Social media is about the people, well at least it should be. Approaching social media strategy with a “platform mentality” is like focusing our attention on the which bike we need to ride when we should be concentrating on our fitness levels to win the race.

Fitness in social media is the ability to understand our consumers. Social media allows us to engage, communicate, question and observe our customers.  This should give us a wealth of information to better understand our customers and better meet their needs. Regardless of the platform, their communication over these platforms should give us insight into their lives, their vales and their needs. Social media opens the door to understanding the new consumer, consumer 2.0. This is what a social media strategy should create, better customer understanding in order to win sales and loyalty.

The path to purchase is too complicated to suggest that social media can be an isolated sales channel on its own. What people see in social media circles often impacts their purchase decisions in a point of sale environment. Consumer opinion online can overpower your offline branding objectives and a physical experience of bad customer service will always impact sales negatively, whether experienced online or offline.

Social media cannot be strategised in isolation to other marketing channels and product design should not take place without researching customer opinion in social media channels. The complexity of social media as an industry is growing to the point that it’s starting to replicate the complexity of a human being. We use forums for formal discussion, search engines and wikipedias for research, micro-blogs for short everyday conversations and we even see business networks realising real return on investment for its users.

People are not social online because of Facebook, Facebook is social because of people.

The new consumer uses the Internet in their own way, the way that makes sense to them, that makes life easier for them. The new consumer does not use all of the Internet, only the parts that makes sense.

So our role as social media strategists is to leverage social media platforms to build communities of people online, in order to listen to, and engage with our ‘fans’. We should encourage those interested towards loyalty and listen to the entire community to learn what interests them. We should stop trying to connect with everyone, and start creating communities of value rather than size. We should start the conversation so that we show our openness to connect and we should be equipped with the ability make a real impact in our customers lives.

1. Making yourself heard

2. Connecting with potential business partners

3. Using Twitter to book meetings

4. Using Facebook to recruit your cheerleading team

5. Using e-mail to connect with potential clients

6. Talk about success

7. Use blogging to force your learning curve

Hope you enjoy the series!

Social Technology (Social Media) has thrown many businesses and industries into a state of flux as they feel the effects of this communication shift.

Barriers to entry, an influx of new entrepreneurs, new platforms and a change in social interactions has business in a spin to keep ahead of the game and protect their competitive advantage.

The fact is that today’s competitive advantage won’t be tomorrow’s. The internet and social technology will make sure of that. Customers are beginning to choose a digital platform (e-commerce, social media or crowd-sourcing and group buying) to purchase from, search for and comment about your company. You can no longer ignore this business shift.

Social Reinvention

A presentation that looks into how business can reinvent its marketing, products, systems and processes to successfully transition to a new world of social technology and social media.

Social Reinvention looks at both international and South African business and how social technology disrupts B2C, B2B and employee communications, business processes like CRM, Recruitment and Training, geographic targeting and business networking. This is done by looking into case studies on some of the worlds best businesses and how they have started to make this transition. These case studies include Deloitte, Nike, Toyota, Tesco, Cell C, Standard Bank, Spar and many more.

Linkedin have opened the status updates option for Linkedin. This means that Linkedin company pages are beginning to look more like Facebook company pages.

Check out the video to find out more about how this works.

I wonder if they will open up the option to link your company twitter profile to your company Linkedin profile.

The infograhic in this post reveals how social screening is becoming a popular trend in the recruitment industry.

Social screening allows employers to find out information from candidates that is often difficult to discover through the interview process. These discoveries can be both negative and positive.

The positive side of social screening:

1. They get a feel for the personality of the candidate
2. The can verify the qualification of the candidate
3. Creative people often use social platforms to express their creativity
4. Employers can get an idea of the communication skills of the candidate
5. Social Sites like Linkedin can provide further recommendations for the candidate

The negative side of social screening:

1. Inappropriate photographs can raise warning flags about the personality of the candidate
2. Drug abuse could become apparent
3. Bad mouthing previous employers can show the candidates work ethic
4. Identify poor communication skills
5. The candidate may be sharing confidential business information of previous or current employers

Who’s Who on Linkedin in South Africa

Linkedin in South Africa has seen a 83% increase in usership over the last 12 months with agriculture and goverment showing the biggest industry growth. The exciting news is the growth in business decision makers on Linkedin. The age category betwee 35 and 54 years has grown more than double and CEO presence on Linkedin grew 78%.

We hope you enjoy the infographic

Infographic created by DigitLab the social media agency

Copy the embed code to paste into your blog:

<img src=”http://www.digitlab.co.za/files/2011/09/Linkedin-Users-in-South-Africa.png” alt=”Linkedin in South Africa” width=”540″ height=”1026″ align=”center” /> Infographic created by DigitLab the <a href=”http://www.digitlab.co.za”>social media agency</a>

Linkedin is a social network that focuses on harnessing the power of social technology to improve professional business networking. The website had about 600 000 South African subscribers in 2010 and that figure has almost double in the last year to just over 1.1 million professional business people. The biggest industries represented on the network are from the finance and high tech arenas.

