Social Business

Understanding the Lift in SAP Jam Implementations & Adoption

Ensuring Success Beyond the Go-Live to Continue the Momentum

As a practitioner of hundreds of SAP Jam and related communities, platforms, collaboration, and transformation initiatives my team and I see many great efforts to support an organization’s strategy, goals, and objectives.  Often we are asked to share insights on how to ensure success after the go-live.
Wright.Brothers.Stamp.png
Recently, when reading the NY Times best seller, “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough, I was inspired by the story of the “courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly.”

A central part of their success was a formula[1] that they worked out and tested for flight:

Lift = k * V^2 * A * cl

The factors for successful flight address the size and shape of the wing, the velocity of the air flowing over the wing and the density of the surrounding air to address:

  • L = Lift
  • k = Smeaton coefficient (addresses the relationship between pressure and velocity for objects moving in air. Drag refers to the resistance that the wing generates as it flows through the air.)
  • V = Velocity (the higher the velocity the greater the lift)
  • A = Wing area (the larger the size of the wing the more lift will be created)
  • cl = Lift coefficient (addresses the angles a wing assumes in respect to the flow of air)

Wright.Brothers.Flight.pngIn the same way SAP Jam initiatives need to take flight and lift organizational goals and objectives towards impactful outcomes.  These factors can be equated to the following:

  • L = Increasing revenues, growth, value, profits, learning, innovation by bridging organizational silos with cross-teams working together through common business processes and work patterns
  • k = The drag or opposing force that organizations, groups, and employees face when in motion
  • V = Speed to market, acceleration to achieve goals and objectives. Velocity is important when things are going well as well as when there are obstacles to overcome.
  • A = The greater the “area” and access to knowledge and expertise than the greater impact to an employee’s productivity, quality, value and reach to engage internal & external customers
  • cl = The trajectory of an organization based on 4 key factors: revenues, operational efficiencies, cost cutting, and/or recognizing major disruptions in the marketplace

When delivering SAP Jam[2] implementations and adoption initiatives some groups dynamically fly towards their goals and objectives while others are more static (or disparate) in their approach.

>>>The question persistshow to effectively start a SAP Jam group (or enterprise initiative) and sustain value beyond the initial launch? How to ensure it gets off the ground and continues the momentum?

While the factors to ensure “engagement” include “executive sponsorship” and excellent “business ownership” along with “business process accountability” and validating “governance” as well as developing “champions” to expand consistent usability is important, 4 foundational factors must be considered by way of the formula “E = A x C3

Engagement = Access x (Content x Communications x Collaboration)

These factors are considered as follows:

  • Access = The right internal & external audience of owners, stakeholders, and end users have access to SAP Jam including setting privacy settings as needed
  • Content = Finding the right information at the right time on an ongoing basis to save time, money and scale to the right audience. Maintaining a 100 day plan for seeded content updates.
  • Communications = Sharing updates about SAP Jam and the respective initiative to the audience based on a 30/60/90 day and beyond plan
  • Collaboration = Posting discussions, questions, ideas, comments, and decision-making tools such as polls to encourage two-way dialogue

Open.Road.pngAs mentioned in the blog, “SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals” often groups play a few of the keys but the more advanced aspects of SAP Jam take time, trial and adjustment, and a combination of business and IT work experiences. The how-to’s of turning SAP Jam on or picking up the basics in the User Guides are helpful but most administrators, power users, content & community managers, and their users seek more by way of SAP Jam tips and insights.

Like the Wright brothers obsession to fly, SAP Jam takes dedication.

It takes both the “science and art” forms to achieve success.  No matter how many implementations take place and questions are answered there is always more to address, learn about, and discover. With new product releases, which happen approximately every 2 months, there are new capabilities, innovations, and investments to take advantage of on a regular basis in the cloud.

Plane.Blog.pngSo whether it’s your very important SAP Jam group (or enterprise rollout / initiative) or the Wright Brothers taking flight, the key is to consider the right factors for achieving lift (i.e. during implementation “and” beyond go-live including adoption).

When the right formula is applied with the right combined skills and best practice work experiences are put in place than success can be achieved both in the short and longer-term.

