World-Class Customer Service in the Digital Age

Published in ClickZ on May 14, 2014.

The combination of the best possible tools for social marketing and the best possible customer service representatives will result in a unique, engaging experience for your customer.

We all know the power of a great customer experience or a terrible customer experience - 95 percent of people share bad experiences vs. only 83 percent that share good, and 58 percent are more likely to tell people of their customer services experiences than five years ago. (Zendesk)

But there is much behind an excellent customer experience. Leading organizations realize that social business is more than just "doing social media"; they need to provide an excellent employee experience and are harnessing the power of social networking to innovate, deliver valuable experiences, and engage with customers in new ways - sometimes even going above and beyond to deliver a juicy steak right to a customer's plane terminal.

So, they're integrating social communication into the very fabric of their organization, beyond just the realm of customer service and support.

Companies need to rethink operations, policies, and infrastructure to better serve customers, because social business is about much more than any single social network; it's about putting the customer at the beginning, middle, and end of your organization's focus.

I'm sure most of us have seen these statistics before, and we know that digital technologies are playing a large part in how a brand interacts with its customers - and how that brand is perceived by its customers.

That's because customer service has become a key differentiator. In an age where a company and its competitors are all reaching out and interacting with the same customer through multiple channels and touch points, everything hinges on customer experience.

• How does the customer interact with your brand? 
• How does your workforce interact with your customers? 
• What tools do you have at your disposal to better understand, interact, and serve your customer?

These are important questions, because the answers determine the kind of experience your customer has when engaging your company - and they also determine if the customer will continue to engage, or jump ship to a competitor.

Industries and CXOs agree: Many of today's customer experience challenges can be overcome by digital fluency.

And, within the next few years, we will see nearly 70 percent more CXOs using digital channels to more fully engage with customers for a stronger customer service experience across every point of interaction.

And social business goes much deeper than just an improved customer experience. It allows you to engage people as individuals, not segments - offering personalized value at every touch point.

By delivering a high-value, personalized digital experience to prospects and customers, you can drive higher revenue. Up to one-third of all consumer spending is influenced by social interactions, accounting for $940 billion annually (McKinsey).

Digital customer service experiences must be:

• Engaging: putting the customer in charge, letting them drive the experience
• Compelling: matching and exceeding expectations
• Consistent: regardless of device or channel, and
• Relevant: the digital experience must know who the customer is, where they are, and what they're trying to achieve. 

Customers satisfied with their digital experience have made 30 percent more referrals. And happy customers call customer service about 62 percent LESS, making very happy employees.

Ultimately, savvy companies understand one truth: that customer service is at the core of customer experience.

By delivering exceptional experiences for your customers, your organization can turn those customers into brand advocates, working for your brand and spreading your messaging across every channel - sharing stories, writing reviews, and recommending products or services to friends.

Did you know that:

• A company with 100,000 brand advocates can reach 60 million people. (Zuberance)
• A 12 percent increase in brand advocacy generates a two-fold increase in revenue on average. (Fred Reichheld, HBS Press)
• Seventy-two percent of adults who had a memorable product or service experience said they took positive action, with 57 percent communicating their positive experience to others, and 41 percent recommending that someone make a purchase. (Harris Interactive)

Social is a natural platform for this - we call it Social Business.

A successful social business will:

• Understand the individual customer by getting the data necessary to anticipate user needs, spot trends sooner, and optimize a digital commerce strategy.
• Foster meaningful interactions through consistent and seamless multichannel experiences, allowing them to reach wider audiences and gain individuals' trust.
• Embrace transparency with open, authentic social interactions and community-based customer service.
• Unleash creativity by using rich media management tools to rapidly respond to changes and new opportunities in the marketplace.

But where do you start? You start with people - both your customer and your employee. Engage your customer through an enabled, empowered workforce. Listen to what your customers are saying across every channel through open communication, use analytics, and put the insight gained to good use so you can create a better, personalized customer experience.

Give your workforce - from the call center to the boardroom - powerful analytics so they can provide better service and solutions to your customers.

Give them the social and analytics tools they need to better interact with the customer, on the customer's terms.

And furthermore, a social business leader uses social tools to determine the best behaviors and traits needed for positions involving any kind of customer interaction, optimizing your customer service by using the most qualified and best-suited employees.

So it's the best tools in the hands of the best possible workforce - coming together to craft a unique, engaging experience for your customer.

