it is not susceptible to an assault from a disgruntled group of citizens or customers.

If this is in fact the case, then does the concept of “Corporate Social Value” come to be a key consideration for businesses now and in the future? I suspect so.

So what the heck is “Corporate Social Value”? It’s a challenge for businesses since it’s pretty much just pixie dust right now. It’s a term we made up. Here’s why though;

Take away fancy terms like “brand image” or “corporate social responsibility” and what it boils down to is do people think the way a company behaves in it’s community of wherever it operates is fair? Do they treat employees well? Do they destroy resources and do nothing to replace them? Do they make and then support, quality products? Are they damaging the environment in their manufacturing processes? Are they seen as indifferent and aloof?

This is how people may “feel” about a company. I think we’re starting to see anecdotal evidence that a company’s “reputation” or how consumers feel about it can impact sales. That’s not an easy glass of kool-aid to swallow. It’s hard to measure and it’s soft, feel good stuff. Business is not about “emotions” it’s about making a profit and reducing costs to maximize those profits. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just the way it is. Otherwise it isn’t a business, it’s a non-profit organization.

Politicians understand this concept very well. How people “feel” about them is an important part of getting and staying, elected. Perhaps businesses will be taking some lessons from politicians. That opens up a whole other, big can of worms.

Regardless, the ability for consumers to express emotions and values and to share them with others, is having an impact on businesses. And consumers are starting to realize that.

Social Media Marketing is Local and Regional

One of the advantages, often overlooked, of marketing in Social Media channels is that you can be highly local or regional in your efforts. Some small businesses understand this well and are taking advantage of it, but we see few regional, national or global brands that understand, or leverage this fact.

The Global Going Local Conundrum

Unfortunately for global brands like Nike, McDonald’s or Home Depot, they can’t think to such a small scale. Because everything is done on a cost-savings massive scale. The perception comes from the days of mass media and wanting to hit the largest target, versus the right, perhaps sometimes smaller, target.

With so much information available to be mined from the Social Web, an effort to start with regionalization for Social Media activities could be done. This may enable brands to have a more “local” connection to their communities. At a lower cost.

Can these large brands get more local?

The Local Going Regional Conundrum

And so the reverse is almost true for the small business that operates locally and wants to go more regional. They too can leverage the information on the Web to source regional connections, find market mavens for their product or service and expand more regionally.

Social Media is a Means of Scale

Whether it’s getting to more local markets or expanding to more regional or national markets, leveraging the information available on the Social Web may provide highly cost-effective routes. As with any effort to engage in Social Media or online channels, a little listening up front can save a lot of wasted effort.

But tying in CRM solutions and leveraging the power of these databases and the new social CRM tools can help make this possible.

Understand your scale and where you’re trying to go, along with the resources. it’s a start.

What do you think?

(Author: G. Crouch, MD)

Thank The Hippies for Today’s Social Media

Seriously. How? Let’s go back to the 1970′s and a maveric by the name of Stewart Brand in San Francisco. He was a counter-culture type, disillusioned like many other hippies with the “establishment” and the growth of broadcast television. He also understood the principles of “cybernetics” or what came to be known as “network theory” developed by American Norbert Weiner in WWII who was looking for a solution for better anti-aircraft defence systems. Stewart started “The Whole Earth Catalog“, which featured items that hippies (for example) could use in their communes. A key feature of this catalog was the creation of a feedback loop (feedback loops are a critical element to today’s Social Media) in which readers could send in anything they wanted to be printed and he included these items in the “catalog”.

It was so successful that Brand eventually shut it down for the most part. It had become too “mainstream” by 1972. fast forward to the early 80′s and the hippies had abandoned their “communes” concept and pretty much all moved back to San Francisco. This is when they started to get into computers. Hippies like Stewart Brand saw computers very differently from the likes of IBM, who saw them purely for business purposes. Hippies saw them as a way to connect people in a feedback loop to go around the broadcast mediums of the establishment. This lead Brand with others to create the WELL, or the the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link - arguably the first citizen driven social technology that lead to forums (and survives today.) Modern Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan also saw the intrinsic value to these technologies; for him, as a devout Catholic, he saw this technology as a way to gain a new level of “enlightenment.” The medium after all, is the message. As McLuhan meant by this, the impact a medium would have on shaping the views and actions of those who consumed it. It wasn’t the message he was concerned with, but the “container” the message was delivered in.

