Today’s social consumers are the most media-savvy generation in history. They want more from the companies that employ them, want to sell to them, have sold to them, or seek to recruit them. Social consumers want to speak with experts who can help them make informed choices or respond when they have problems.

A recent GlobalWebIndex report found that b-to-b decision makers, for example, were highly socially engaged and rated conversations with brands on social networks as more influential than webinars, sales presentations, conferences, or corporate entertainment. The more complex the decision, the greater the need to ask questions of experts in online communities.

The challenge for many businesses is how to manage this evolution from executive spokespeople to expert spokespeople. This requires changes to job descriptions, coaching, and administration – and is a long-term play. It also means empowering more people across a business to play public roles – counter to the centralized model that’s commonplace today.

At Text 100, we’re managing “Digital Academy” training for our clients. These programs help people from customer support, sales, marketing, human resources, and so on use social networking channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn to support their business goals. The resulting programs see these experts blogging on corporate websites, managing communities in company discussion forums, and acting as ambassadors in external earned media communities.

In time, we’ll see people from all business functions playing similar expanded roles in support of their own objectives. This is a logical next step for those companies that have developed owned media properties across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Based on our experience, it’s best to start with one business function, division, or product and build a program around someone with a greater aptitude for social media. Measure their success – learn from the things that didn’t go well – and evolve the campaign around them.

No one said this is easy. But if companies are to meet the needs of social consumers, then having experts in online communities must become as commonplace as media interviews and press releases are today.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the PR Week Insider blog.

Email was the spring board for so many other communication innovations that have been hugely beneficial in the evolution of business and the world in general. Think about it – after the emergence of email came blogging, then social sites, then Twitter and geo-location-based tools (the list goes on!) – all designed around communicating in a new and varied way. These new options provide myriad benefits that the physical world can’t – bringing global communities of people together around a common passion, globalization and democratization of information, real-time spread of significant world news and events, the concept of endorsement (i.e. retweeting a tweet), and even just teaching people how to drill down to short messages to get a point across quickly. And given the psychology behind real world interaction between humans, we can certainly expect the innovation in this space will only continue to evolve the way in which we communicate with one another.

While Mr. Tjan may argue that in-person conversations are a dying art, I’d propose that these technologies haven’t taught us to stop communicating, they’ve simply taught us to socialize in a whole new, and arguably more productive, manner. Certainly with the digital nature of our world, we should remember not to abandon the value of real, live conversation, but let’s not forget to appreciate the new and innovative communication and relationship building opportunities that do exist as a result of these technologies. Innovation and developments in this space will continue to grow, and new tools will emerge to mimic human behavior in a powerful way – not to replace it, but to enhance it. At the end of the day people are people and we’ll always value a live conversation, and now with geo-location software, chances are we’ll find a lot more people in the same location than we’d otherwise ever have been aware of.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Arthur W. Page Society’s blog, Page Turner. Aedhmar Hynes is a member of the Board of Trustees.

Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Twenty years have passed since Geoffrey A. Moore published his seminal marketing tome, Crossing the Chasm. In the intervening decade, another chasm has opened up: social media.

The advent and dramatic uptake of social media means businesses have a much more critical gulf to negotiate. Social media channels are no longer the playthings of the tech elite or “pajama-wearing bloggers.” Digital destinations such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are profoundly affecting consumer behavior and the businesses community.

The shift to digital isn’t a fad, these channels exist because they enable three fundamental human desires: to share, to collaborate and to create. The smart business leaders have seen the writing on the digital ‘wall’ and realize their businesses must participate because the game has changed forever. The tone is now being set by their customers, and companies must adapt.

P&G’s Social Media Lab program shows how businesses can use social media and digital channels to fundamentally change their businesses. This program allows the company to study how customers interact over social media channels. With brand managers understanding these behaviors, P&G has changed the way it communicates–and collaborates–with customers.

The degree to which P&G understands the practical application of digital influence is shaping its business. Social media’s relevance and impact across the breadth of business ecosystems cannot be underestimated. Those companies that have a full appreciation for its ability to infiltrate all areas of their business will inevitably come out on top.

