Tag Archives: smb

Social collaboration: Collaborating people, not tools

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This weekend was full of birthday celebration, so I decided to take a pass on my weekly self-written commentary. In my stead, I offer to you a guest post from my friend and  colleague Julie Hunt. Julie is a Market and Competitive Intelligence professional, and one of the best strategic and analytical minds with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working in the past decade.

Julie Hunt HeadshotThe following post originally appeared on her Highly Competitive blog under the title Social collaboration in the enterprise: The heart – and goal – of Community is “collaborating people”, not collaboration tools. Yes, this was focused on the enterprise, while this blog tends to hone in on SMB and Entrepreneurial topics. Regardless, the message is relevant to business professionals of all types, and it is most applicable for those of you who want to sell to and interact with larger companies.

Without further ado…

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Community and collaboration in business enterprises is about people working together more effectively, quickly, and proactively – to achieve the goals of the business as robustly as possible.  This may sound like a simplistic statement, but it seems to be eluding many companies that are adopting social media tools.

There is a constant stream of information on the internet on how to implementing social collaboration software in enterprises, both for internal and external purposes.  Quite a healthy industry of solutions, consultants and advisors has sprung into being.  Many blog posts and articles are devoted to recommending the best ways to take advantage of social media software.

But for many companies, implementation efforts for social collaboration software will be doomed to failure for one simple reason:  most enterprises have failed to engender a “collaboration culture” based on real human interaction. The executive management of many companies does not even understand what a “collaboration culture” is.

Frankly, executive management of many companies is hard put to authentically value employees – these companies want to de-humanize employees with such terms as “resources” and “human capital”, and think that it is enough if they sling around a few “mission statements” claiming that they “value” employees.

The proliferation and subsequent failure of traditional formal enterprise collaboration tools proves that collaboration is not successful just because there are software tools.  These formal collaboration solutions are usually unwieldy, result in silos of information,  are extremely opaque, and most importantly, fail to engage the humans for whom the collaboration venue is meant.

The newer social collaboration tools are better at ease-of-use, agility, relevance. But it is still essential that companies grow and nurture live collaboration cultures, where collaboration is a natural response for business activities, for any departments in the enterprise.  Planning a healthy collaboration culture also requires a dynamic plan for the role social media tools will play to bring the people in the company together in worthwhile interaction.

Returning to the human side of business won’t happen magically – it will take real work and real commitment, from the executive level through all levels of management and employee departments.

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And, of course, you’re not getting out of here without my two-cents worth. This comes down to the desire to control everything by large companies. Until they can figure out they no longer own the messaging and conversation, this problem will continue. As entrepreneurs and SMBs who can adapt and react quickly, you should view this fear of change as an opportunity for you to get a leg up on the big guys.

Now go forth and prosper!

The 10 Commandments of B2B Social Media

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Good morning, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays. As I sit here awake early with  my baby awaiting everyone else (who, by the way, are still sleeping), I decided to share a little holiday cheer by way of my 10 commandments of B2B Social Media.

B2C and P2P are the easiest forms of using social media for most, and we have plenty of materials available in the blogosphere about how to attack those areas. But what I see lacking is a breadth of content about B2B.

So let’s start simple…10 important tips for how to use social media  correctly in B2B.

  1. Respect those who have chosen to befriend you, lest they move on. Yes, the various social media are great tools for reaching more eyeballs than ever before, especially if you are a cash-strapped small business. But you can never take it for granted. Social media got “opt in” right where email did not, and “opt out” is quicker and easier than ever before. Don’t forget it.
  2. If thine must pitch your product or service, back off the hard sell. If you want to play in the social media circles, there’s nothing worse than shoving your sales pitch down the throats of those who give you a couple of seconds of their time. Of course you can talk about your product, technology, reviews, case studies, etc.; just drop the used car salesman act or you’ll find yourself posting tweets and updates to no one.
  3. Buy me a drink before you ask me back to your apartment. Okay, the biblical verbiage got tired quickly, so onto other metaphors. Never forget that, regardless of communications medium chose, you are still dealing with real people. Engage. Show interest. Identify a need…first! Keep in mind you still need to use general rules of diplomacy and courtesy, whether face-to-face, on a conference call, or exchanging ideas on Twitter or LinkedIn.
  4. What I need is a chisel, or maybe a shovel, or wait, was it a pickaxe? Don’t get enamored with the tools. How many sites and systems have we seen for “getting 100′s of followers a day”, measuring Twinfluence (whatever the heck that is), and calculating the time of day tweeps tweet? Yes, use the tools right, but I long for the day when the conversation is more about what we are accomplishing via social means rather than where we are taking part in the conversation.
  5. Go to the land of your people, and you shall be rewarded. Remember the classic rules off marketing, even if they no longer all apply. Experienced marketing professionals have already figured out how to target the right audience. If you are playing around on a new social media site, make sure you can find them or you’ll just waste valuable time and effort on the wrong prospects.
  6. Be sure you have a way to lead your sheep to water, or you will be the one with thirst. Sorry about the “sheep” metaphor, but the point is pretty clear. Just talking to someone via social media doesn’t pay the bills. How are you going to drive them to your website? How will you get people into your sales funnel? How will you prove that this is where the lead originated? How will you measure it all? Sure, you can just look for some quick exposure, but at the end of the day, you have to figure out how to turn it into revenue.
  7. Watch what you say, because your potential and current customers are listening. That’s right, even if they’re not participating and seem like they aren’t paying attention, they are. Don’t say anything that you wouldn’t stand in front of a reporter and share. Because saying it on a social media property is just as likely to make its way to the press as it is your mom or brother-in-law.
  8. Pay it forward and it will come back two fold. This is a simple rule of networking that sometimes gets completely forgotten. If you want your network to bring you value, you must first offer value to them. Think about the Emotional Bank Account idea from Stephen Covey for example.  Believe in Karma or not, business is about people first, because they buy, spend money, share good experiences with friends, and ultimately, they make or break you.
  9. When in doubt, shut up! Quite simply, if your options are to say something dumb, offensive, or otherwise highly controversial, you are safer just to abstain from commenting. Unless you buy into the belief that “no PR is bad PR” and like to take enormous risks. In the vast majority of cases, discretion is more important.
  10. Keep it real, and keep it fun. While it’s crucial to take 1-9 into account, people want to engage with a real person with whom they can relate. Be conversational. Ask questions. Even crack lighthearted jokes. You want to build a relationship, just make sure it’s a potentially productive one.

On that note, I’ll get back to my holiday and leave you to yours. I hope the holidays are all that you hoped for them to be.