Footnotes:
[1] National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), “Lift Equation of the Early 1900” – http://wright.nasa.gov/airplane/liftold.html
[2] Important Note:  SAP Jam is a unique market leading platform and solution.  It seamlessly integrates social business capabilities into existing (& planned) business process. SAP has made SAP Jam an integral part of the SAP portfolio of products and solutions addressing:

  • All lines of business centric vs. CRM as the primary
  • One SAP Jam vision vs. multiple roadmaps which have overlaps
  • SAP’s proven 40-year history of business software, processes, and market leadership
  • Collaborative ecosystem (Out of the Box – i.e. OpenText, Box, SharePoint, etc.)
  • Application integration (i.e. OData, REST APIs) by utilizing the SAP Jam Developer Center
  • Integrated platform as a foundational principal vs. a standalone which increases costs
  • Internal & external SAP Jam group capabilities & templates which easily set-up
  • Structured collaboration to support problem solving, issue resolution, and decision making
  • Screen and video capture
  • Mobile App alignment with SAP Jam Page Designer provides out of the box mobile capabilities

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About the Author
Richard D. Blumberg, President, World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) provides 25+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building.  He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations and adoption.

WSS is a SAP Service Partner for SAP Jam and long-time supporter of the SAP Community Network and the SAP Ecosystem.

Prior Blogs:
SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals
View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
SAP Jam Work Patterns:  The Big $ or € &/or ¥ Game Changer for a New Product Launch!
SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building

SAP Jam: Using all the Piano’s Keys and Pedals

The Importance of SAP Jam Implementation & Adoption Expertise

The rewards of using SAP Jam are awesome! Getting to the point where business and IT value is realized takes time, logic, dedication, and expertise.  Successful SAP Jam implementations and adoption requires many considerations, some of which are often overlooked.

pianoIt reminds me of the day when my family got a piano from my in-laws house for our son. While other children and friends would bang on the keys he wanted to play meaningful songs at an early age. There were adult friends and teachers who remembered playing a bit growing up (or knew a few songs) but could only offer a few ideas around how to play the piano beyond the basics.

Only when we got an expert piano teacher (on the second try) who had the style and skills which were complimentary to his interests did we see his enjoyment and piano playing skills soar forward.

untitledFor my team and I working with leading customers and business units around the globe we see that no two SAP Jam implementations are alike. Like a snow flake each one has its own unique work patterns based on their customers, industry, lines of business and culture.

As a result we must be agile and dig deep on each engagement to address a wide range of skills, requirements, work experiences which range from HR, Learning, Onboarding …to Sales, Marketing, Services, Commerce and Customer Engagement …to Communications, IT, Procurement, Operations, Communities of Practice, and User Experiences …to working within a wide range of SAP and 3rd Party Apps and related Management Information System (MIS) environments …to the ability to write, provide visual consistency, and program management …as well as help turn complexity into …simplicity.

There are a number of best practice guidelines to consider:

ROI_DiagramConsideration #1 – Getting Started!

  • Understanding the business requirements
  • Enabling overall usability
  • Translating the business process to SAP Jam
  • Ensuring relevance by way of content / communications
  • Utilizing dynamic widgets vs. static text and images
  • Assessing Change Management
  • Ensuring participation

Consideration #2 – ROI & Value

Pinpoint the SAP Jam Return On Investment (ROI) and business drivers important to your organization centered around “Time” “Money” and “People” scalability to ensure measurable (“quantifiable” and “qualifiable”) gains.

Consideration #3 – Differentiators

SAP Jam is a unique market leading solution.  It seamlessly integrates social business capabilities into existing (& planned) business process whereas as other 3rd party platforms are focused on the tools.  SAP has made SAP Jam an integral part of all SAP solutions addressing:

  • All lines of business centric vs. CRM as the primary
  • One SAP Jam vision vs. multiple roadmaps which have overlaps
  • SAP’s proven 40-year history of business software, processes, and market leadership
  • Collaborative ecosystem (Out of the Box – i.e. OpenText, Box, SharePoint, etc.)
  • Application integration (i.e. OData, REST APIs) by utilizing the SAP Jam Developer Center
  • Integrated platform as a foundational principal vs. a standalone which increases costs
  • Internal & external SAP Jam group capabilities which easily set-up
  • Structured collaboration to support problem solving, issue resolution, and decision making
  • Screen and video capture
  • Mobile App alignment with SAP Jam Page Designer provides out of the box mobile capabilities

Consideration #4 – Roles & Responsibilities

When addressing an SAP Jam initiative the executive sponsor, business owner(s), and project leader must consider 3 key roles including:

  • Administrator(s) (or Power Users)
  • Content Manager(s) (& Contributors)
  • End Users

While one SAP Jam tactical action can be straight forward. Each action has a consequence on another aspect of the project or initiative.

