Jive SBS Syndication Feed

Get Social!

paulstillmank — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:22:52 GMT

It’s been over a week now since we wrapped up our time with Jive Software as part of their national “Get Social Tour.” The tour launched April 21st in Los Angeles, with scheduled stops in Houston, Toronto, New York, San

Community Moderation Nourishes Success

paulstillmank — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:10:43 GMT

The role of an online community moderator is a relatively new one. And like any new role, it's going through its developmental stage right now. It is most often confused with the role of Community Manger which has more to do with the overall direction

Build Traffic to Your Community

paulstillmank — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:26:43 GMT

We are scaling up here at 7Summits and so you will see more frequent and varied blog posts in the coming weeks and months. This is the first in a series of thoughts focused on community activation and moderation. We will tag each entry with

Find Your Social Spark!

paulstillmank — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:30:12 GMT

We’ve talked (and we’ll keep talking) about the need for a strategy to apply social media to your business. The islands of Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter accounts, Youtube Channels, and one-off blogs need to be reigned in and managed. A

Social media - The best thing that could happen to your business!

paulstillmank — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:33:24 GMT

Thought of the day. There is a lot of discussion about the good things and the bad things that social media can do for companies. From a Marketing, Product Development and Customer Support POV, we believe this is the best thing to happen to your

Designing your content to travel on the social web

paulstillmank — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:29:46 GMT

There is an art and science behind designing your content to travel on the social web. Anyone who has seen the conversation prism by Brian Solis is well aware of the many distribution channels and outlets in the social media ecosystem. But what are

Jive World 2009 – Community Everywhere!

paulstillmank — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:07:24 GMT

It has been over a week since Jive World 2009 and the vibe is still going strong! From the time we arrived at Jive World in San Francisco, the sense of community was everywhere. Companies, Partners, Speakers and Jive Software all gathered

Integrating All of Your Online Efforts Is Key To Success

paulstillmank — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:06:08 GMT

We are now meeting with dozens of prospective clients and we are seeing a pretty wide range of approaches being taken when it comes to Social Media. Many companies feel somewhat behind and they are tryin to "catch up" by throwing up fan-pages, twitter

Web Marketing: Where does Social Media fit?

paulstillmank — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:56:16 GMT

Most marketing organizations are finalizing their 2010 plans. As they do so, many are looking at social media and how it aligns with other investments and ongoing programs that will be in effect in the New Year. Websites are already being updated with

Social Media For Business & Brands - The Risk of Doing Nothing

paulstillmank — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:35:21 GMT

We talk regularly to brands about where to begin with social media. As we shared in our last blog post, eMarketer recently published a survey touting the many benefits of social media presence for brands: Influence brand reputation Increase

Social Media Creates Brand Awareness, But How to Measure?

paulstillmank — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:47:28 GMT

The recently published Strategic Framework for Applied Social Media serves as an excellent back-drop for discussing our Marketing Imperative: “creating awareness, growing sales and taking market share.” We presupposed in our earlier

Strategic Framework for Applied Social Media

paulstillmank — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:40:27 GMT

Traditional online marketing and eCommerce contexts are undergoing a revolution of change driven by the social nature of how consumers engage online. 7Summits has created a strategic framework that captures how social media is applied to these contexts:

Let Business Imperatives Drive Your Use of Social Media, Not Just the Technology Itself.

paulstillmank — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:31:02 GMT

You know, we really didn't believe it at first. How could all of this fun stuff called "social media" have anything to do with business? But it isn't exactly a big stretch to realize that where consumers spend their time is where companies need to reach them. That's nothing new. What is new is the number and type of media that consumers are involved in and how they both engage and expect to be engaged.

Media is proliferating at a rampant pace. There are currently well over a dozen different categories of social media and hundreds of named media across those categories. Audiences are having conversations about brands and products and, quite frankly, this information is more readily available than it has ever been before. In fact, there is an overwhelming amount of it.

Consumer engagement has changed with social media as well. It's social. Broadcasting advertising is being tuned out and audiences are more likely to be influenced by like-minded peers providing referrals and/or product reviews. When you take into consideration the multitude of individuals becoming influencers through their own blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages, and more, it makes the question of "reach" more complicated than ever. It's no longer just "where", it's "where" and "how". Yes, there are new rules of engagement as well.

This proliferation of media combined with new models for consumer engagement has left companies more dependent upon and less aware of how their business is portrayed in the social media realm. The reaction has ranged from indignation to over-reaction. Those reticent to participate are overwhelmed and hope that it all will just go away. Those that embrace these changes realize that segmentation is being handed to us online and they are rushing solutions to the market: many times without a clear plan for how it truly relates to the performance of their business.

It’s this latter group that interests us. These are the pioneers whose case studies we are all harvesting now to find a better way. Some were lucky. Some were smart. Whether lucky or smart, these companies and their forays into social media were successful because they delivered bottom line results. We contend that there is a way to do this more reliably and it requires a focus on core business imperatives and the value levers that directly impact them.

So what are these business imperatives and value levers? They’re the basic tenets upon which any company is built. Let’s take an example. “Increasing brand awareness, growing sales and taking market share” could be described as a business imperative that sales and marketing would affect. Value levers are specific actions that can be taken to directly impact a business imperative. The example business imperative just mentioned can be directly impacted by actions around product portfolio mix, pricing and sales promotion activity. These are value levers. Social media can be applied to drive these actions harder. Specifically, social media can be leveraged to multiply the effectiveness of campaigns.

What’s really incredible about this thinking is that once we embrace it, benefits of applied social media go well beyond sales and marketing related imperatives to other areas of an organization:

Human Resources: Attracting, engaging and retaining a workforce;
Product Development: Aligning innovation with market demand and being first to market;
Public Relations: Maintaining a positive reputation;
Customer Service: Providing consistent and efficient customer support.
Procurement: Making buying decisions in the right quantity, at the right time and from the right source

Social media can impact many of the value levers supporting each of these as well.

Early adopters of social media focused on changing and enabling consumer behavior. Now the word “consumer” can be replaced with “audience” referring to employees, partners, and customers as enterprise applications of social media become more evident.

We’ll keep exploring these concepts with you in the coming months. We’ll present clear examples of how social media can be applied across the enterprise. We won’t be limited to just marketing. And we’ll always focus on measurement.

Paul Stillmank

7Summits