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New study shows Social Media Interaction brings Greater Business Impact

Posted on April 5, 2012 by James Baron

There have been some clear signals in recent months that marketers have begun to shake off their doubts about the benefits of social media and are prepared to invest more time and money on it.

A recent study has shown that some of the more social-savvy companies are beginning to use social engagement to generate more sales leads, expand marketshare and more efficiently hone their marketing message.

The study was conducted by the Austin based PulsePoint Group and The Economist Intelligence Unit. It shows companies that are willing to take the leap and embrace social engagement are experiencing – “Four times greater business impact” than their other less socially engaged rivals.

To work out these statistics, PulsePoint observed the effect of those companies who actively engage with their employees, customers, partners and stakeholders – “In meaningful conversations – enabled by social technologies – so that both parties benefit. This mutual exchange of value is not just about products but about useful information that builds commonality of interests and a sense of trust.”

The key findings are:

The average return on social engagement was calculated to be between 3-5%. The most engaged businesses are reporting a calculated 7.7% business impact specifically from social engagement, which is four times the performance of the lowest performers who only achieved a 1.9% estimated return.

The top two areas where executives thought social engagement had real value were improved marketing and sales effectiveness (84%) and increased sales and market share (81%).

C-suite advocacy is critical, now and in the future. Two-thirds of the organisations achieving the highest returns reported that their C-suites are active advocates– that is, they commit to social engagement as a strategy and they reallocate resources to make it happen.

However, a full 28% of C-suite executives still don’t believe in social engagement. The number one reason? The inability to gauge ROI (45%). For engagement to work, the C-suite has to believe in it and see measurable returns.

The most socially engaged segments believe that widely distributed buy-in across the organization – and beyond marketing and communications – is key for scale and generating economic business impact. This even includes operations management and financial leadership.

Executives defined social engagement today as online listening (28%), blogging (24%) and building relationships with online influencers (21%). But the top performers have a different view – they will be more focused on ideas and action in the next two years. Big-return companies crowdsource new products (57%), or let customers participate in developing ideas — they are predicting a significant portion of new products will be derived from social engagement insights.

Fifty-nine percent of executives/managers interviewed say that young people, as employees and customers, will expect and value engagement; that’s what is driving their engagement plans. Fifty-four percent say that customer expectation of social engagement is driving their plans.

In order for companies to know whether their investments are providing returns, appropriate metrics need to be developed. The research indicates that benchmarks (33%) and key performance indicators (30%) will be the top approaches for measuring social engagement in the next two years. Today, many companies are depending on executive intuition (27%) or are simply not measuring impact (28%).

The full press release for the study can be found here – PulsePoint press release.

Posted in Open Comms | Tagged PulsePoint Group, Social engagement, Social media | 1 Comment

Open comms and the future of communications?

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Posted on September 12, 2011 by Dinis Guarda

Social production as a new source of economic ...

Image by opensourceway via Flickr

Open comms; an admirable world of voices to listen to and to watch wind blowing data!

When we think about communications for business, were is the wind blowing? Optimists can point to the introduction of new areas powered by social technologies that somehow open business towards a relation and interaction with customers, new structures of defining strategies and change management that opens a lot of new enterprise oportunities. Pessimists can point to the continuing deluge of all negative spam attention, ever-more sophisticated phishing techniques, and of course the burdens of increased regulatory compliance, legal and difficulty to reach an audience, target customers in the right way, listen to the voices around you or your business and analyse its data and analytics.

Open Communications – Open Comms are the Next generation for collaboration

Open Communications – Open Comms – is the next generation of human communications and collaboration in any organisation leading the field in delivering new ways of communicating and creating co-creation process and synergies. I am one of the positive ones looking at it. Open Comms can and is indeed shifting the way business, organisations and contries deal with their communications. And let me tell you this is hard, difficult and new, but amazing.

Some recent stats show that 57% of businesses currently monitor online conversations about the brand, products or services, according to a recent study by Capgemini. But the reality is that 20% do not listen at all and another 23% of respondents weren’t sure whether or not the company is listening to online conversations in the same study.