Rethink Social Media War Room Strategy

Published on ClickZ on March 19, 2014.

As a former email marketer, I love a good subject line, and just today I saw one that got me thinking: "Time to rethink social media 'war rooms.'" The email was for a short video interview, but it was the subject line that sparked my thoughts. This is a topic that we have discussed internally quite a bit, because we believe that social communication is about people-centric engagement and not about war with or through media. It is certainly not about command or control of social conversations. So I'd like to spark some thoughts for you around how you approach your dashboarding and interaction.

By thinking strategically through engagement beyond just listening, we looked to the types of dashboard information that can help provide deeper insight and meaning around people's intent and our success in delivering to that want or need. We dug into our own tool bag and utilized a number of the key solutions we have that provide detailed analytics into real-time conversations and listening, sentiment, behavior, and even psycholinguistics.

To begin our journey, we have brought a large physical "center" to key events. It's made up of multiple large touchscreen monitors that allow attendees to interact with the data that is being captured live about the specific event. The engagement is both physical and specific and carries out to the socialverse.

Response to this type of visualization of people-centric engagement has been overwhelming. I believe it's because we're getting beyond the basics of social media and are really looking holistically at how people are engaging by examining a series of powerful analytics. Analytics that can help us serve people better. Analytics that can help us create real, valuable insight for the business. Analytics that can help impact the bottom line. We are bringing to life this insight with powerful visualizations that people can make sense of and react to-drill into for deeper understanding.

So what are some of the things that you should think through as you approach the creation of a center of engagement for your brand?

• Social listening - for customer service, sentiment, product innovation, trends
• Web analytics - to understand behavior, ensure customer experience, measure interaction and revenue
• Real-time benchmark data - so you know how you are performing against your peer competitors
• Cognitive analytics - for powerful personality profiling that will help to better serve customers based on their personality traits to improve conversion rate, acquisition rate, revenue, and profit
• Business intelligence - for deep comprehension and analysis of how the above translates into bottom-line business results, and insight into trends over time
• All including visualizations to help drive rapid insight and action from your engagement response team

At the end of the day, to think strategically you need to put your prospects',  customers' and peoples' needs front and center. You need to listen and watch to the cues they are giving you. The tools to do this are changing rapidly. But please remember that your intent should not be to wage war with media or to command social, it should be to engage with people. After all:

  "Social media and technology are not agents of change. They are just tools. We the connected people are the agents of change."

                 - Stuart J Ellman, President of 92Y at Social Good Summit 2012

Social Data: Inside Out

Published on ClickZ on February 19, 2014.

There have been a number of pieces lately on social data and how predictive analytics can make certain different assumptions. Some of the recent examples in the press are around Facebook and the forecasting of dating couples becoming a couple or when someone will get married based on their friends' marriage dates (timely for Valentine's Day), or earlier in the season around Twitter and flu outbreaks. In my mind this is some interesting behavioral data that can help the average person wrap their heads around some of the big data processes that we in this space professionally understand can be mined in varied and vast ways. The other thing that these stories are conveying to the general public is that the data mined from their social activity is indeed public domain, but that's a story for another day...

Today, I'd like to talk about the power of harnessing social data inside an organization and the amazing competitive benefits from doing just that.

Image source: Gigya's Blog

I think it's safe to say that we all recognize that there is a major evolutionary shift happening today - in the way that is transforming how we do just about anything. Gartner calls this the "nexus of forces." These are universal game-changers - data explosion, social media, proliferation of channels and devices, and shifting consumer demographics - that the chief marketing officer (CMO) is worried about.

And how we work is certainly under these same transformative pressures. There are efficiencies to be gained by applying social communication technologies and collaboration styles inside the organization that can lead to:

• Improved productivity
• Enhanced employee engagement
• Foster collaboration
• Faster and broader knowledge sharing

...and that's just by facilitating easier and more efficient and transparent ways of communicating and reducing our dependence on traditional email.

But the truly exciting part of this from an evolutionary perspective is to be able to apply the data science that we are hearing in B2C use-cases and turn that inside the business and understand the breadth and wealth of information that we create that could facilitate breakthroughs in both process and output. As organizations roll out collaboration and social platforms inside the company, the amount of internal user generated content is exploding just as much as it is everywhere else. These "digital footprints" can be a treasure trove of information to help preserve the competitive edge of the organization - in an age where speed and innovation are the keys to success.

