Last week I joined IBM and a group of communicators from some of New Zealand’s top companies to hear about IBM’s CEO study which identified some key issues facing leaders around the world.

Increasing complexity, the need to be closer to customers, and the need for greater agility are the three things keeping CEOs awake at night.

As the second guest speaker, I was tasked with speaking about social media as a way to get closer to customers, but in many ways social media can help with the other two needs as well.

We all agreed that social media was a great way to sense what was going on in the marketplace – the pain points, the great customer experiences, and the unsought new ideas that come from unsolicited customer feedback.

The question then is, what do we do with all this data?

It’s like businesses have started to develop a nervous system. If a company listens in to conversations online, they start to feel the pain. But do the nerves go all the way to the muscles, to where action can happen?

Social media may have first been seen as an IT issue. Now it’s beginning to be seen as a marketing/comms issue. But how many companies are involving their innovation departments (in fact, how many companies have innovation departments?)

This is not a new idea. Bill Gates coined the phrase digital nervous system in his 1995 book Business @ the speed of thought (when @ symbols were ultra-cool and futuristic). Stephan Haeckl describes a similar idea in the Sense-and-Respond organisation.

But these have been theoretical possibilities. In the next few years, perhaps we’ll start to see organisations that work organically, able to not only sense the message of the marketplace, but respond positively.

Can you think of any examples of companies doing the nervous system thing well?

(Photo: perpetualplum)

Sometimes things are funny because they ring true. In the process of trying to define and measure something, Murray is completely blind to his alienating behaviours. And it’s just as easy to do in business marketing and communications.

Of course measurement is important because simply being on social media is an investment that needs to be measured. But beware the effect your measurement has on behaviour. Watch out for what you incentivise, and what you discourage. Make sure you’re thinking in the customer’s shoes.

What’s best practice? So often it’s “better felt than telt” as the old Scottish phrase goes. In other words, we can give you a detailed checklist to get you going, but social media is just another way to connect with people. Rely on intuition and commonsense as much as best practice guidelines.

Essentially, this post is exactly the same message as my driving to Taupo post, but with some Flight of the Conchords fun thrown in

I was lucky. I started on Twitter when it was still new, and just being on Twitter was a reason to connect to someone else.

By some accounts, it’s a different story now. In many ways Twitter is a busy, crowded marketplace with people struggling to get attention.

But Twitter wasn’t designed as a marketplace; it was designed as a person-to-person social network. The problems seem to arrive when we have a message to get across, or something to sell.

In a recent workshop where we were getting people onto Twitter for the first time, I tweeted:

“New tweeters … would you say it’s hard work to break in to the ‘in crowd’ on Twitter?”

I got some fascinating responses.

“What in crowd?”

The vast majority of responses asked “there’s an in crowd?” This was a mixture of people new to twitter and seasoned tweeters, and some of the responses were pretty funny:

(er, ignore the “rooftop” message … another benefit of Twitter, multiple conversations at once!)

Only two or three people said it was a bit hard at first:

Great analogy. And yet one of the secrets of Twitter success is in the tweet above from @spdalton: “…everyone I’ve met has been super nice and friendly.” Twitter works best when it combines with real-life meetings, whether that’s a one-to-one coffee meeting, or a more festive atmosphere like a Tweetup.

That’s the beauty of social media. It’s part of an ecosystem where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You’ll likely end up knowing the same people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and in real-world events. Social media just allows you to have more conversations in more different ways.

What if you live in Eketahuna or outside the country you want to reach? It’s harder but not impossible, and requires a bit more online time.

Rule 1: There are no rules. Just relationships. But here are a few tips:

• Find conversations where you have something of genuine value to add, that doesn’t involve selling your product. It’s counterintuitive, but you earn more trust when you just offer value and don’t stand to gain anything immediately.
• Click through to people’s profiles to learn more about them, including where they are, their bio and website link. Also make sure your profile gives people enough info about you – it really makes a difference because there are no other ways to get a fix on who you are.
• Take a long-term view. People buy from people they like, and how long does it take for someone to like you. Not five minutes. But not five years, either. Build relationships and look after people you connect with. As Zig Ziglar says, if you help other people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.
• Ask for help. (But get to know people first). If you’re just learning Twitter, and there’s something you don’t understand, ask your followers for help. Or, ask for opinion. That’s how this blog post came about; I asked my followers’ opinions.

So is there an in crowd on Twitter? Not if you follow the advice above.

How about you? How did you find your groove in Twitter – or are you still trying to? Or worse still, has Twitter not worked out for you? Love to hear your comments below.

(Photo from It’sGreg. Did you know ducks were inherently amusing?)

In an unpredictable world, how can success be predictable? Les McKeown, author of Predictable Success, joins us for a candid chat about visionary leadership, and how Les uses social media to market his book. Interesting perspective from someone who’s by his own admission “very old”

(This is part of the roots of the revolution series.)

Social media is not the be-all and end all of marketing. It’s one symptom among many of a revolution that is profoundly changing the way business is done. We’ve looked at the rise of virtual communities before; one of the other symptoms is Corporate Social Responsibility.

A nice idea in the 1970s, CSR is becoming a must-have. Global branding thinktank the Medinge Group puts it this way:

” …these are the sort of attributes we would expect of a nation-state, and increasingly we expect them of corporations.”

And Ernst & Young’s Global Megatrends 2009 report (PDF) speaks of the “rise of responsibility”. According to the report, businesses face “increasing expectations and obligations around how they act and the impacts they have on the world around them”. These expectations are coming from a growing body of stakeholders, who are no longer defined simply as “their consumers, employees, regulators and shareholders, but include far wider-ranging groups, including NGOs, the media and local communities”.

Social media is speeding up the pace of change, and amplifying the voice of individuals and lobby groups who want to hold large organisations to account.

Read more about corporate social responsibility:
Nicholas Ind, edited by, Beyond Branding
Gurnek Bains, edited by, Meaning Inc

WHAT THIS MEANS: Ask yourself, why does our company exist, other than to make money? Make that your cause.

Update: Thanks to Alex for telling us that “Communicative Stakeholder Relationship” better describes CSR these days, according to a recent PR Global Forum. Details here and here.