From the WELL, sprang ever increasing “networks” of computers tied together. As the Internet gained popularity and computing became easier for people, so did the advancement of Weiners original cybernetics capabilities. Today, social media technologies like Twitter, Facebook and blogs, all pull their technical underpinnings from Weiners original concepts from the 1940′s.

It was the Hippie movement and their belief in enabling people to connect and communicate outside the media channels controlled by industrial media that drove them to evolve these technologies. Today that seems a bit odd, since big media portrays hippies as highly-socialist drug smoking free-love types, not as technologically thinking folk who would be so eager to drive new technologies. But it’s how they saw the technology being used that is key.

After all, a key philosophy of Social Media is “sharing” as in “share the link love” and being open about what we see. As one thinks about that, perhaps the hippies really were onto something. Even Steve Jobs, Apple‘s founder, gave credit to the Whole Earth Catalog as a precursor to today’s World Wide Web.

Interesting isn’t it?

Peace out.

(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)

Can Too Much Social Media Dilute A Brand?

As a “consumer” of a brand, is there a point where your engagement with that brand actually dilutes its value to you? Can you “know” too much about that brand? Can Social Media engagement by a brand be too much?

As consumers we engage with various brands in different ways. Some are brands we are loyal to, but only in the sense of continuous purchase. We don’t want to engage anymore than simply buying and using that product or service. Others, perhaps due to the nature of the brand (i.e. a computer or Smart Phone brand) we have to engage more deeply with – like needing customer service.

But I’m thinking separate from customer service issues. Do we want to continuously engage with a brand, like Walkers crisps or Skittles? At some point, do consumers find less connection with that brand as a result of engaging with them on Twitter or via Facebook?

Now, with so many brands dipping their toes into Social Media and some going full-bore into these social channels, are they diluting that sense of attachment we have to a product or brand?

Put on your “consumer” hat and ask yourself; do you feel a stronger engagement with that brand because they’re also in those social media channels your using? Do you want to be engaged that much? Perhaps it depends on the product?

Personally, when I find out more information on some brands, that brand loses some of its mystique. What about you?

(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)

But We Like Our Comfy Place Thanks. Sorry Seth.

We’ve conducted research on Social Media usage for over 80 companies now, from health care to engineering to non-profits. No, I’m not tooting our horn here; bear with me a moment. We’ve covered Europe, Canada, the USA and snippets of Asia and southern Africa in our wanderings. One thing we’ve learned out of examining over 780 Million (or so) bits of data? People like where they hang online and they don’t really like to change – with a few caveats. Of course.

When it comes to Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, MySpace or Bebo) citizens (I hate the term “user”) become rather attached to those brands and services. Once entrenched and engaged there, they tend to stay there. In monitoring brand and product mentions and discussions over a 6 month period for several brands – people mentioned the brand in a channel where they initially hung out. Less than 1% of over 240,000 people left their initial Social Network to engage in conversations or make comments elsewhere.

In usage patterns, we found that out of the 240,000 sample group monitored, 78% also used a separate photo service and would have an account on YouTube or another video service. Less than 5% of the sample group (Canadians, American and Brits) had more than 3 actively used accounts. Okay, a caveat here, we sampled these 240,000 people where we found the same “user name” being used – but we do estimate a less than 4% margin of error here.

To Seth Godin’s new project with Squidoo “Brands in Public” we are very interested to see what happens. Brands in Public offers brands the chance to engage with people when they mention their brand by creating a portal that sucks in any mention of their brand across Twitter on blogs etc.

The upside is that the brand can then “go” to the channel(s) where the issue is being discussed and engage with people. For the most part. I like it for microblogging services like Twitter or Plurk, but suspect it will fail when it comes to newsgroups, usergroups, the BB and Usenet etc., all areas some (like ours) services can monitor, but Google does not. Nor would this tool. It’s a great concept, and it will have a positive impact. But.

At the end of the day, citizens like the online home they make. They’ll rarely venture out and away from the services they start with, since that’s where they’re comfortable. Seth has changed the game here for many monitoring services like Radian6, RTGI or Trackur and for Microsofts proposed solution. The good side of this project is the ability for the brands to reach at least most of the services where the conversation may happen that affects them, if not all.

Key is that Seth et al have recognized a key fact; a brand in Social Media has to go to the audience, don’t expect them to come to you.

Did we miss something? What do you think?

(Author: Giles Crouch a.k.a Webconomist)