Social Business Planning for Enterprise

L E A D E R NETWORKS

Social Media Strategy Roadmap
Social Business Planning for B2B Organization
Vanessa DiMauro, CEO Leader Networks

Copyright © 2014 Leader Networks, LLC

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About Vanessa DiMauro
CEO & Founder of Leader Networks
Leader Networks is a highly specialized research and consulting firm
focused on helping organizations build deeper relationships with key stakeholders, thus
creating significant competitive advantage and outstanding business results. We produce
strategic planning and business alignment for B2B social business and online communities.

In a nutshell:
•
•
•
•

Founded and run profitable B2B online communities – 20 years experience.
Clients include F1000 and Blue Chip companies, many have won prestigious awards for our
work together.
Ongoing research agenda – download our research and templates from
http://www.leadernetworks.com.
Research and client success stories have been published and covered by leading publications
such as the The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com and CIO Magazine.


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Agenda
• Overview Of Social Branding For B2B
• Social Business Behavioral Evolution
• Developing A Social Strategy – Roadmap with mini-cases
–
–
–
–

Develop strategy
Validate model
Pilot
Operational integration

• Guiding Principles


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Why Believe Me?


4


Social Branding Explained
Social Branding is…..
The persistent act of connecting key
stakeholders* to each other and to the
organization using social applications and
approaches resulting in improved business
processes and greater competitive advantage.

* (prospective and current customers, influencers, partners, suppliers, employees

5


Social Branding Explained In Pictures
The past 3+ years: digital shout

A new, better way: social business

Social branding has evolved to become social business

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And The Growing Need Is Driven By A Changing World
• Competition is truly global

•

Competing solely on price against
offshore firms is a losing game

• Customers’ problems are far
more complex

•

Customers need much more help
to fulfill their business mandates

• Innovative products have
become table stakes

•

Companies need to understand
customers’ changing needs much
faster and better and partners’ &
suppliers ability to service them

• Company missteps become
known quickly via social
media

•

Lack of sophistication in social
media is starting to hurt


7


Social Business Changes Business As Usual.. For The Better

Extend
accelerate
product &
services
delivery

Deepen
client
relationship
s
Build
greater
brand equity

Social Capital
Deliver
improved
financial
returns


In-person + online

Shorten
product
innovation
cycle

Provide
better
customer
care

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Social Business Behavioral Framework
“Socially Present”

Focus

Design for marketing presence
on the social channel to
communicate information and
ideas online and drive
awareness.

“Socially Integrated”
Design for leveraging
information and relationships
gathered through social efforts
in support of key business
functions.

“Socially Familiar”

“Socially Enabled”

Design for learning about cause
and effect online. “If I do this,
then that will happen….”

Design for operational scale and
efficiencies using social the
centerpiece of most customerfacing efforts.

- Organizational Complexity +
Source: The Social Business Benchmark Study – 2013 Preliminary Findings, Leader Networks LLC co-launched with
the Society for New Communications Research

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Finding The Starting Line: A Social Business Roadmap

1. Strategy
Development

3. Pilot
Initiatives

2. Model
Validation


4.
Operational
Integration

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Developing A Strategy
Questions

Where to look for answers

What are we trying to
accomplish?

Create leadership roundtable to vision – Sales,
marketing, operations need to come together.

Which stakeholders are we
looking to engage with?

Define reachable narrow audience first, than plan
for scale.

What is the business case?

Develop If/Then statements to identify value
drivers for the business.

Which business processes will
be enhanced? How?

Examine current offline initiatives and seek for ways
that social can accelerate the processes.

How does this initiative align
with our strategic objectives?

Social strategy must support or enhance larger
organizational strategy to be fruitful.

Who you seek to engage with will dictation the approach, platform and goals!

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Understanding Stakeholder Values And Identifying How
Social Helps Deliver On The Promise
What do customers value?

How can social advance the agenda? (Be specific)

1. Easy to do business with
2. Ability to co-create products

3. Clear communication
4. Access to developers or thought leaders
5. More….

Surface 1-3 strategic initiatives (increase stakeholder value or increase customer
value proposition) and identify how social business can help advance the goals.
Seek programs that drive top-line growth.


