UPDATED 11:35 EST / APRIL 29 2014

Social already embedded in fabric of many companies | #IBMimpact

water on fabricIn an interesting segment on SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE, broadcasting live this week from IBM Impact event at Las Vegas’ The Venetian Resort and Casino, John Furrier and Paul Gillin welcomed Sandy Carter of IBM to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of social business strategies, the role analytics can play in decoding all of the social data collected and where social will come to rest in the corporate structure. Carter is the General Manager for IBM Ecosystems and is the Social Business Evangelist for the company.

Leading off the conversation, Carter claimed social has become an important component in many of today’s companies. The adoption of social strategy is a new business concept when compared to only just a few years ago. “I would say social has become embedded in the fabric of so many companies,” she stated. She cited a recent IBM study that shows many companies have migrated their social engagement to within their own four walls.

There are, according to Carter, three factors that can determine a company’s success or failure as they step into the social landscape. The first of these three is the company’s culture.

“Culture eats strategy for lunch,” she began. “If your culture allows for employees to communicate and get out there and speak their subject matter expertise as content, then typically a company is successful.”

Failure is almost assured if you have a management team that is overly protective of company information and is adamantly opposed to the sharing of ideas.

Watch the interview in its entirety here:

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The second and third keys to success are the possession of the ability to articulate your company’s return on investment and being able to use and leverage your social engagement and influence. This last point, states Carter, will likely require the use of gamification so your company establishes a leader board that clearly shows who is being the most influential. “You curate your content and you get it out to them so they help impact your customer and employee message,” she said.

The trend towards social has been apparent. Gillin noted that C-level executives have put direct customer involvement in the strategy of the company at the top of their list. “Are they making this transition naturally or are they having difficulty with the idea of the customers being involved at the early stage of developing and even marketing the product?” he asked.

“I think it depends on the company,” stated Carter. She then related a story of a time she was stuck on a tarmac for several hours and happened to be sitting next to a CEO who, after hearing her job title, stated flatly that his company has opted out of social. “We don’t want our customers or anybody commenting on us,” she claims he told her. After just a few moments, she was able to find how a competitor had put a spoof of his company on social media. He immediately called his CMO and his company has now seen the value in adopting a social strategy.

Shifting the direction of the conversation, Furrier asked, “What tools are you identifying that can help to realize the contextual importance of social?”

“IBM has powerful tools in analytics and Big Data,” Carter began. “We can take 200 tweets and determine a person’s personality traits across 52 points.” Things such as this can aid a company in tailoring a targeted engagement that seemingly speaks directly to that individual.

The task of overseeing a company’s social strategy currently resides in the marketing department for many organizations. Recognizing we are still in the early days of social, Gillin asked, “Will marketing still be responsible for social in 10 years?”

“No,” Carter replied. “A lot of companies we are talking to have social in the COO’s office or in a virtual office. Marketing can do social but they don’t own it.” The future of social, according to Carter, is limitless. We haven’t even really seen the full launch of the Internet of Things (IoT). She believes social will have a significant role in IoT. “Imagine that data and the ability to share it,” she concluded.

photo credit: ecstaticist via photopin cc

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