Social is an interesting word.
If you ask 20 people for a definition, you will get 25 definitions - as at least ¼ of the group will have changed their definition upon listening to others.
If you ask Wikipedia, it will tell you that it is a Fuzzy Concept - something that implies that each person or entity using the word will have his or her own definition.
I recently presented on this topic at the Sugar CRM User Conference and preparing that presentation gave me a chance to research and think about how organizations must adapt to whatever definition they adopt.
Social is not about Kumbayah. It is neither about becoming friends and playing nice with each other - at least not in the business world.
Businesses will remain businesses whether they adopt social initiatives or not. CEOs and shareholders will continue to judge a business by the strength of its bottom line and the potential for the future. To think that those metrics will be replaced by one that talks about how many followers they have, or how many community members they attracted is - well, dumb.
Which is why we are having a terrible time figuring out how to measure and demonstrate value from being social.
Being social is not about coming closer to the customer, nor is it about listening to them more - those are byproducts of becoming a social business. Being social is not about allowing customers to run our companies, exposing all our secrets and becoming transparent about everything we do as business, nor is it about reversing the traditional value chain to where customers are more entitled to value received that given.
Social is about leveraging the customer willingness to work with us, as a business, to achieve better products, better services and have better relationships. Social is about collaborating in a win-win environment where both customer and business achieve maximum value in each and every interaction, regardless of how it was planned and executed.
The essence of social is recognizing that even though there are megaphone owners out there screaming at the four winds how bad we are, if the engagement with them lacks value - the organization must move on and focus on the social customers that offer value in return. After all, if you would not date the bully in school out of fear - why would you court the cyber-bullies out of fear?
That is not being social, that is being a coward.
To be social means to bring smart, human-like characteristics to the relationship between the business entity and the right customers in the right situations.
As you go along and map your plans in how to become social, think about what is the value of being social, and only then create your social beliefs. You will be surprised how some of the "must haves" of this business evolution cycle are not so important anymore.
What do you think? What does it mean to be Social as a business? Did I get it right?
