The Seven Success Factors of Social Business Strategy

Businesses have approached social media in an ad hoc, experimental fashion. Its time to get serious and link those efforts to real business outcomes. Most organizations have evolved their social business over time, starting out with external-focused social media initiatives and gradually enabling and socializing different business units and functions. At some point, leading organizations create a coherent social business strategy that has the support of senior C-suite executives. That process often turns out to be messy, ridden with missteps, and lacking in best practices. Most businesses have few clear connections between their social business activities and business goals - metrics, if they exist, focus on engagement activity, not business value creation. The definition of a successful social business strategy is one that is clearly aligned with strategic business goals of the organization and has alignment and support throughout the organization that enables the organization to execute on that strategy. There are some common characteristics of successful social business strategies, the most important one being a laser focus on achieving business goals. And the companies with the most successful social business strategies are ones with an executive who can articulate the vision and strategy roadmap almost as well as the social strategist. Based on thought leader interviews, comprehensive surveys, and extensive research, social media experts Charlene Li and Brian Solis show readers how to define their social strategy, create alignment across the organization, and use that strategy to support business goals, illustrating the key elements and best practices as well as common mistakes to avoid.