ChessFor those of us who watch (or remember) Star Trek and Spok’s 3D chess game, each move has an impact to another chess piece which may be on the board you are working on or another.  It takes a lot of SAP Jam experience to address these moves which have important relationships to other business processes.

A successful SAP Jam implementation addresses 5 phases:

  1. Preparation
  2. Realization
  3. Verification
  4. Launch
  5. Post Go-Live

EagleIt takes vision, leadership, teamwork, compelling business outcomes, and passion to build any successful community which meets either face-to-face or virtually. SAP Jam requires the same consideration to achieve successful implementations and adoption.

Whether its learning how to play the piano or SAP Jam, it takes multi-dimensional expertise to ensure that all the “keys and pedals” are optimized.

SAP Jam has many self-evident, out of the box templates and capabilities that are excellent, but to gain the full advantage it takes the right skills, work experiences, and expertise to achieve the highest level of success.

About the Author

RDBRichard D. Blumberg, President, World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) provides 25+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building.  He and his team are recognized SAP Jam global experts for implementations and adoption.
WSS is a SAP Service Partner for SAP Jam and long-time supporter of the SAP Community Network and the SAP Ecosystem.

Prior Blogs:
View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success
SAP Jam Work Patterns:  The Big $ or € &/or ¥ Game Changer for a New Product Launch!
SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity
Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!
The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building

Originally posted on the SAP Community Network – full blog >>

 

Building Partner Networks with SAP Jam

This article is reproduced from the Oct-Nov-Dec 2014 issue of SAPinsider (SAPinsiderOnline.com). Read the entire special report on social collaboration. View this attachment (4th page) or visit SAPinsiderOnline.com.

Building Partner Networks with SAP Jam
by Rich Blumberg

Launching new products such as automobiles is both exciting and challenging, especially when you consider the complexity of connecting a manufacturer with its dealer network. Launch success depends on full visibility; timely training and certification; as well as clear sales, marketing, and go-to-market execution (see Figure 1). World Sales Solutions (WSS) understands the manufacturer-to-dealer complexity as this services organization is regularly called on to assist manufacturing and service companies in making these necessary connections.

figure_1.png

WSS relies on the SAP Jam developer program to provide its customers with a social collaboration platform that bridges the gap between manufacturers and dealers with a central hub that:

  • Brings together a company’s marketing, sales, service, and cross-team staff with external parties such as advertising agencies and key suppliers
  • Provides formal learning and certification using SuccessFactors Learning Management System (LMS) or SAP Learning Solution
  • Delivers informal learning (via SAP Jam) such as sales best practices among dealers or quick access to experts
  • Onboards new partners and employees expediently to ensure the shortest time to revenue by optimizing SAP Jam
  • Supports strategizing and decision making among the entire network for product innovation, including integration with SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), SAP Cloud for Customer, or third-party innovation management systems
  • Enables coordination among the entire network for product or new service launches, including large-scale activities requiring visibility into events, tasks, and deliverables

The SAP Jam Developer Program:
Extend Existing Investments and Drive New Revenue

Customize

  • Develop work patterns (custom processes)
  • Add pre-built third-party apps

Integrate

  • Bring SAP and third-party app data into SAP Jam with OData
  • Collaborate with documents from content management systems
  • Embed SAP Jam in your business apps

Extend

  • Build collaborative customer apps on SAP HANA Cloud Platform
  • Add capabilities with OpenSocial
  • Incorporate third-party capabilities (gamification, for example)

SAP Jam helps align companies with their partner networks to drive efficiencies that save time and money based on the volume and scalability of their network, boosting return on investment (ROI). To use auto manufacturing as an example, each dealer has the opportunity to access SAP Jam to engage with its local sales and service staff for receiving training, learning best practices, finding experts, keeping up with regulations, managing rollout of sales and marketing plans, and sharing feedback from customers.

“As a partner, the SAP Jam developer program presents market-first options for solving complex business problems such as enabling more successful automotive product launches,” says Richard Blumberg, President and CEO of WSS. “We can now create new work patterns or bring business data directly into SAP Jam from our customers’ existing SAP or third-party systems to support customer-specific processes. This has helped us position unique social collaboration services to our customers with a strong ROI.”