Applying analytics to internal data provide the ability to:

• Expedite expertise location and introductions for employees working on similar projects around the world
• Crowdsource innovation based on conversations happening on internal social channels
• Understand employee sentiment, and identify internal influencers
• Identify talent and top leadership qualities 
• Understand if an employee is a good fit for a team prior to their on-boarding

The world is becoming both larger and smaller because of the abundance of data at our fingertips. We are able to form human relationships across the globe because of common interests that are shared on social platforms, both inside and outside of the organization. We are able to think through global strategies more quickly because of the cross-cultural input at early stages of development. By applying data strategies to internally created user generated content, we will be able to accelerate business processes that enable organizations to compete. The data is already there (and growing rapidly) and tools to leverage it are available and growing quickly. It will be interesting to see how quickly businesses look inward to start mining this data as the true competitive differentiator; I believe that sometime very soon, we will see that those that do will leapfrog forward and those that do not will be left behind.

I wonder when we'll be looking at our own internal data to plan for the impact of flu outbreaks within a company and how we can shift process or production to unaffected areas to compensate...

Thoughts on Disruption and Innovation

Published on ClickZ on January 22, 2014.

Recently I was fortunate enough to attend an amazing panel, "Time to Change -- Culture and Brand Disruption Leading to Innovation," held at PARC Forum. The panel was made up of some great Silicon Valley thought leaders (and friends and colleagues): Susan Etlinger of Altimeter Research, Bryan Kramer of PureMatter, Michela Stribling of IBM, and moderated by Todd Wilms of SAP, all of whom had great thoughts to offer for the topic at hand -- disruption and innovation.

It’s wonderful to know that armed with a smartphone and Twitter, I was part of the contingent in the room that was helping to share this great insight beyond the four walls of the event itself. Reading through my Twitter "notes" now, I’d like to take the opportunity to share with you all some of the highlights of the discussion.

Are we becoming disconnected because of tech?

Etlinger's reply was an immediate and emphatic, "NO!," with the explanation that it takes a while for us to understand the human impact of new technology. The example given was television -- when it was invented in the late 1920s it was used only to record the existing radio programs that were already being broadcast. It wasn’t until 30 years later that I Love Lucy really began to take advantage of the new medium in its fullest sense -- using the visual medium and multiple camera angles to communicate its comedic moments. The same is true of new technology.

Social has gone through the same application discovery. Kramer discussed the shift in "connection." Tech, especially social tech, has allowed us to focus not on demographics but on what he calls "personographics." It has allowed us to connect with people who share our common interests, regardless of where in the world we are.

Historically, innovation happens in 10 year chunks, allowing for people to understand the innovation and test for its best implementations. There is innovation around the application of the concept to find its best usage. Striblin also adds that there must be support from the top, saying that "[Companies] must talk the talk and walk the walk! Innovation and culture change starts at the top with executives." It is becoming more difficult for companies to whitewash innovation; they can’t say and not do. And for effective change, it must come from the top down.

Business disruption is not just disruption for disruption’s sake -- you need to rally around a business goal and then innovate with passion.

To add my perspective, this is absolutely true. We are at a juncture in time where social technology has been around in an advanced commercially available personal capacity for more than 10 years now. It is now time for us in the professional world to see how we can innovate and apply this to our daily business function. I see this as Social Business, and that organizations need executive charter to make this transformation a priority in strategy and process through every part of the organization -- infusing social communication principles into how we collaborate, engage, and create value.

The discussion continued: Innovation can happen at any and every level of the organization. And in order for a company to embrace that, people need to know that they have management support to fail. People will not put their ideas into action if they think that their jobs will be on the line. An example given was around social innovation in marketing -- what a great opportunity to engage more authentically with your prospects and clients, but it creates a huge disruption for the risk management team. And this is where I believe policy and governance strategy must evolve to keep up with both the innovation and disruption (as I’ve mentioned, here in the past). The panel agreed, social governance is key for social. The bottom line is: you need to train your people. Laws and tech are evolving so use common sense.

Brand ownership has changed. Wilms' favorite story is about brand ownership and the power of authenticity in apology for employee transgression.

Wilms elaborated on his favorite example of a brand that showed its human side during a social media event that was threatening its brand value. The scenario was that an employee, a deliveryman, of one of the major shipping companies had been caught on camera throwing packages, including TVs, over fences instead of properly delivering the packages. The company spokesperson, who was clearly nervous, made a sincere apology from the organization stating the embarrassment of the company, that the employee’s actions were not reflective of the company beliefs, that sometimes mistakes are made in hiring, and that the employee was being properly reprimanded and dismissed. Wilms emphasized that this was a truly authentic apology, and that the spokespersons’ (nervous) demeanor further approachability of the brand.

