It’s funny how sometimes something sticks in your head as an action or placeholder for something you want to do. Well, a few months ago I had heard my friend Sherrilynne talk about a set of stages that organisations go through in their jounrey to adopting Social Media. I ended up digging around and found her source, a most excellent post by Brian Solis called The 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business.
In a nutshell, the 10 stages are:
Stage 1: Observe and Report
Stage 2: Setting the Stage
Stage 3: Socialising Media
Stage 4: Finding a Voice and a Sense of Purpose
Stage 5: Putting Words into Action
Stage 6: Humanizing the Brand and Defining the Experience
Stage 7: Community
Stage 8: Social Darwinism
Stage 9: The Socialization of Business Process
Stage 10: Business Performance Metrics
It’s a thought provoking piece, and if you read nothing else today, read THIS. And I mean really read it; don’t skim through it, savour every word and ponder on its significance. It will give you a deeper understanding of the journey we’re all heading through.
A couple of weeks ago, I opened a talk for the Isle of Man Social Media Club entitled Enabling Social Media for Internal Communities. The speaker was Mr Chris Gledhill from PDMS who gave a talk about an off-the-self collaboration package called Microsoft Sharepoint and presented a case study around his organisation’s use of the product.
A friend sent me a link to a great presentation about Social Media, particularly how Social meida sites today work and how this maps onto the real world. It contains some great advice for people working in this space, especially if you’re thinking about designing a service for people to use.
Robert Scoble, blogger and entrepreneur, discusses his thoughts on how ideas spread. The public session was part of the Stanford GSB marketing course, the Power of Social Technology (Dr. Jennifer Aaker). A panel of experts, including Robert Scoble, MC Hammer, and Loic LeMeur, discussed how social media can build successful brands.
Here’s an interesting set of videos I came across that talk about a variety of subjects related to Social Media and their impact and effect on business today.
It’s been interesting to watch this subject develop, from the early days of blogging all the way through to today. Blogging opened up self-publishing to the masses and coupled with a cheap camcorder one could even start to produce videos. Business has had to come to terms with User Generated Content, the ability for consumers to air feelings and opinions openly and the wide proliferation of information. It’s been a fun journey so far, and we’re still at the beginning. I’m just happy to be riding the wave!
There’s a lot that has been written on the web about the benefits of using Social Media to engage more closely with customers. There are many benefits to doing this, but it also presents a number of challenges in how to direct the conversation and how to avoid negative perceptions like lack of control or message dilution. It’s interesting to start seeing people address these issues to and here are a couple of articles that might help in this regard.
The great thing about these sites is that they offer easy access to companies to meet their target demographic. Regardless whether you’re a mainstream player like CocaCola or a niche market like a small company selling hgh spray, social networks put you in touch with the people who matter most to your business: your customers.
Owen has a background grounded in application development and technology consultancy but today focuses on helping organisations make best use of technology, processes and people to provide maximum satisfaction to clients, employees and other stakeholders.