Digital is forcing many enterprises to rethink their business models–from product to sales to customer service to marketing–as it enhances and amplifies their ability to connect with customers, partners, influencers and employees.

Global food and facilities management services provider Sodexo has taken this to heart. It takes an integrated approach to recruiting through social media channels using a Facebook Page, careers blog, LinkedIn Group, YouTube channel, Twitter and Flickr. This program communicates the company’s values and work experience while creating ways for prospective employees to interact with the company during the recruitment cycle.

The logic is sound and the evidence is mounting. A December 2010 McKinsey study of 3,249 executives determined that technology-enabled collaboration with external stakeholders helps organizations gain market share from the competition. It also concluded that Web technologies raise productivity, help create more valuable products and services resulting in higher profits. Other surveys have shown creating and engaging with a digital community can dramatically reduce the cost of customer acquisition – from $10 to $400 per customer to as little as zero.

Dell has proven the value of social media. More than 100,000 of the company’s employees use the Chatter social collaboration tool. Similar to Facebook, Chatter allows employees to create profiles, update their status and share files and data. This has improved information sharing, encouraged better collaboration and enabled faster decision making.

The challenge for both business and communications executives is two-fold: They need to reshape their organizations and simultaneously keep pace with ever-changing communications channels. From PR to marketing to advertising, there will be new tools and tactics to influence and connect with customers that force rethinking of frequently entrenched go-to-market models. Businesses also need to get past the scrum over which communications discipline will “own” the mandate and establish dominance. The change we’re talking about is fundamentally bigger than a marketing tug-of-war.

The ultimate prize is to reshape companies for a digital future. The ‘chasm’ is growing but there is still time to make a change. This change must be driven by each business function incrementally, towards a common digital destination. Each function must consider its constituents’ needs and begin to engineer digital day-to-day processes around these needs. Those organizations that refuse to take these steps do so at their own peril and face an uncertain future. Those enlightened companies that have a clear, collective sense of the destination and put steps in place to reach it will reap the returns.

Aedhmar Hynes is a board member of the Arthur W. Page Society, a professional association for senior public relations and corporate communications executives who seek to enrich and strengthen the profession.
Read more: http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/marketing-sales/2011/03/15/social-media-embrace-risk-falling/#ixzz1JbhTJQGv

Image from flickr user Lee Hopkins.

Keynoting at PRSA Digital Impact Conference

While the Public Relations industry does everything possible to become immersed in the social media space it’s presented with the question of “How do you sell Social Media to the CEO?”

This was the topic of a presentation I gave at the PRSA Digital Conference this morning in New York.

From my perspective, as communicators we should adopt a principle we’re already familiar with, understand your audience and get inside the head of the CEO. By understanding their current exposure to Social Media, most likely read in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, they are probably familiar with many of the examples of where social media goes wrong.

Examples such as Amazon.com, Dominos Pizza, or John Mackey, the CEO of Wholefoods will all be top of mind. And in truth they probably have more immediate priorities, the economic downturn, top line growth, reputation, shareholder value and customer satisfaction.

Not surprisingly then, most CEOs are sitting on the sidelines with only 16% of Fortune 500 companies having a public-facing corporate blog and a whopping 48% of them believing that social media lacks relevance to their target stakeholder audience. Our job then is to create a new context. Many of their competitors are already there, their customers are most certainly there and no matter how obscure their business is, there’s a conversation going on somewhere about them that they need to listen to.

But to make any of this a priority we need present it in terms that are relevant. How will improved brand reputation deliver top line growth and ROI, how do they connect with new customers in a more direct manner, how do they protect their reputation by being authentic, how can they avert a crisis before it happens and thus protect shareholder value. Only by answering some of these issues might we get a CEOs attention. The recommendation won’t necessarily be to get the CEO personally engaged in social media, but ensuring they understand it, support it and see the tremendous value it can deliver in practical business terms will take us a long way beyond where we are today.

To follow the ongoing discussion from today’s PRSA Digital Impact Conference, please join the conversation here.

Photo credit: Eric Schwartzman

Initially she plans to post once a week, on Monday. And maybe sometimes on Tuesday……;)

Cathy