The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success

Understanding the Financial Value 

Introducing the WSS ROI Calculator for SAP Jam

biker.path.1

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Many SAP Jam initiatives require a solid business justification before senior management will commit time, money, and resources.  The business case can address one or more of the following:

  • Revenues – Aligning strategic and tactical sales, profits, and margins with account plans
  • Customers – Engaging customers to provide value-add, collaboration, and communications
  • Employees – Providing an environment to maximize productivity, performance, learning, onboarding, and cross-team collaboration
  • Partners – Leveraging the channel to extend revenues, delivery, learning, and customer reach
  • Operations – Identifying and quantifying process improvements and simplification
  • Financial – Reducing costs and/or showing a realistic Return on Investment (ROI)

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The assessment of SAP Jam begins with the value and importance of SAP and SuccessFactors.  SAP is the market leader for business software with over 253,000 customers.  SAP Jam has over 15 million subscribers. One only needs to look at the SAP Solution Explorer value maps, with a breadth of products and solutions, to realize that the current and upcoming investments (& alignment) with SAP Jam are part of the overall strategy to fuel organizational simplification, cloud and “digital transformation.”

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Five ROI Essentials

  1. Quantify – Understanding a project’s economic impact and business drivers can turn uncertain support into an endorsement to move forward.
  2. Stakeholders – Connecting ROI to a project can build confidence amongst key colleagues, cross-team members and influencers that a project is worthwhile.
  3. Benefits – Socializing a SAP Jam project can lead to finding additional benefits that were initially not recognized.
  4. Prioritization – Ensuring accountability. Once the decision is made to invest in a SAP Jam project the ROI can help management and stakeholders prioritize their time as participants.
  5. Change – Recognizing that an important business initiative needs help (i.e. by way of change management) and that SAP Jam can enable important outcomes.


Understanding the Financial Value

Measuring financial value can be complex.  Breaking it down into known components helps simplify:

  • Time – Accelerating productivity and reducing wasted time
  • Money – Aligning value around salaries (and cost savings) as well as supporting revenue initiatives
  • Volume – The quantity of people including employees, customers, partners, and other stakeholders


Providing a base level framework around these values provides a business model and perspective.


How do we know it works?

In addition to World Sales Solutions (WSS) best practices and hundreds of SAP Jam and related community work experiences, consider an industry analyst’s perspective:
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“According to an IDC White Paper sponsored by Adobe, “Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap: New Challenges and Opportunities for IT,” September 2012, reporting on a global survey of information workers and IT professionals, information workers waste a significant amount of time each week dealing with a variety of challenges related to working with documents. This wasted time costs the average organization $19,732 per information worker per year, amounting to a loss of 21.3% in the organization’s total productivity.”

ROI.calculator.Work.Pattern.png
Now assess the impact to your organization!

Based on a breath of data points, customer feedback, and findings, World Sales Solutions has built the first WSS ROI Calculator for SAP Jam(www.wssroi.com). This tool provides an internal/external “customer-centric” framework (see diagram on right) for measuring the economic impact of Time, Money, and Volume when addressing:

  • Finding the right information
  • Searching for but not finding information
  • Realizing information is in disparate locations vs. a central hub
  • Receiving unfiltered information (including spam)
  • Finding the wrong information
  • Reworking unfound or wrong information
  • And many other “Business Driver” considerations


How do these examples affect your business goals & objectives
? Consider the impact of each!

Paths.Vectors.1.png
There are many paths!

In summary, there are many paths to realizing value from SAP Jam projects and initiatives. Using a combination of “ROI” and identifying “business drivers” (see WSS ROI Calculator for examples) these strategies and tactics can be centralized and guided by executive sponsors, business owners, and content (or community) managers along with end user contributions and collaboration.
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Organizations that implement and adopt SAP Jam can gain higher productivity, performance, and a competitive advantage.
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The use of SAP Jam allows organizations to invest in core competencies, achieve a solid ROI, and addresses important business drivers which form the foundation for success.

 


RDB.jpgAbout the Author 
Richard D. Blumberg, President, World Sales Solutions, LLC, (WSS) (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com) provides 25+ years of thought leadership on a variety of “View from the Top” strategies including: Enterprise Social Business, Go-to-Market Strategies, Business Development, Talent Development, and Community Building.
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WSS
is a SAP Service Partner for SAP Jam and long-time supporter of the SAP Community Network and the SAP Ecosystem.
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Featured SAP Community Network Blog: The Path to SAP Jam ROI Success

..
Prior Blogs:
 
 View from the Top: Bill McDermott shares his success secrets at a #fireside chat!
 SAP Jam Work Patterns:  The Big $ or € &/or ¥ Game Changer for a New Product Launch!
 SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity

 Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!

