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May 17, 2010The Strength of Your Brand is Not Dependent on the Size of Your Marketing Budget
May 19, 20104 Things Social Media Has Done For B2B Marketing – A Thought: Marketing Becomes Whole Business
Yesterday I was reading a great post by Amanda O’Brien across at Social Media B2B on 4 Things Social Media Has Done For B2B Marketing.
The post neatly summarised 4 ways that social media has changed how we market our businesses
- Re-learning how we do things and have always done things
- Marketing can be done effectively from inside an organization
- With power comes risk
- Education and Customer Service is Marketing
I would encourage you to read the whole article at: http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/05/4-things-social-media-b2b-marketing/
Reading this post got me to thinking about the role of the team in marketing. Traditionally, marketing has tended to be the domain of the marketing team but it seems that with the advent and growth of Social Media marketing, branding and customer service has now become a whole team issue.
Now, Amanda in her post talks about educating and informing the team about social media and the company’s policy on social media. However, if a company wants to outperform its competitors and amaze its customers, I would suggest that education and information is not enough. I think that it has to start with engagement and values because if you are expecting your team to live and breathe this stuff, right? Yes, it needs to be guided by policy but surely it has to be felt too if it is not to become robotic. Right?
So, how engaged are your team members? Engaged enough to be let loose on social media? Is their level of engagement the thing that may be holding you back from exploring this new, exciting world of Social Media?
According to Gallup, whose engagement ratio is a macro-level indicator of an organization’s ‘health’.
- In average organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 1.5:1.
- In world-class organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is near 8:1.
Where would you put yourself on this scale?
Further research by Gallup found that team members in many companies were:
- Only 17% are actively ‘engaged’
- 63% aren’t engaged
- 20% are actively ‘disengaged’
- 88% want to work hard and do their best
- 50% worked just hard enough to avoid being fired!
- 75% believe they could be significantly more productive
They, also, found that the benefits of an engaged team:
- 50% more likely to have lower staff turnover
- 56% more likely to have higher than average customer loyalty
- 38% more likely to have above average productivity
- 27% more likely to report higher productivity
It seems straightforward that before embarking on new marketing efforts that utilise social media tools, team and business leaders should be asking how aligned and engaged their team are. Taking time to find out and build a higher level of engagement, trust and teamwork should help you manage the risks and benefit from the upsides of social media.
What do you think? Am I ranting? A little?
Your thoughts/comments would be appreciated.
Thanks to Sebadanon for the image
11 Comments
4 Things Social Media Has Done For B2B Marketing – A Thought: Marketing Becomes Whole Business @ http://bit.ly/9FRBiI
4 Things Social Media Has Done For B2B Marketing – A Thought: Marketing Becomes Whole Business http://bit.ly/dx3jaE
4 Things Social Media Has Done For B2B Marketing – A Thought: Marketing Becomes Whole Business http://bit.ly/dx3jaE RT @adrianswinscoe
RT @adrianswinscoe: 4 Things Social Media Has Done For B2B Marketing – A Thought: Marketing Becomes Whole Business http://bit.ly/dx3jaE
Adrian, at points I felt I wasn’t reading right. Maybe the article is a little disaligned and tends to go off track at times. I’m no big shot so please don’t take this as a critique.
I’ll say that employees, irrespective of their teams, need to be sensitized to what they put up on their social media (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) pages. However, such sensitization also needs to accommodate the fact that the employee did not create that virtual space only to be restricted by the company policies. That’s a personal space where individuals voice their opinions. We don’t want to see modulated and scripted updates form people. The entire philosophy of tapping in to the Social media to gain “insight” would be lost.
That said, companies need to make a conscious decision about how they want to play out their SM strategy, overall. Curbing the individual right to expression on the web is definitely not the way to go.
On a related note, I do share some of my thoughts on how SM is helping salespeople connect better with their prospects in my blog post: http://blog.insideview.com/2010/04/27/connecting-the-dots-how-sales-2-0-can-help-you-connect-with-prospects/
Adrian, in case you’re interested, I recently wrote another post on why and how Social CRM is gaining predominance across the sales fraternity. You can come and check it out here: http://bit.ly/c8lvma
Do leave back your comments and thoughts. I’m always looking for new perspectives to brainstorm on. 🙂
Hi Gaurav,
Thank you for your honest and straightforward comments. I’ll certainly look at the piece again and check that it all follows and I’ll head over to your blog and post a comment too.
On your point, I think there is a clear difference between what is personal in Social Media and what is business related and only the latter should be governed by a company’s culture and policies.
Thanks again for your comment,
Adrian
Interesting article Adrian.
I think the point that we need to take is that just like all forms of marketing, there needs to be some form of engagement to turn noise into revenue.
.-= Matthew Needham´s last blog ..Lessons from Lady Gaga and Luke Skywalker =-.
Matthew,
Thanks for your comment.
Interesting point. I agree that there are too many cases of people seeing ‘another new initiative’ which is just, as you put it, noise. Only when we engage people, be they team members or customers, can we translate that into real results.
Adrian
Thank you for the mention Adrian. Glad you liked the blog! I agree with you that a company’s marketing isn’t just for the marketing department anymore. Keep up the good work!
.-= Amanda O’Brien´s last blog ..What the Twitter Bug from Today Should Make Very Clear to You =-.
Hi Amanda,
Thanks for dropping by and for your comment.
Adrian