KMA Social : January 2013

Social Business = Social Collaboration + Enterprise Social

Making the World Work Better. Making the Web Work Smarter.

Happy 2013, everyone! (Freaky frogs! Month-end already. Where did Jan go?) Moving on from my blog post on Social Business - hottest topic on the web right now thanks to IBM Connect - let's dive into...

The 4 P's of Social Business

Planning
Social Business begins as a Growth Plan. Put on your thinking cap and map the journey, outline the architecture, define business value right down to delivery, envision strategic goals, put the right people in the right seats. Draw up a detailed schematic of how internal workflows sync with external connections. Failing is OK, but failing to plan is planning to fail. Not OK.

Participation
The transformation from using social media well, to becoming a digitally connected, integrated Social Business calls for enterprise-wide, inter-department, "un-siloed" participation. Sure, adoption takes time. Innovation doesn't happen overnight. Participant buy-in may not come at once, skill transfers may take a while. Begin at the top to catalyze the creation of a top-down, inside-out ripple.

Paradigm
Social Business is indeed, a new corporate paradigm. A holistic approach to work, it calls for a dual shift = technology and skill + culture and attitude. Making that shift happen is a D-I-Y task, sans instruction manuals. It's vital to have a strong focus on long-term vision. And p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e.

People
The 4 P's of social business could well be People, People, People People. At its core, a social business runs on intuitive social tech platforms, but it is powered + driven by genuine relationships with, for, of and by who else... people: empowered employees, brand advocates, company stakeholders, connected customers, executive leadership, social listeners, community members...

Social Business is more than content, social media or digital marketing. Social Business is about tapping into collective human potential to exploit opportunities of scale emerging from instant global access, 1st-degree connections, cognitive tech and real-time data. And we've just begun...

[Then there's Performance, Philosophy, Process, Purpose - but that's another 4 P's. Another post, another day.]

Which brings me to the 9th P of Social Business... Podcast. Just kidding :-)
Humour aside, this Social Pros pod is a must-listen. Transcript included. Tune in. Be amazed.

Excellent + Essential Advice for 2013 -> @jaybaer w/ @sandy_carter on Social Business Strategy (#SocBiz #IBMconnect) lnkd.in/FwU-ev
— Amar Trivedi (@Mr_Madness) January 25, 2013

Valuable advice via Sandy Carter: Empowering Employees with Social Business Strategy

9 gems curated for you to explore

(i) A sweet tweet

I've always believed... "Social is not something you do. It is something you are."
Happy to note Vala Afshar's much retweeted acronym on the same line of thought:

don't do social, be S.O.C.I.A.L. - sincere open collaborative interested authentic likeable - #ibmconnect #socbiz
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 28, 2013

(ii) An informative video

(iii) A Social Workforce Is A Smarter Workforce -- an excellent PDF

Download this --> "Liking" isn't Leading. The Rise of Social Business.

(iv) Two well-written articles by:

Emilie Doolittle: Enterprise Social - The Rise of the Humans.

Laura Dinneen: "The Role Of the Social Business Champion in Scaling Social Media."

(v) A cool InfoGraphic

(vi) An eye-opening white paper from IBM Institute of Business Value

Executive Report - The Business of Social Business: What Works and How It's Done

(vii) A new book by Ed Brill