Archive for May, 2011

Writing a Book on Enterprise Collaboration (Enterprise 2.0) With McGraw Hill!

6 COMMENTS
May 31st, 2011

I’m excited to announce that I will be writing a book on enterprise collaboration for McGraw Hill which will be out around July of 2012!  The purpose of the book is to help guide executives and decisions makers who are responsible for these collaborative initiatives within their organizations.  The book is going to be supported with data which we are collecting from our enterprise collaboration survey.  Just a reminder if you participate in the survey (provided it is relevant to you) you will get access to four free case studies on enterprise collaboration!

We have seen quite a few social media books published over the past few months on social media and customer facing social strategy; but in my opinion (and many of my friends and colleagues agree) there is a lack of resources for organizations looking to deploy these social and collaborative tools internally for their employees (commonly referred to as enterprise 2.0); that’s exactly what this book is going to be about.  Over the course of the next few months I’m going to be writing, interviewing, and collaborating with some of the world’s leading experts, practitioners, and consultants on enterprise collaboration (from some of the world’s most well known companies).  I really want to add insights, ideas, and contributions from the industry as a whole so I’ll be reaching out to quite a few people, in fact I already have several folks who are going to be contributing but won’t announce them yet.

I just want to be clear that although I did write a social media book a few years ago that this book is NOT about social media or customer facing social strategy, this is all about deploying social and collaborative tools and strategies WITHIN organizations.

This is a topic I am very passionate about and I feel that enterprise collaboration really impacts all facets of an organization including its impact on customers.

The book doesn’t have a definitive title yet but it’s something I’m working on with my publisher.  As far as the content goes the book will be broken up into three parts modeled after a game of chess. Meaning we will cover the opening, middle game, and end game.

The opening is going to focus on things such as what organizations need to know about implementing these tools and strategies within their organization, here we will cover things such as who needs to be involved, evaluating risk, and identifying business drivers (among other things).

The middle game is going to be about implementation and adoption strategies for organizations.  Here we will also cover things such as resistance, governance, and the adaptive social business framework.  As I mentioned above multiple sections will devoted to practitioners within large organizations who will also be sharing their ideas and insights.

Finally we will be exploring the end game.  This chapter is really going to focus on sustaining these initiatives which is something I believe is oftentimes overlooked.  So, what happens after you have implemented and achieved your adoption goals?  How do you keep this thing working in the long run?  We will also explore measurements of success as well as what the future of enterprise collaboration might look like.

I’m very excited to be working with McGraw Hill on this and I recognize that there is still a lot that needs to be learned about enterprise collaboration.  My hope is for this book to become THE resource for executives and decision makers on enterprise collaboration and I hope that with the supporting data and contributions from industry practitioners, that it will help elevate the level of knowledge, education, and insights around enterprise collaboration.

Over the coming weeks and months I will be sharing more information about the book including more detailed information about the content, contributors, unique value points of this specific book, and plenty of other interesting discussion topics :)

In the meantime I want to thank all the readers here for their continued support.  Finally, I’d like to encourage you to participate in our enterprise collaboration survey if you are responsible for these initiatives.  If not, please forward and share the survey with relevant friends or colleagues.

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow…”

~Lawrence Clark Powell

TAGS: enterprise 2.0 book, enterprise collaboration book, mcgraw hill

Social Media Marketing isn’t Customer Collaboration

17 COMMENTS
May 26th, 2011

Telling your customers you want to engage and collaborate with them and then marketing to them are two very different things.  The concept of wanting to collaborate with customers sounds great and at first everyone nods their heads and says, “yes we want to do that.”  But when it comes time to actually doing it (collaborating) we oftentimes revert back to the idea of using social media to market or send out messages to our networks, not quite the same thing as collaborating with them.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with just using social media for marketing, but in my opinion it can be used for greater and deeper impacting business purposes.

Many organizations actually start out with social media marketing but then evolve to collaborating with their customers.  Social media marketing has oftentimes been a necessary first step.

Collaborating with customers isn’t about sending them offers, news, information, or messages.  Collaborating is about putting the customer at the center of how your organization conducts business, it’s about integrating the voice of the customer.  It’s about making business decisions with customer input and feedback.  It’s about listening to your customers and acting on the information they give you.  It’s about implementing some of their ideas and co-creating and developing products and services.  This is far more powerful then simply using social tools and technologies to get your message across.

It’s important to understand the difference here especially from an executive and decision maker standpoint.  Customer collaboration shifts how your organization operates and it impacts multiple facets of your business, social media marketing on the other hand leaves your organization as a whole relatively unchanged (or with minor changes).

So, when you say you want to collaborate with your customers do you really mean that or are you really talking about ways to use social channels to spread a message?

TAGS: customer collaboration, Social Media Marketing, social media marketing isn't customer collaboration

Ask Your Customers and Ask Your Employees!

3 COMMENTS
May 23rd, 2011

If you want to know how your employees would feel about using collaborative tools…ask them. If you want to know if your employees will support an initiative to engage with customers via social media…ask them. If you want to know how employees are using social media at work…ask them. If you want to know what your customers [...]

TAGS: ask your customers, ask your employees

Do You Need a Business Case for Social Media?

9 COMMENTS
May 19th, 2011

I had an interesting dinner meeting with a prospect today about how they might use social media.  They are a b2b subscription based publication and they were wondering if they should be in the space.  I thought about it for a minute and resisted the temptation to just say “yes.”  Because after all just “being” somewhere and [...]

TAGS: getting started with social media, social media, social media business case, social media training, social media use case, social media workshop

Three Ways to Use Linkedin for Social Sales

15 COMMENTS
May 13th, 2011

I’m a big fan of Linkedin, I use it several times a week and when I announce what I’m working on (which I will do within a few days) it will become even more clear why it’s been so useful to me.  I have three favorite uses for Linkedin: Finding relevant people to connect with, [...]

TAGS: linkedin for social sales, scrm, Social CRM, social media for sales, social sales, social sales strategy, using linkedin for sales

Questions to Ask When Developing a Social CRM Strategy

10 COMMENTS
May 6th, 2011

Social CRM means different things to different people.  If you ask three people to explain social CRM chances are that you’ll get four different responses.  The thing to remember is that all of this “social” stuff is about solving customer facing problems that address people’s change in behavior, expectations, technological fluency, and communication methods. These [...]

TAGS: planning social crm, questions to as when developing a social crm strategy, scrm questions to ask, social crm strategy, understanding social crm


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