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Think fast: what is a business made of? Broadly speaking, we can say that a business is made of processes, activities, functions, goals, planning, communities (lots of sweat), and, of course, people. But wait a minute: what does “community” mean?
Well, organizations have always had their communities: employees, customers, suppliers, investors, partners, and so on. Until a while ago, each of these communities interacted in an offline environment, which meant little collaboration. Nowadays, as you know well, the story is different, and it is even rare for a community not to have an online element, be it through interactions via social networks, e-mails, instant messaging, etc.
Taking this concept of communities in companies, let’s make a bridge with a term that is becoming increasingly robust: Social Business.
What is Social Business?
According to IBM, Social Business is about moving beyond the social media tools you are currently familiar with to unlock the potential of people and gain a competitive advantage.
Today, by combining social media tools – internal and external – with sophisticated analytical capabilities, companies have transformed their business processes, building stronger relationships between their employees, customers, and business partners and making better decisions, faster. This is what social businesses do – they embrace communities of people to create new business value and new opportunities.
To better understand its meaning, we just need to make an association with social networks. In this way, just as networks aim to create connections, this is exactly the function of Social Business. And just like social networks, Social Business has the premise of engaging communities (employees and customers, company and employees, company and suppliers, etc).
The term Social Business carries with it the importance of communities interacting with each other. This means, for example, the collaboration between customer service, customers, and partners to seek improvements for the support staff.
So we were to summarize the concept in a few words, we could say that Social Business is the ability of an organization to use its communities to improve its performance. In addition, Social Business:
- Puts people and human connections at the forefront,
- Aims to engage the company’s communities,
- Aims to share knowledge for agile decision-making,
- Values information transparency,
- Accelerates innovation and
- Is concerned with providing better customer experiences.
Note that it is also a strategy of Social Business to involve all departments of the organization, stimulating the exchange of ideas and experiences through communication and activities. This enables a much more collaborative environment, which is conducive to the stimulation of creativity and the development of innovative solutions. Therefore, with the application of Social Business companies seek to differentiate themselves in their market.
How to apply Social Business?
It should be noted that Social Business is a business tool. As such, its adoption must be done in accordance with the company’s needs, which may vary from organization to organization. That is, if the needs are not met, there is a risk that the adoption of Social Business will not bring any results.
The first rule to adopt is: to educate your employees so that they understand the importance of the strategy, and present them with the guidelines for the use of social tools inside and outside the organization. After that, some steps can be taken:
- Identify the areas of the value chain where customers are looking to interact through social channels. With that information, develop a social media strategy that integrates marketing, sales, and service components.
- Develop a policy where the entire organization listens and responds to customers.
- Use tools to integrate information gleaned from customer conversations with purchase and usage data to innovate and personalize offerings.
- Be aware of other companies’ customer communities.
- Create a community for your customers and nurture them with materials to create engagement and dialogue.
- Provide your customers and partners with collaborative spaces where communities can post questions, answer inquiries, post materials, and locate experts.
- Develop processes for collecting internal and external innovations on an ongoing basis.
- Track social interactions to identify future innovation needs and trends.
- Conduct internal events where employees can focus on innovation.
- Build a platform where the internal community can come together to share information.
- Use social media to identify and engage with influential leaders in your industry.
In short, if you think about adopting a Social Business strategy in your company, the golden rule is: enable communities to interact!
Now, your turn: what do you think of Social Business?
As I have tried to show, Social Business seeks engagement and collaboration. In an age of the Internet of Things, in which everything is increasingly connected, nothing could be more natural than connecting what matters most to any business: people. By connecting communities, we are making room for the exchange of ideas, sharing of information, and openness to innovation. Everybody wins!
Since the purpose of Social Business is to engage, tell us what you think about it and how you see it being used in your company. Take the opportunity to watch our webinar on Social Business and learn more details about the power of social collaboration in companies.
