A good report from McKinsey – “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.” It is all about how the business entrepreneur can add value by applying social technologies.
Purchasing in groups, on social platforms, and sharing opinions (McKinsey more broadly defines social technologies as “products and services that enable social interactions in the digital realm, and thus allow people to connect and interact virtually”)
Overall, $940 billion of annual consumption in some US and European categories could be influenced by human input. That is the best reason you should be interested in social technologies and their application.
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But there are more reasons to pay attention … social commerce is only one of ten ways social technologies can add business value.
Overall, two-thirds of the value creation opportunity afforded by social technologies lies in improving communications and collaboration within and across enterprises. In other words, much of the value potential of social technologies lies in collaboration, not commerce; particularly, professional collaboration between colleagues and businesses.
Successful business ideas.
Some further useful statistics from the McKinsey report of note:
$2xPotential
value from better enterprise communication and collaboration compared with other social technology benefits
>1.5 billion social networking users globally
80% Proportion of total online users who interact with social networks regularly
70% Proportion of companies using social technologies
90% Proportion of companies using social technologies that report some business benefit
In May 2012, Facebook logged its 900 millionth user (this is now 1 billion users from September reports). It is estimated that 80 percent of the world’s online population use social networks on a regular basis
In the United States, the share of total online time spent on social networking platforms more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2011, from 7 percent to 15 percent
By adopting social technologies internally, companies could raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent.
Further Report Insights:
Social technologies enable unique insights, by allowing marketers and product developers to engage directly with thousands of consumers and to monitor unprompted and unfiltered conversations
Social technology has an almost primal appeal. It is a fundamental human behavior to seek identity and “connectedness” through affiliations with other individuals and groups that share their characteristics, interests, or beliefs. Social technologies have given these basic behaviors the speed and scale of the Internet at virtually zero marginal cost
For electronics, 16 percent of shoppers rely on social input for purchasing decisions; in home goods, the figure is currently just 2 percent
Social technologies enable social behaviors to take place online, endowing these interactions with the scale, speed, and disruptive economics of the Internet.
Business entrepreneur … everything is an idea
Let me share an example with you.
A little while back, my wife was talking to me about her Facebook page. She’s an aspiring social media consultant and, as such, uses her page a lot to talk about books, news of interest, and the like.
One of the things she said as she found it hard to come up with ideas, given that there’s only so much you can talk about plot and print.
I asked her if she’d ever considered being more personal. Let readers get to know the real person behind the page.
What inspires here; what she’s afraid of; what her goals are beyond sales and recognition.
As a result, she started to publish more personal posts, with one, in particular, getting over 700 shares on Facebook and more than 30 comments.
From my own experience, even though I stopped writing directly about business on my blog in 2014, I still get business inquiries, along with emails and comments on how certain posts aren’t restricted to the personal topic I’ve written about.
Which makes sense – because our whole lives are one big blog post idea.
The beauty of the sunset, and how that can inspire a new beginning in business when the next dawn rises;
The innocence of children, and how that can make us better business leaders without ego or ignorance fuelling us;
The friendly neighbor
who’ll do anything for another human, and how that can make us more accountable as colleagues;
The love of our pets, and how that can instill the importance of loyalty and reward when it comes to our customers.
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These are just some ways that everyday occurrences can result in a business lesson. Which can then be turned into a piece of content.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve found to be true, both in business and in life, it’s this – people relate to real life.
If your people (your customers, your colleagues, your clients, your readers) can relate to your life and all you learn from it, it’s pretty much a guarantee that the goals you have will be easier to meet.
Try it – you might just find out it’s all you needed to do, to begin with.
The bottom line
To be effective in this new era, we as businessmen and women need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views, or social media shares.
We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.
We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.
There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement in any business, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems we all are looking to take our success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement about their brand marketing.
Changing before you have to is always a good idea.
Now it’s up to you. Choose one social technology idea to start with. Have a meeting around it. Discuss how to implement it. Then, do it and repeat the process, creating something good for your customers to talk about! Soon you will receive much stronger social commerce values for your business.
Please share a social commerce business experience with us.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s teamwork, collaboration, and learning? Creative ideas in running or facilitating collaboration or continuous learning workshops?
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improve your continuous learning?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Complaint Management … Tips for Small Business Success
Complaint Handling … 14 Effective Business Relationship Recommendations
