Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement

Part I: Chapter 03 “Build a Social Business”

Chapter Summary
Creating a social business—that is to say, a business that is connected through deliberately collaborative processes with both its customers and its employees—is the challenge now facing many C-level and other business executives with similar responsibilities. Web 2.0 is challenging business leadership not only in the marketplace but now as well across business fronts ranging from corporate reputation and the attraction and retention of key employees to the design of new products and services. This chapter looks into the fundamental concepts of what makes a business “social.”

Review of the Main Points
This chapter provided an overview of the considerations when moving toward social business practices. In particular, this chapter covered the following:

  • A social business uses the same Web 2.0 technologies that power the broader use of social media to connect itself (externally) to its customers and to connect (internally) its employees to each other.
  • Social media marketing and the activities associated with social business are fundamentally measurable. Because the activities are expressed digitally, integrating social media analytics with internal business metrics produces useful, valuable insights that can guide product and service development efforts.
  • Your employees can be connected via social technology just as customers already are: Using a platform like Socialtext, for example, results in an internal, social-profile based linkage that encourages and facilitates collaborative problem solving.

    With the basics of social business defined, you’re ready to begin thinking through what this might look like in your own organization, and how connecting your own working team together with customers through collaborative technologies can speed and refine your business processes that support innovation, product and service delivery, and similar talk-worthy programs.


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