So why all the fuss over a website? I mean, isn’t this just another Facebook where people go to procrastinate doing any “real” work?

If it’s I.P.O wasn’t enough to prove to you its value in business lets take a look at a few elements of business that Linkedin is taking on and how this innovative internet business is changing the way we do business.

A new way of building business networks

You are only six degrees away from every person on the planet. Which means that you are possibly less than three degrees away from the people you need to achieve business success.

Social media allows your network to find you in a faster and more direct fashion. Communicating your message on social media platforms enables your peers to easily share your message with their peers. It is this ’sharing’ that often brings interested parties to the table. Especially when this networking takes place within a business network like Linkedin.

This is why Linkedin is so powerful. You can see the network that your peers in business have. Being able to see your ‘extended network’ you can make strategic decisions about how to leverage your network to meet the right people to grow your business. What’s even better is that you can then ask for a recommendation referral over LinkedIn. In essence, you can take control over who your network promotes your business to.

The number one reason business professional need LinkedIn? It helps you take control of the growth and strength of your business networks!!

Challenging the recruitment industry

As the Internet makes a bigger impact on the recruitment industry we are starting to see recruitment agencies enter into a second state of disruption in South Africa.

The first state of disruption that the recruitment industry experienced due to the internet lead to the creation of Job’s Boards and career websites like Career Junction. Some campaniles struggled,  and still struggle, to make this transition in business as their industry started to take on a very digital approach.

The second state of disruption facing the recruitment industry comes in the form of social technology. Recruitment agencies now find themselves in a stage of their digital evolution that forces them to harness social media websites and online headhunting strategies to find new candidates.

I believe that the biggest shift between these two states is the role that digital technology plays in each stage.

Finding and Processing Applicants

In the first state digital technology allowed recruitment agencies to manage their influx of applications for jobs they had on the market. A strong digital presence would also have increased the number of applications for each job. This data was then processed and matched to the job specification criteria. Once the match was made consultants often took the candidate into the interview stages of the recruitment process.

The biggest challenge in this state was the management of MORE. Job boards and the likes, created huge volumes of online applications and instead of more quality, the truth was was that the value often stopped at quantity of candidates. The second state of disruption offers agencies the opportunity to take the recruitment process further.

Head-hunting and Career Management

Social media channels have opened up the landscape for websites like Linkedin to operate. Currently sitting of just over 1 million South African users Linkedin seems poised to make a huge impact on the South African Recruitment Industry.

Social media website allow companies, agencies and entrepreneurs to head-hunt people online to find the right candidate. Today’s candidate are using websites link Linkedin to manage their business networking, personal branding and career planning. They understand by putting their best step forward (creating great online CV’s, collecting recommendations and networking with new potential business connections) they can set the stage for companies to approach them instead of the other way around. In other words social media, if used correctly by the candidate, could create a more powerful negotiation tool.

The Up and Downside

The plus side for companies and recruitment agencies is that they can research potential candidates from a pool of high quality candidates.

The downside for recruitment agencies, and one of the most important disruptions to address, is that these resources are available directly to your clients. In South Africa I have already heard of big business investing in social media websites to improve recruitment practices. In other words, if not dealt with carefully, this new disruption in the recruitment industry could start taking the money right out of the recruitment industry.

Now thanks to the guys and girls at Amazon I am able to manage my recommended readings from amazon and share it with you from here. I will continually update this list with new books about social media, social business and marketing. Hopefully it helps you find new books that will help you come to grips with with this ever changing topic.

You will also be able to click the book and buy it straight from Amazon in paperback or kindle versions.

So here’s my latest version of my recommended reading list. Enjoy!

1) Real life events are social media’s best friend

We have been running a number of social media campaigns this year for a number of different size companies and brands. In most of these campaigns we are using competitions to create energy around the brand and introduce the brand to new consumers online.

What has been interesting though has been how effective it has been to couple social media platforms alongside real life events. These events are enhanced by a competition or journalism of the event. Almost like the energy that a good MC brings to an event.

We have found that when executed correctly and energetically the company or brand profiles gain in numbers of followers and the level of interaction with fans.

An example of this was when I attended the Social Media World Forum a few months ago. I endeavored to blog throughout the event to tell my readers and the event guests what was taking place at the event and my opinion on it. I also made a point to tweet frequently throughout the 2 day event and became very visible in the twittersphere over the Social Media World Forum.

The end result is shown in the graph below:

An increase in over 100 followers at an event that only had about 300 people attending. On top of this I experienced record traffic to my blog and my twitter following continued to grow substantially over the next week by an additional 100 followers while my new followers started to retweet my content to their communities and followers.

2) First person communication trumps third person every time

Social media is a conversational environment. Third person communication tends to alienate your fan base and create a bigger gap between them and you. Third personcommunications also creates an element of pride and either a feeling of being spoken down to or spoken at.

