One of my favorite topics is talking about how social media is really changing business. Having looked at this topic for a number of years now I still surprised that more people aren’t familiar with building the business case for social media. Regardless of what role I have had, I continue to see the same patterns. Customers not happy with a company’s products and/or services are using social channels to broadcast their frustration, and often disdain, to millions. And there are still some companies that are unsure whether social media is really here to stay and even hesitating to really dig in deep to social media. That really blows my mind!

Many companies have done the basics… get a Twitter handle and tweet or have a Facebook page… But what really sets a company apart is the understanding that just doing the basics in social media is only the tip of the iceberg. Many of you who have seen me speak on this topic know my point of view on social media. It’s not just a channel or a technology. It’s probably one of the most important contributions to business since the assembly line.

The reason? It is literally transforming business. That may sound a bit dramatic, but my point of view on this comes from my days of listening to my dad speak about working in the auto industry. He would tell me stories about a man named Edward Deming. Deming’s moto was essentially to listen to your customers and your employees. Take that feedback and integrate it back into your company. If you were successful in doing that and really making the changes that needed to be made on an ongoing basis, you’d have a very successful company.

What I’ve found most striking about social media is that — if used as an enterprise feedback tool — it is the best source of data… from both customer’s and employee’s that a company could ever dream of obtaining. And what we are seeing is that companies that realize how to use social media – across all departments — PR, Marketing, Customer Service, Product Development, Sales, Manufacturing, etc… are the ones that are truly getting huge return’s on their investment.

I’ll be doing a series of posts on this topic and go into more detail on some of my philosophies on social media and how its transforming business. But for now, I’ll share with you some links to some of the content we’ve recently created. You may have seen Kathy Herrmann and I speak on the topic of social media ROI. To help people get a better handle on this topic, we put our thought leadership together, along with Salesforce.com to produce a white paper and several videos.

Below are the links to the materials we’ve created. We hope that these help people:

• Believe that the ROI of social media can be calculated
• Gain a better understanding of how ROI can be calculated
• Use this information to start to create their own business cases and
• Stimulate a lot of discussion on the topic.

We believe that in the course of dialogue on topics like this, some of the myths will be shattered, people will begin to help each other to get a clearer understanding of the impact social media can have on their business and together we can transform not only business, but education, government and many many other things that are very important to us all! And this is ONLY the beginning!!!

I hope that these materials help you and look forward to talking with you more. We’ll be hosting several Twitter Chats on the topics in the next few weeks, so be on the look out for when and what time!

Cheers and many, many, many happy returns!

@drnatalie  Learn. Share. Grow!

Videos:
Snackable Insights Into ROI of Social Media
Episode 1: How to Build a Business Case for Social Customer Service
Episode 2: Calculating ROI for Social Customer Service
Episode 3: How Social Customer Service Benefits the Entire Company
White Paper: ROI Guide

Info on: Social Customer Service