Page 369 - Social Media Marketing

• Social technology begins with business objectives. Don’t let the technology 347
guide your implementation, but instead let your objectives guide the technology
selection. ■ ╇ R eview and H ands - O n

In summary, unless you are ready to tackle Enterprise 2.0 (or you are working in
an organization that is already doing this), the starting point in applying social technol-
ogy to business is in connecting your customers and stakeholders through collabora-
tive processes that link business objectives with the higher levels of engagement. You
can speed this process within your own functional area with the assistance of informal
cross-functional teams. Take the time to build support in other parts of your business,
and you’ll find the entire process significantly easier. The typical starting point—after
the implementation of a listening program—is generally connecting your business pres-
ence into the existing social spaces where customers spend time, setting up an effective
listen-understand-respond process. That is then followed by the implementation—as
driven by your business objectives—of collaborative tools such as support and ideation
platforms to drive a basic business norm of “Listen, Understand, Evolve.”

Hands-On: Review These Resources

Review each of the following, and then take note of what you’ve learned or gained
insight into: How can you apply (or specify the use of) these items in your own projects?

• Visit the tutorials* and resource pages for the APIs and social plug-ins associated
with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Foursquare, Layar, and similar platforms.
Gain an appropriate understanding of the intended uses of each, and then look
at the examples of how they have been used to create differentiated social tech-
nology solutions.
*If you are not a programmer, read the summaries and cases associated with
each. The objective here is to obtain ideas on how these services and tools might
be used.

• Visit the websites of Jive Software, Lithium Technologies, GetSatisfaction,
Microsoft Sharepoint, Lotus Connections, SAS Institute, Socialcast, and
Socialtext. Gain an appropriate understanding of the intended uses of each, and
then look at the examples of how they have been used to create branded social
applications.

• Visit Slideshare and search for presentations on “Social Applications.” You’ll
find great resources for almost any type of business.

http://www.slideshare.com

• Using Twitter, follow the conversations around global applications of social CRM.
You’ll find the conversations organized for you under the “#globalscrm” hashtag.

http://twitter.com/#globalscrm