 The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building

SAP Jam: The ROI Impacting Sales Productivity

For the full blog visit the SAP Community Network – More >>


Ask a knowledge worker supporting sales to find customer-facing information produced by any combination of departments such as researchers, engineers, marketing, product development, suppliers, services, and partner teams; it often takes a long time.

Now ask the same question of current or new sales team members who are responsible for accelerating pipeline or winning deals and the results often take “much” longer. The time spent in searching, collecting, e-mailing, and verifying the right versions of the truth can be frustrating.

Based on an IDC White Paper* reporting on a global survey, “information workers waste a significant amount of time each week dealing with a variety of challenges related to working with documents {and related assets}. This wasted time costs the average organization $19,732 per information worker per year, amounting to a loss of 21.3% in the organization’s total productivity.”

While the survey results may vary in many organizations, the trend is clear.


For the full blog visit the SAP Community Network – More >>

News Alert: World Sales Solutions, LLC Becomes an SAP Services Partner Focusing on SAP® Jam

Accelerating Sales, Marketing, Services and Innovation to Support Customers

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — World Sales Solutions, LLC (WSS) announced today that it has joined the SAP® PartnerEdge® program as an SAP services partner. WSS will focus on the SAP Jam social software platform together with the SuccessFactors Talent Management Suite as well as SAP Jam with the SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application for on-premise, cloud, and social-network-inspired collaboration.

“SAP and SuccessFactors, an SAP company, continue to lead the way in enterprise social software (ESS), with SAP Jam having experienced a growth rate of over 850 percent year-over-year,” said Richard D. Blumberg, president of World Sales Solutions. “Our team welcomes the opportunity to share insights with our customers’ senior executives and their teams to help achieve quick and tangible results. Customers benefit from our work experiences in delivering successful private and public communities ranging from 30 to 300,000+ participants and representing important products and solutions seen around the globe.”

The WSS team provides a quick start program for the deployment of SAP Jam to help customers address specific ESS requirements around top priorities and compelling business issues. While there are many ESS tools in the marketplace, the unique combination of SAP Jam plus SAP applications, such as the SAP Cloud for Customer solution and SAP CRM powered by the SAP HANA® platform, provides a competitive advantage for organizations to establish a 360° view of their customers.WSS also works with sales, marketing, services, and innovation cross-teams to orchestrate adoption around best practices, productivity gains, cost savings, and measurability which helps deliver bottom-line revenue results.

About World Sales Solutions
Founded in 2004, World Sales Solutions, LLC (www.WorldSalesSolutions.com), a business development professional services organization, supports the world’s leading businesses, universities, and organizations to help achieve dramatic increases in revenues, profits, growth, and value. Over the last 8+ years, WSS has provided services to organizations that use SAP solutions. As an SAP services partner and member of the SAP PartnerEdge program, WSS supports enterprise social software delivery and best practices for using SAP Jam.

SAP, PartnerEdge, SAP HANA and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contact: Diem Lam, World Sales Solutions, +1 610-745-4514, [email protected]

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

 

Split Second Selling with SAP Jam – 7 Use Cases!

Background: This blog is the second in a series which began with the acclaimed post, “The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative: Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building.


Recently, I came across an impressive McLaren race car which triggered thoughts about the similarities between sales teams and race car drivers. The “SAP Speeds Up – McLaren Formula One” video provides insights on the importance of “split second and informed decisions” to impact short-term results and future outcomes.

Since that unexpected sighting of a very cool car, I began to ponder how this performance model might be applied to cross-teams and collaboration to help impact revenues and bottom-line business results.

This question came to mind…
How can organizations apply tools such as SAP Jam to win their respective races?
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For the full post visit the SAP Community Network. More >>

Workshop & Blog: The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building

Featured Blog: SAP Community Network

Announcement:
The following workshop took place as part of Drexel’s CEO LEAD (“Creating Experiential Opportunities for Leadership Education and Development”) on Drexel University’s campus.

Title: The Customer Go-to-Market Imperative – Transforming Silos to Social Business and Community Building

Date/Time: May 16, 2013 @ 6 PM, EST – Complete

Presenter: Rich Blumberg, President, World Sales Solutions, LLC (Alumni Board of Governors and Volunteer)

Summary: Increasing revenues, profits, value, and growth depends on collaboration with customers at the center of an organization’s support system. Silos impact performance when geographic, business unit, and functional boundaries impact sales and the delivery of products, solutions, and services.

