Page 274 - Social Media Marketing

chapter 9: SOCIAL CRM ■ At this point it should be clear that there is an order to the integration of social
technologies by businesses and organizations. There is also—as a direct parallel—a
steady raising of the stakes at each step up. Traditional advertising is the easiest from
a marketer’s perspective because it cleanly separates marketing from operations and
avoids the complications of customers who can “talk back.” Likewise, traditionally
structured businesses are able to operate in silos—and tap the efficiency associated
with these industrial-age business process innovations—precisely because any defects
or shortcomings can be addressed after the fact, after the traditional advertising mes-
sages and promotional tools have done their jobs.

Social technologies mess this up, in a major way: They literally turn siloed busi-
ness processes on their heads, as customers are suddenly not only on an equal foot-
ing in terms of access to the information needed to make a smart choice, but are also
equipped with this information before the purchase has occurred, effectively short-
circuiting the traditional funnel. As you move from social-media-based marketing to
social business, consider in detail the impact of this type of reorientation on your cur-
252 rent business processes. Enterprise 2.0 can really help you in this regard.

Sun Microsystems: Web 2.0 in the Workplace

Sun Microsystems published a report on its own internal social platform, “The Estuary Effect,” in
2008. The platform is featured in a related post titled “Relevance of Enterprise 2.0 for HR” pub-
lished in 2010. You can read the post and download the original report here:

http://blogs.sun.com/vsehr/entry/relevance_of_enterprise_2_0

Firms such as Dell, Philips, and Sun Microsystems are using internal col-
laboration and knowledge-sharing applications to reduce innovation cycle times and
respond more efficiently to customers. Sun Microsystems, for example, has created
its own internal platform, SunSpace, that supports rich content types—video, photos,
podcasts—and collaborative discussions between employees and across divisions. Not
only does this speed the conveyance of information, it provides ready access to the
employee-held knowledge that can facilitate the innovation process and customer/sup-
plier/partner response programs.

Internal connectivity and knowledge sharing is particularly applicable when
dealing with large numbers of customer suggestions: See Table 9.3 for some suggested
starting points in creating an internal platform for collaboration around customer-
generated ideas. Starbucks, for example, has received about 80,000 “ideas” from its
My Starbucks Ideas platform since its launch in 2008. Based on these, about 200 inno-
vations have been put into actual practice following internal discussion, as well as