Resolving To Get Real Work Done With Social Networking In 2009

Social networking’s infatuation needs to lead into real results in 2009.  The passionate evangelists of this new medium need to step up in 2009 and make all the promised potential of social networking pay off.  

Less Time In the Echo Chamber and More In The Trenches

How can you use social networking to save a dying company? How can social networking serve as a means of reconnecting the parts of a company that are falling apart?  What about entire industries and the lack of integration between suppliers?  Or how can you manage a reduction in force and still stay in touch with the critical knowledge these valuable people have?  Knowledge management and the free agent economy – what does this look like in twelve months?  All critical questions and quite frankly social media experts need to spend less time in the echo chamber and get out and be real evangelists – solving real problems – if social networking is ever going to live up to all the hype.  It’s time to put social networking to work in 2009.

There’s nothing magic about all this.  It’s all just about hard work.  For the many social networking vendors out there, all the ROI studies really don’t matter if you can’t show how you made one of your customers more focused, stronger, more capable of weathering a recession because they used your apps. 

All the long-term studies are worthless in an economy that is in completely uncharted waters right now. All that matters is getting deep into the problems companies have who have invested in social networking applications and really learning their businesses, and defining just how social networking applications can help.  Hype is recession roadkill. Results are all that really matter right now.

Recession: A Test To See How Strong Your Company Really Is

Despite the global economic crisis and the fatalistic tone many writers and bloggers have today, this is a time that is definitely going to show how strong each company is beneath the surface.  Companies in business twelve months from now are already completely redefining how they support their customers, how they attract new ones, and how they serve their channel partners.  Is social networking the panacea for all these areas? No.  Hard work and a commitment to completely question how business done is, and then quickly change to be more aggressive and focused than competitors are.  

You can see companies who are already positioning themselves to survive the next twelve months and its uncertainty, and they are taking the following steps: 

• Treating Time A Competitive Weapon.  A short twelve months from now, many companies and people will never view time the same again.  That’s because in those companies who ride out this recession with fewer staff will require more work from fewer people, and the managing of more relationships than ever before.  Social networking will play a contributory role to streamlining jobs and making these goals accomplishable, yet will require tailoring first.  This already is transcending pre-sales, sales and service and will extend into other areas of companies in 2009.
• Putting Customer Retention Strategies on Steriods. Again, forward-thinking companies are already taking the time their sales forces have to delve deeper into the unmet needs of their customers, and working to provide expertise to solve these problems.  Unmet needs emanating out of the complex, difficult-to-solve problems are where the opportunities are in this recession.  Resolving to delve into the toughest problems customers have is all that really matters.
• Overcoming resistance to change with social networking. As the pace of execution quickens during the year there’s going to be major push-back in many companies to new initiatives.  From implementing SaaS-based analytics to better track services and customer costs to launching new strategies for retaining customers, change is going to be constant in many companies.  Social networking will be able to act as a sounding board for companies to share their anxieties over change, confidentially – and it is critical for C-level executives to shoulder their part of the change burden. This has to happen for any company to embrace change and survive.

Bottom line: It’s time for social networking to get to work in 2009, and instead of being fascinated with itself, turn to what really matters, and that is using these applications to serve those most in need: the many companies who are going to fight to survive in 2009.

Courtesy – Louis Columbus at Perfect CEM