For today’s students, who are the future business and technology leaders, it is critical to recognize the compelling business issues, priorities, and market conditions which impact CEOs and customers’ decisions.  Those who understand these trends have better job and career opportunities which ultimately results in more hiring or firing.

Learn about the best practices, case studies, tools, and resources required to help organizations go from ordinary to extraordinary. Understand the critical importance of equipping the sales team on a daily basis. Find out how executives, experts and content contributors provide the essential source of information which customers require one economic decision maker at a time.

Networking: How and Why Leaders Spread the Word!

Most network groups, associations, and clubs have initiatives which may take the form of an event, conference, fund raiser, resource development, webinar or meeting.

The difference between the “participants” and “leaders” is often a fine line of getting involved and helping “spreading the word” about the upcoming program or activity. Kinetic vs. passive energy goes a long way!

A few tips to consider when bringing together a group:

  • Identify a central theme that draws people in
  • Form a core team
  • Provide opportunities to network
  • Welcome current and new members
  • Build awareness of existing benefits and value-adds
  • Create a memorable experience for everyone to enjoy
  • Focus on what’s attainable vs. spreading too thin
  • Set quantifiable goals and measure success

Leaders (or those who are “connectors”) readily take the extra steps to encourage:

  1. Participation – Early commitments to attend, register or reply to the RSVP
  2. Recruitment – Set goals to get others involved (i.e. connect to 5+ or more friends or colleagues to participate)
  3. Socialize – Leverage social tools to spread the word such as Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter
  4. Personalize – Make personal connections by phone, e-mail and/or face-to-face

When joining forces with a group if each member does a small part then the sum of the parts will be greater then what one participant can deliver by themselves.

Consider this analogy: “From a small snow ball a big snow ball can be created; it just needs to be rolled over enough snow!:-)” Success is about building momentum around small steps, broken into small parts to ultimately make a big difference.

Growing a group. Increasing involvement. Having fun. The key is to create meaningful connections which ultimately benefits a person or group on a social and/or professional level.

When momentum is built. When teams help spread the word… Then groups, associations, or clubs have a better opportunity to reach short and longer-term goals.

As a result many win-wins take place on many levels!

 

Beyond the mystique of Social Media tools

Social media is moving at blazing speeds around new tools and capabilities on a daily (“real-time”) basis. Keeping up with it can be a big challenge!

Often groups and individuals put more emphasis on the mystic around the basic (“and certainly important”) tools such as Facebook, Twitter,  LinkedIn, and other platforms as well as Mobile Apps running on iPads/tablets,  iPhones/Smart Phones, rather then the “holistic view” of what makes Social Media —performed for important business reasons— work.

At its base are the core, essential pillars which are important to an organization including a keen focus on the audience, core messages, listening from the outside in, and a strategic plan around a clear set of goals, objectives, and deliverables.

Of course there is more too it. A team or individual must be an expert in all aspects of business and client development including building communities, communications, go-to-market, and information architecture.  Often individuals or groups specialize in small parts of the bigger picture and have a challenge taking action on the realities of what is really happening from the view of the customer and the marketplace.

As a starting point consider these 4 principals:

  1. Access – Who will need access to your social media messages, tools, and or platforms? How will they get it?
  2. Content – What content will sustain your social media plan? How does it equate into your business objectives including go-to-market, community building, and bottom-line revenue objectives?
  3. Awareness – How will you develop communications which increase awareness? What channels and which influencers can help multiple and amplify the core messages?
  4. Collaboration – Are your social media activities one-way and push only or two-way collaboration? What are your plans around moderation and seeding two-way dialogue?

While these fundamental considerations will help. It’s important to have a strong view on short-term wins and a longer-term path of consistency.

Another key consideration is that within a short amount of time an organization will have a massive clutter of information…data points…and feedback from internal and external stakeholder… Maybe you’re there all ready, but with a social media campaign it will grow and grow.

It’s important to continuously step back and reassess the top priorities that will truly make an impactful difference to the bottom line.

So in the end while the latest social media tools which create both hype and mystic are important…

…it really boils down to the multidimensional expertise of the team or individuals building and delivering the social media plan.

What you deliver in Social Media by way of communications and messages should start with a unit of one; how it impacts “one” individual, influencer &/or group? And then multiplied and scaled (“amplified”) to the whole target audience.

The golden rule to consider is something I learned from Dale Carnegie. Your audience wants to know, “What’s in for me?” And how can they can apply your social media activities to something that’s of value to their business, professional, or personal goals and objectives?

Small wins. One step at a time. These are the key building blocks to your social media campaigns and ultimate success.