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• They sought to help practitioners of the
Balanced Scorecard share knowledge and
experience
• Increase customer intimacy and raise
awareness of products and services
• Tap into leading trends in strategy execution
• Create a new revenue-generating service line
for Palladium Group
Many offerings means many markets
Their audience is elusive – CSOs and CRO of
top companies globally

Question

Palladium Group is a consulting and
conference firm whose founders invented the
Balanced Scorecard measurement system
(Robert Kaplan and David Norton)

How can the company apply strategy best
practices to examine the opportunity for
social business leverage?

• Developed strategy at the C-suite level
• Created potential, varied revenue models

Solution

Complications

Situation

Example: Building The Case For Social

• Vetted model with customers and partners

• Identified internal thought-leaders to lead the
charter.
• Beta tested with 500 strategy practitioners
before launch.

Their consultancy focused on a high-touch
model, but scale was an barrier.

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Palladium Group XPC – What Happened Since Inception?
• Launched a global online community with more than 50% of the
membership from non-US countries, deepening Palladium’s market reach
• Membership from over 3,600 organizations worldwide
• Drives conference attendance, consulting projects and publishing arm of
Palladium
• Revenue-generating in first 6 months (subscriptions, partner programs)
• Over 15% of new members come from peer referrals
• Numerous private working groups (e.g. KPI library for Risk Professionals)


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Validating The Strategy and Managing Risk
Questions


How can we test our hypothesis
before making a significant
investment?

Speak with or survey a set of customers or partners
about what they want or need more of from your
company, and from their peer-relationships

What do we have to offer?

Thought leadership? Assets, answers to product
questions, access to executives? Define your “give”
with equal gusto as your take.

How do we mitigate risk?

Starting with the target audience, select one area
for social branding focus run an early experiment
with defined goals & KPIs. Develop governance
progresses early and often.

Test, document, learn, evolve, scale

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A large industry association sought to
use the social channels to engage on hot
topics like genetically modified food and
artificial sweeteners for business gain.

Question

Situation

Example: Validation (Measure Twice, Build Once)

They wanted a federated strategy and
not a random collection of social efforts.

Thorough validation effort to surface best practices:
• Key stakeholder needs assessment

Different groups involved in various
social approaches.


• Broad-based survey

Solution

Complications

Need to understand best-in-breed and
standardize for greatest returns.
Through ongoing experimentation, they
had developed a number of social
approaches, each one with a unique
strategy and discrete, un-related metrics.

How can they learn from their experiments to
reduce overhead and increase efficacy according
to clear business goals?

• Research-driven examination of current social
approaches
• Competitive analysis
All enabled them to refine and streamline their
social strategy, reduce staffing redundancies, IT
costs, and set a clear path to parallel ROI metrics.

Refined offerings and 25% of original plans were
refined.
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Launching Pilot Programs
Questions


Who should we “be” online?

Define your online voice before starting and align it with
your existing, offline brand.

What is the right platform for
social branding?

Drive technology choices with business goals. Go to
where your audience & convene on your site.
Teams work. Identify staffing needs in accordance with
the business goals. E.g. If customer care is goal, then
customer service staff are best.
• Seek internal and external thought leaders.
• Be prepared to train and educate for best practices.
Don’t default to the millennial just because they have
a twitter account.

Who should run social
(Staffing)?

Test, document, learn, evolve, scale

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Question

Customer Intimacy is core and central to how a
B2B storage company sells and conducts
business:
• Strong reputation for excellent customer
service
• Offers superior products and services to the
market
• Strong culture that reinforces and rewards
customer intimacy
• Desires a larger share of voice and thought
leadership position in the market
Scale, audience reach and persistent
engagement currently place a burden on staff:
• Clients are not aware of all they has to offer
• Entering a new market with recent acquisition
s
• No digital “channel” to support customers
and partners


How can they improve its customer & partner
engagement model and enhance its thought
leadership platform to reduce costs and increase
revenues?