The moral of the story is that organizations need to take ownership of operational mistakes in social. Social has made human connection easier. People accept that brands are no longer a "thing" but now a collaboration of people, and that people are human -- and therefore fallible. Brands that can accept that they are fallible, and can respond to transgressions quickly and authentically, will be able to mitigate financial and sentiment risk.

Parting thought from Etlinger: "To be innovative, you need to get over the fear of being seen as 'stupid.'" Which in my mind is giving yourself permission to be curious, ask questions, and try new things. Don’t let your own fears stop you!

Many thanks to my fellow Twitter conversationalists for helping me archive this panel to share in this post! @cshasarrived, @CecileSF, @dlack2010, @ShawnDMyers, @motodot, @lisajoyrosner, @JanetJoz, @PegahKamal, @jaydiamond, @suzannahscully, @SVTechWire, @PARCinc

Why Doesn’t Social Influence Shopping More?

Published on ClickZ December 5, 2013

Shopping is a social activity. As marketers, we know this instinctively. It's human nature. But measuring the real impact of social on sales is a different story. Social is continuing to grow in importance as a form of digital communication. But what do the latest numbers from the IBM 2013 Holiday Benchmark report say about Thanksgiving and Black Friday retail sales?

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Image source: socialnewsdaily.com

For one thing, on average, they show that holiday shoppers referred from Pinterest on Black Friday spent 77 percent more per order than shoppers referred from Facebook. Facebook average order value was $52.30 versus Pinterest average order value, which was $92.51. However, Facebook referrals converted sales at nearly four times the rate of Pinterest. It's interesting to see these kinds of comparisons, but what do the numbers actually contribute to the bottom lines of retailers?

The fact is, while consumer-generated content (like ratings and reviews) directly impacts retail results, but in many cases, social continues to have a minor direct impact on shopping. Now to me, this all makes perfect sense, but it's somewhat surprising to hear just how small that impact seems to be. According to a recent interview with Jay Henderson, strategy director at IBM Smarter Commerce on Mashable, just one percent of Black Friday sales are attributable to social media. One percent! That said, it would be naïve to think that your social efforts don't have any influence on sales.

Why is that? Let's take a look at the facts:

• Dorie Clark demonstrates in Forbes that only 15 percent of CMOs can quantify the impact of social media. 
• Ben Harper explains how to quantify social media ROI, and proves that it's not very easy. 
• According to a recent study by ExactTarget, quality beats quantity when it comes to measuring social media effectiveness. 

So what's really going on when it comes to understanding the impact of social on retail? To understand, I think we have to spend some time thinking about how we actually recommend products to our friends, colleagues and family members. 

Take my experience, for instance. I was getting my nails done before the Thanksgiving holiday, and another woman's significant other was in the waiting area talking to one of his buddies on the phone. They were going on and on about fishing (he had a lot of time to kill). This guy was really excited about some pre-Black Friday deals he saw on Amazon.com for an amazing fishing reel. He and his friend were making plans to meet up and fish, but he kept coming back to this deal.

"Oh man, I really want that reel," he'd say again and again. He left and got a coffee and came back, and took a call with another friend, and the same thing happened. "We're going fishing, weather should be nice, high tide is at 10:30 am-and man, I found this reel that I've had my eye on, and Amazon has it at a great price right now."

Now this guy is passionate. He's had two personal conversations, and I can imagine he's shared the same info with his social networks. But has he included a direct link to the product in any of those conversations? With tracking codes? How would the retailer know that it was a social referral? And even if he had, would his friends buy directly based on his Facebook post, or would they wait to see if he bought it? Or would they do a search on their own to see if they could beat the price?

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Image source: www.mediabistro.com

We all do this-every day. We email each other pictures of products we want, but we don't include links. We see something on Pinterest while browsing on our phones, and remember to buy it later once we get online at home-with no direct connection between our activities. We get together over the holidays and talk about shoes, gadgets, or vacations we've seen on Facebook, and go out and buy them without those posts ever getting the credit.

And so, we can definitively say that social media had a positive impact on shopping revenue this year. But at this point in time, we just can't say exactly how much. However, as technology and our marketing measurement systems improve, I'm sure that we'll be able to see just how powerful the influence of social is on shopping. After all, it's about measuring human nature-and soon, there will be an app for that.