This reveals the importantce of a proper communication strategy and a lot about the importance and the necessity to invest in an open communications strategy.

Why am I a defender of Open Comms?

Because I believe in creating value and listening to different voices, even when sometimes we might hear things that we don’t want to hear and that are different from our own perspectives or ideas. I believe that the only way to deliver successful strategy is challenging certainty, especially our own. When you or your business might think you’re undeniably right, ask yourself “What might I be missing here in this communication?”. And when you start listening to your clients, users, customers you might want to adpat, change or evolve. (Although I must underline this does not mean forget your core values of principles).

In a world with a huge increasing variety of principles, cultures and lack of clear hegemonies things are flowing. It is rather difficult to understand everything form one’s own perspective.And social media fast adopting technologies and tools just created a world without barries: economic, politic, financial where change and continous change and evoltion has been radical.

The market of communications has been through a revolution with an entire new industry for listening services rapidly maturing with vendors such as Radian6, Spiral16, Crimson Hexagon, Research.ly, Lithium, Sysomos, Marketing Sentinel (Skyttle) and many others improving businesses communications and monitoring consumer conversations and experiences. Nevertheless the wide array of these new communications tools and capabilities are nothing less than baffling. They somehow require proper stratgey open mind set for business and expert analysis prior to committing any significant investment of finances or organizational resources now and over time.

Some perspectives for the future of Communications = Open Communications:

- The need for an Unified Communication: from internal to external, from traditional to social;
- Open IT-Based Communications, make sure software is fast in execution
- Powerful set up in a content and SEO friendly way;
- Fixed Mobile Convenience and convergence with the advent of the mobile tablets and smartphones;
- Agile Business Process Integration towards the concept of a Open Business;
- Rich User Experience and knowledge how to navigate in the data and analytics;
- Deployment of Choices, clear transparent management capable of communicate internally and externally;

- Business Continuity and Integrity, key for a good communications, the importance of a good continuity story telling.

Posted in Open Comms | Tagged business, Capgemini, CommNet, communications, CommVault Systems, Consulting, Crimson Hexagon, data, Flickr, Lithium, Management, Marketing and Advertising, Marketing Sentinel, open business, open business council, open comms, open communications, open data, Open IT, Radian6, Research.ly, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Skyttle, Spiral16, Sysomos, Telecommunications | Leave a comment

Domino’s Time Square Billboard: Open Communications

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Posted on August 17, 2011 by Jamie Burke

Times Square in New York is nicknamed “The Crossroads of the World.” People come from all over the world to visit this New York landmark. The advertising signs that companies rent space for are seen by millions of people every day.

“The Zipper” is the scrolling new sticker on the former NY Times building at One Times Square. ABC has a dual ticker showing regular news and sports stories on a building across the square, Domino’s Pizza franchise has rented a billboard above the ABC News ticker, showing customer comments. This will allow the millions of people to read every day what people are thinking about Domino’s products.

Open Squared

For Domino’s this act means being open squared. Not only are they already visible through social media ‘at the mercy’ of their customers, but by showing –unfiltered- Domino’s customer experiences at such a crowded space is a commitment by them to get and be Better. It adheres “a brand is what customers think it is”.

To get better: by improving its products and experience by listening to and interacting with the community.

To be better: by being a platform, co-creating its value and brand perception together with external stakeholders. Not only customers, but also suppliers and food-experts that have their opinion in organic food, sustainable supply chains and what more. All in order to be a more socially responsible organization.

Self-regulation

By opening up communications Domino’s needs to be self-regulative, paradoxically being more autonomous in the ecosystem due to connectiveness with external stakeholders.

Sustainable and ethical business

A business that is open to direct and indirect involvement of its external stakeholders is being “forced” (from a conventional point of view) to become a sustainable and ethical business. Openly communicating and debating are its new ways of co-creating mutual value, increasing sales and credits.