First person conversational type communications does so much towards engaging your audience better:

• It eliminates heirarchy the engagement
• It highlights the fan instead of the brand or company
• It invites a response
• It breaks down the “brick and mortar” barriers between your customer and the team inside your company

3) Organisations need a “change agent” in order to adopt social media effectively

Jim Collins, in his book “How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In
”, writes about how organisations has fly wheels. These are processes and ways of doing things that take time to put in place and sometimes to even see the benefits from the fly wheel. These fly wheels become the way that business makes money, research and designs products, looks after employees and a host of other elements that make large organisations successful.

I believe that Social Technology (the ideal’s and processes of communication that forms the foundation of social media) is the next fly wheel for business. Businesses should be looking at how they can transition their business organisation into a social business. Businesses of the future need to look at what it means to become social in order to gain the right competitive in the future.

Social businesses are not companies that have Facebook addicted staff and where productivity levels are lower than ever before. In fact, a social business is one that understands the economy of the new social internet and how to harness this economy to:

• improve product development
• engage generation y employees more effectively
• market the company to prospective top talent in the marketplace
• use the power of crowds to sell, buy and create products and services
• train leadership more effectively
• create strong business networks
• protect your company image
• market your business
• speak to your customers (CRM)
• increase sales

Change agents are people dedicated to getting the Social Business Fly Wheel moving in your business. They will highlight the areas for change in your business, implement the strategies and training for those changes to take place, lay the foundations for successful transition into a social business and finally provide guidance, expertise and energy to turn the fly wheel into a profitable venture.

So there you have it, my top three social media lessons for business so far in 2011. If you would like to discuss these in more detail please feel free to comment below.

I also have a social media coaching program to help equip change agents and a few keynote presentations that speak into Social Media for Business that you could use at you next conference if you would like to start this discussion in your company.

I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.

What was the catalyst that caught your attention and started your journey in marketing Deloitte with Social Media?

Within Deloitte of Tomorrow (Internal Innovation Program) we identified Digital as a trend about 3 years ago. Deloitte Digital is a service line that converts Deloitte intellectual property in applications and sells these applications as software as a service. The best example of this is the Deloitte Leadership Academy http://www.deloitte.la/welcome/. As part of the market testing and commercialisation of the Deloitte Digital business case a number of our clients and executives started asking for our advice on how to deal with “Social media”, we looked at the landscape and quickly determined that we needed to have our house view before advising our clients on their approach.

As a result we developed a strategy to address the 5 strategic objectives identified below:

• Reduce the cost of recruitment
• Reduce the time to develop Innovative solutions and new service offerings for DOT
• Increase the storage of intellectual knowledge capital within a central tool
• Reduce the cost of training
• Increase our Brand and Eminence in the market

As a result we agreed to embrace 9 social media platforms to address the above objectives. Key was determining where these platforms would complement our overarching strategy. As you can see Brand and Eminence was only one of the objectives.

We know, from you presentation at the Social Media World Forum (#SMWF), that you use Linkedin, twitter and email marketing. Are you involved in Facebook, if so, has this worked.

We are involved in Facebook which is mainly used from a engagement perspective for Graduate recruitment and our Alumni community. The platform is very effective for our Graduate recruitment team but is not the only mechanism that we use, it needs to be linked to other platforms if you want to maximise your return on investment.

What are your thoughts on Facebook as a business 2 business tool?

From a B2B perspective our recent survey on ITweb highlighted that Facebook is used for informal engagement and graduate recruitment. Based on our audience segmentation we use different tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog and various mobile applications to drive B2B engagement. With Paypal and other mobile payment solutions available in RSA we see Facebook more for B2C engagement.

Deloitte uses a customer communications preference facility that allows it customers to choose how Deloitte communicates to them. Is this an actively used facility by your clients? What are the top communication preferences for Deloitte customers at the moment?

I have provided the results of a recent poll conducted amongst subscribers to our newsletter and blog, connections on LinkedIn and followers on Twitter:

How does Deloitte use social media to enhance its CRM programs?

Social media is one of the mechanisms that allows an organisation to listen or engage in customer conversations around your brand and service delivery. Externally we use Linkedin, Twitter, our blog feedback and ORM tools to listen to what is being said about our service and brand. We then link these tools into our internal social media tools i.e. wiki’s and yammer to drive engagement from our staff in terms of customer solutions or issue resolution. To date we have used these very effectively to win work, raise eminence and highlight service delivery issues. That said if you are only monitoring social media channels you will be missing a large proportion of the conversation, the social platforms that are out there are only one facet of the landscape, face to face, e-mail, traditional media (TV, print and radio) and good old fashioned research are your other key elements of the solution that need to be in place to effectively manage a holistic CRM program.

Social Media experts often talk about complete transparency and honesty. How have you found marketing a corporate organisation in such an environment and would you agree with the experts. Are corporate organisations able to be as transparent and honest as the experts would deem necessary?

From a corporate brand perspective we have been able to be transparent. People are always looking for the next big news story and want the “insider scoop” realistically all corporations are bound by governance and client confidentially clauses and therefore certain information will not be communicated via the digital channels, this approach is no different to traditional media approaches. That said social media allows you to experience the brand through the various platforms allowing you as a 3rd party to gain greater insight into an organisations culture before you actually meet the organization in real life, why because the social media channels are real time and broadcast to wide audience as and when the news happens, no delays.