Are You Ignoring Your Best Brand Advocates?

Published on ClickZ October 30, 2013

I joined a Twitter chat about the value of social this week and during the course of the conversation, was surprised to learn that for some people, the idea of enabling employee advocates was a novel concept. So many people recognize the power of social media for marketing and external evangelism, yet they neglect the power within their own organization!

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We all know that social technology enables human connections. But the thing is, there are no boundaries between consumers or employees, because most of us are both. Technology has also amplified the speed and reach of every type of communication. This evolution in how we share information and knowledge goes far beyond just social "media." It's a complete transformation in the way we interact. When businesses fail to take advantage of the valuable assets in their organization, they miss out on an excellent way to create both customer engagement and employee empowerment.

Social strategist Ted Rubin was featured recently in a great article by Cheryl Connor, in Forbes. He said, "When someone asks, ‘What is the ROI of Social?' I ask back...‘What's the ROI of Loyalty, what's the ROI of Trust?' In order to sell the concept, you've got to talk in a language they'll understand."

I'd take this a step further, to ask employers, "What's the ROI of employee engagement and effective communication with consumers?" When employees are empowered to make direct connections with the customers they serve, it fuels productivity and loyalty from within. In addition to having satisfied employees, an organization can create an internal army of brand ambassadors and influencers who can help promote the business.

So often in marketing conferences, we hear about an employee who has gone above and beyond for the sake of a customer. In this social and connected world we live in, this single experience can spread like wildfire, promoting the organization in an organic, authentic way. Giving your employees the power to speak out on behalf of your organization (with some guidelines in place) can only help broaden the voice of your brand voice and increase the level of visibility in the marketplace.

What does it take to develop a following of employee brand ambassadors? Start with these guiding principles:

• Make your organizational knowledge accessible to all employees through the use of social technology within the business.
• Empower employees to participate in social media on behalf of the brand. 
• Put clear, easy-to-follow guidelines in place and have a plan for dealing with potential mistakes. 
• Facilitate innovation by listening and encouraging feedback around processes, services and products. 

Over the next few years, it's going to become clear that businesses will need to give employees a social experience just like the ones they get in their personal lives. This will not only help businesses retain valuable employees, but it will also be a benefit to the bottom line--and a significant competitive advantage for those that do it right. It will improve employee engagement, productivity and innovation. It will help employees deliver exemplary customer experiences to consumers. It will allow organizations to rally their largest group of brand advocates: the employees themselves.

One thing is absolutely true in this new world of free-flowing information: everyone has a voice and the platform to use it. If you're not using it, someone else will.

Demand Generation + Social + Mobile = BFFs

Published on ClickZ October 2, 2013. 

We all know that the increase of digital media consumption has changed how we approach demand generation. These days, people respond to your outbound campaigns on their cell phones, or they find your campaigns through a friend or colleague’s tweet.

As outbound marketers and demand generation professionals, it’s up to us to figure out how to take advantage of this change in behavior. To do that, we need to completely rethink the customer experience.

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IBM Rethink Campaign: optimized for mobile

I’d like to demonstrate an example of this by walking through some of the ways social and mobile were successfully integrated into a recent campaign I helped develop at IBM. I’ll point out some specific considerations we made throughout the process—as well as some lessons we learned—that might be helpful to you as you create your own approach.

We started by asking ourselves three questions for this outbound/inbound digital campaign microsite, and as we answered each one, we developed new ways to engage our customers.

1. What Did This Audience Really Want?

Thinking about our diverse audiences as well as the variety of solutions that make up the overarching value proposition, we decided to custom-tailor the content to each specific role. In other words, we put our clients’ perspectives first, rather than our view of the broader market.

Of course, we recognized that we had to demonstrate excellence through execution. Marketers are one of our eleven audience roles, so we realized we’d have to provide a seamless user experience while demonstrating the marketing technology represented in our portfolio. Part of this process included the inclusion of social sharing links at every interaction point.

2. How Could We Craft the User Experience in Context to Impress Our Audience?

Our customers are busy business professionals, so we need to provide them with facts they can use right away. We took interesting statistics, incorporated them into a visual treatment that we called a mini-infographic and made sure each one was immensely shareable.

Factoids can be fun to share over social, so we made it easy: with a single click, a visitor could send each one via Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook – all pre-populated with the factoid, hashtags, and a web analytics-tagged URL to bring people back to the website.