Developed a social business strategy pilot that
is currently running
• Develop / refine the business case

Solution

Complications

Situation

Case Example – Pilot to Learn and Grow

• Market test to validate customer need and
assumptions as well as functional and content
requirements
• Bring partners deeper into the conversation
• Identify select business processes to use the
social insights to accelerate efficiencies (learn
and grow)
• Potential to leverage the online customer
community as a best practice to inform
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Potential Scenario – Continuous Product Enhancement
3
1

Product Development

5

Product Roadmap

Social Business Team
2
3

New Features

Current Process

4

Problems / Issues

4

1. Product Development collaborates with Social Business team to:
- Discuss the current process for identifying problems / issues and new features including off-line venues (e.g. customer service,
customer advisory councils / boards)
- Establish guidelines and process for incorporating insights gathered from the online community initiative
2. Measures of success (e.g. business metrics) are established for identifying problem issues (e.g. quantity, quality) and new features
(e.g. quantity, quality)
3. Insights are gathered by Social Business team, per previously agreed upon guidelines, through discussions, polls, surveys, etc.
4. These are then forwarded to Product Development for evaluation and potentially incorporated into the product roadmap
5. Product Development provides feedback to the membership and outlines next steps

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Building A Social Pilot
business goals: What is the anticipated business goal or concept being tested?
Audience: Who you want to engage?
Timeframe: How long do you think the initiative will take?
Milestones: What mini successes do you hope for along the way?

Evolve

Create

Measure

Participate

Lead

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Operational Impact
Questions


How will we measure
success?

Develop business-focused metrics, leading and lagging
indicators.

How can we carry the social
insights through to make an
operational impact?

Identify 1-3 business processes to be improved through
social business. Solicit and secure buy-in and support for a
beta project with 1 business process.
Document current examples of the ways community
positively impacts operations (e.g. marketing or sales).
Provide roadmap of operational process improvements
over time.

How will we meet
expectations on an on-going
basis?


Develop programs for scale – editorial calendars,
engagement strategies and programs, integrate social into
existing offline activities (e.g. events, publications,
website).
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What’s The Big Deal About Measuring Success?

Source: Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?
MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Report 2012 (in collaboration with Deloitte),
by David Kiron, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Nina Kruschwitz

Source: Social Business: Shifting Out of First Gear
MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Report 2013 (in collaboration with Deloitte
University Press), by David Kiron, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Robert Berkman


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While Social Business Performance Measurement
Is In Place, It Is Often Disconnected From Strategic
Objectives

Source: The Social Business Benchmark Study – 2013 Preliminary Findings
Leader Networks, LLC (co-launched with the Society for New Communications Research - SNCR)


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Sample Operational Integration Points For Social Business
Example Success Measure
Raise awareness of products or services
Visibility of company, products, services or thought
leaders
Increase sales
Event attendance
Customer questions about how to use a product or
service
Learn from Customers (e.g. feedback into product
development)
Customer retention / satisfaction
Call center reduction / Improve customer’s ability to get
help from each other
Increase utilization of the products

Shared Accountability
Marketing
Marketing
Sales
Marketing
Customer Service
Product Management / R&D
Sales

Customer Service
Product Management
Source: Leader Networks Blog “Social
Media Manager vs. Online Community
Manager: Same or Different?” September
2012


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Social Business Metrics Should Be Aligned With
Business / Functional Unit And Corporate Objectives
Corporate Objectives

Business / Functional Unit
Objectives

– Financial
– Customer
– Process
– Learning & Growth

Online Community Initiative
(Business Case / ROI)

Current

Target

Outcome

Delta / ROI

Performance
Metrics
Engagement
Metrics
Business
Metrics

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Social = A Business Process Redesign for Online
Collaboration

Strapping new tools onto an old process won’t yield the desired results

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Guiding Principals For Successful Social Business
•

It is important to integrate interactivity into the business model
– Companies need to examine how to bring interactivity into their business models in
ways that serve the business and the customer goals alike.
– People’s expectations are changing.. They no longer want to be passive recipients of
information and experiences.

•

The human process & trust factor can not be overlooked
–

•

Create programs with beginnings, middles and possibly ends
–

•

Determine the goals, measure returns , revise and evolve

Communicate across departments
–
–

•

What works in the face world will work in an online environment

Share information, findings, efforts, plans.
involve legal and IT- before you act online

Build relationships & be valuable
–

Connect people with each other and with insights


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Get In Touch
Questions, comments and keeping the conversation going…

Vanessa DiMauro
CEO, Leader Networks
617 484 0778
vdimauro@leadernetworks.com
www.leadernetworks.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessadimauro
@vdimauro


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