The Social Media Party Is Over

Sorry, the party’s over. The days of social media celebration are gone.  It’s not as if a random collection of “Likes” and “followers” had any real meaning but, hey, it was fun to watch the cool kids all get drunk at the bar of social media promises.

It’s time to sober up and put the kids to work. Business executives, in the parent role, have arrived on the scene and are calling for more focus on business goals and authentic measures of success.  The caretakers are taking a hard line as social business enters young adulthood. So how do the kids win the trust of those parents in the executive suite? Where is the Kevin Bacon for this social media “Footloose” story? Learning to think critically about business concerns and addressing the needs of the business execs is the burning question for today.

And to help answer this very question, I recently delivered a talk to the wonderful Community Roundtable (@TheCRT) about How To Excite Your Executives About Online Community And Help It Deliver More Value.  Here is the session overview and the presentation – it’s rated PG and not for the faint of heart nor the metrics-challenged!

We know you have a big job keeping your online community or social business initiative alive. You know there is more to community than just ensuring conversation flows between your customers, partners and employees. Community yields great value – but how can you get the executive team to get behind the effort?  You see great opportunity but need more to make it come fully to life– more attention, stronger executive sponsorship, integrate community with key business processes and perhaps even garner a dedicated budget to execute on the community vision. 

This session is designed to surface opportunities to excite leadership about the value your community is delivering and offer insights into ways to spotlight the potential returns and benefits and will enable you to answer the burning questions every executive asks and community leader faces:

• How does the community align with the organizational strategy?
• What is the business case?
• How do we know we are making the right decisions (do we have the priorities)?
• How are we measuring success?
• What speaks to executives at various stages of a community’s life cycle?

After you have developed or refined your go-to-market strategy for community, be sure to share this with YOUR executives to help them understand the value your community brings to the organization. Ask yourself:  What have you done to excite your senior executives today?