We included an image of the mini-infographic because we knew that visuals increase interaction on Facebook and LinkedIn. Taking a dynamic approach to the user interaction and web design was one of our key decisions. We decided on an HTML 5 parallax-designed website in that was visually engaging—one that focused on showing, not telling, through videos, webinars, interactivity, and of course, social sharing. The site had to be optimized for mobile, so we considered the mobile format when approaching the site design. We kept the buttons large and used pre-populated social links would improve social engagement on mobile devices.

3. What Would Continually Keep Our Audience Engaged?

We built the site experience around relevant, focused content that could be a great resource for our customers. We knew that during most B2B solution investigations, buyers and influencers need multiple interactions and validation points to make a decision. Our goal was to speed up some of those exchanges by providing a variety of quality resources for the visitor to engage with. At every interaction, the visitor was able to share these resources via social.

The social links were presented on the success page of the webinar, e-book or report, so the visitor could share that specific asset with their peers. The links embedded in the pre-populated posts directed the visitor directly back to that asset—no need to hunt for it on the microsite. Our approach to social engagement for the content was to make access for the inbound social visitor as easy as possible.

IBM Rethink Campaign: post-conversion social sharing

Do You Make It Easy to Engage?

As you start to create your next campaign, consider how the user experience informs what’s valuable to your target audience. Making it easy for your visitors to engage in social is key to that experience. There are many people out there who are still just getting started with social media—and of course, we’re all pressed for time—so if you can make it easy to share your content, more people will be more inclined to do so.

The benefits are clear: Most of the visitors that you successfully engage on your site are networked and connected to many more visitors who share a similar profile and are therefore part of your target audience. If you set up your site well, develop valuable messages and content, and enable social effectively, you won’t have to go looking for new customers—they’ll come looking for you.

Want to hear more? Join my session at SES Chicago on Wednesday November 6th from 2:00-3:00 pm, as we rethink B2B marketing and explore social as a lead-gen machine.

What Does It Really Mean to Be a Social Business?

Published on ClickZ September 10, 2013.

Social media and social business are terms that are getting used a lot lately. But while one may enable the other, they're very different - and organizations that don't understand the distinction may be missing out on a huge opportunity to improve their business processes.

Debate Brewing

Social media continues to mature as both a channel and a market in its own right. It's even becoming an agent for social change. Technology made it possible for us to connect, and now social media has made it possible to do it in a more organic, human way. It's hard to believe, but Facebook and LinkedIn are each coming up on their 10th year, and Twitter is now six years old. Together, they've fundamentally changed how we engage with one another online. Millennials who grew up in a social world are entering the workforce. What happens next? Social business.

While the concept of a social business has been around for a few years, right now it's really gaining traction. But there's a huge difference between a business that uses social media and one that that empowers social connections and makes them a fundamental part of operations. In other words, some companies tweet about their products - and that's it. Truly social businesses use social collaboration to change the way their employees and teams interact.

Not everyone agrees - the debate is brewing, and a number of papers, research reports, and books appear on the subject every day. I recently engaged in a discussion on the subject during a Twitter chat hosted by @PamMktgNut. Check out the #getrealchat transcript to read the whole conversation. I love the fact that we were using social media to discuss the topic, and that we got to hear 136 perspectives in a real-time discussion. The consensus was that social media is a marketing and communication channel, and social business is a philosophy that combines process, technology, and people to be successful. Of course, social media is a part of the greater concept of social business, since it helps an organization communicate with external constituents. But an intrinsically social company infuses social interaction into every part of their business operations.

The Social Business

The way I see it, a social business is a connected organization where the expertise of the individual is accessible by all through the ability to collaborate. Internal and external social communication fuels the development of new product and service development by employing social listening and analytics. It's the application of the new communication medium that was introduced by social media into the very fabric of how we work.

I believe that social business is the next step in the evolutionary process in the day-to-day functions of digitally enabled enterprises. Much in the same way that the Internet revolutionized how we all work in the era of e-business; social processes, technology, and mindsets will revolutionize how people in organizations connect, collaborate, and share knowledge.

What Do You Think?

Of course, this debate continues in the marketplace, and since this is an ongoing evolution, it's likely to change. Large software vendors like Adobe, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce.com are starting to formulate strategies for developing new ways business is conducted in the digital and social era. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what this means for you - and also for the future of your business.