Page 235 - Social Media Marketing

better raw materials, and to realize other similar business benefits. Each of these has a
distinct, measurable payback of its own.

Consider innovation and the ability of a firm to afford the programs that sup-
port and drive innovation. An enhanced ability to innovate means your business or
cause or program is less likely to be stymied by a change in the legal or business envi-
ronment (as when AT&T was forced to open up its local lines to upstart MCI) or tech-
nology (say, from horse-drawn to horseless carriages). The latter example may seem
obsolete; but Fisher Body, which is still going strong, is the classic case of innovation
and survival after its core business—depicted in its logo (shown in Figure€8.3)—dried
up in the face of technological and industrial change.

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Figure€8.3╇â•B‰ ody by Fisher ■ ╇ E ngagement as a B usiness Activity

Fisher’s founders had originally made horse-drawn carriages. Seeing the oppor-
tunity for innovation as Ford and other auto manufacturers sprang up, and having
access to working capital, they adapted what they knew about carriage building to
become a premiere auto body builder. The result was a firm that became a household
name building car bodies for General Motors long after the original business—horse-
drawn carriages and the firms that made them—had disappeared. The point is this:
Innovation is the lifeblood of business, and the opportunity to rapidly innovate is
enhanced through the process of engagement and collaboration with customers that is
enabled through social technologies.

While much of the interest in social media marketing is driven by sales and
demand generation, innovation as a result of the adoption of social business practices
can pay an additional dividend: higher sustainable margins that enhance your ability
to attract and retain higher caliber employees. Investing in better employees across the
board pays big dividends when your firm or organization sets out to transform itself—
for example, into a social business that is connected more directly to its customers.
This type of transformation can be upsetting, and so employee “buy in” as well as their
innate ability to step up to a more complex job is absolutely essential.

Why? Because superior employees are both more capable and more willing to
learn new skills, to consider different ways of doing things, and to look for and cham-
pion new solutions. This is critically important. When you connect your business to
your customers, those customers will no doubt ask for things that your firm has not
considered—or has even decided against. Your ability to innovate and address these
suggestions and ideas, to rethink past decisions, and to question established practices