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The 2.0 Adoption Council 341

Susan Scrupski is the founder of The 2.0 Adoption Council, a professional organization for large ■ GET STARTED: PLAN A SOCIAL APPLICATION
enterprise organizations interested in learning about and sharing best practices around the use
of social technologies. You can follow Susan on Twitter (@itsinsider) and read more from
Susan and The 2.0 Adoption Council here:

http://itsinsider.com/

http://www.20adoptioncouncil.com/

Why This Matters in Business

Ultimately, running a social business is about organizing around your customers and
stakeholders, and involving them directly in your business in the evolution of your
brand, product, or service. Very often, the most challenging aspect of this is getting
your own organization to cooperate in a way that facilitates working collaboratively
with your customers, and with other employees. Take a look at the Enterprise 2.0 tools
that match your needs, budget, and current IT infrastructure. Align your organization
internally to support the demands for collaboration, self-service, and faster response
times by your customers. The motivating factor for pulling marketing and operations
(and everyone else) together in support of your customers and what you are learning
from them and about them on the Social Web is, after all, long-term growth and finan-
cial security.

Get Started: Plan a Social Application

Active, participative engagement means that your customers and stakeholders are
“buying in” to your business or organization in ways that transcend any actual pur-
chase or transaction. They are aligning around values—established, perhaps, through
advertising but then proven out through social applications like “The Good Guide”
and “My Ideas.” In addition, your customers are offering their contributions freely
as to how your brand, product, or service can evolve beyond the satisfaction of basic
needs and wants, and further align with their personal values, passions, and causes.

Closing the loop, the higher levels of engagement possible through social appli-
cations can be tapped as drivers of your business objectives. (If not, what’s the point
of any of this?) What’s required is a planning methodology that at once recognizes the
connection between business objectives, customer or stakeholder desires and behaviors,
and the cross-functional nature of your internal collaborative teams to whom the task
of delivering talkworthy experiences will fall.