Capitalizing on Your Social Capital

Capitalizing on Your Social Capital

Christian BuckleyChief Evangelist at BeezyFounder of CollabTalkMicrosoft MVP

Christian BuckleyChief Evangelist at Beezy, Founder of CollabTalk

www.beezy.net@buckleyplanet

cbuck@beezy.net

www.buckleyplanet.com

Beezy is the Intelligent Workplace for Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint, extending the feature set and improving the user experience for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments. We are on a mission to transform the way people work, and to help employees be more connected, innovative, and happy. Learn more at www.beezy.net or @FollowBeezy on Twitter.

Launched in January 2012, CollabTalk provides community outreach and discussion around all-things collaboration, producing tweetjams, podcasts, videos, and events that focus primarily on the Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365 ecosystem.

CollabTalk also provides independent analysis and research in partnership with the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.

Follow us on Twitter @CollabTalk Like us on Facebook at /CollabTalkFind us on LinkedIn at /company/17924231

Understanding the “Brand Effect”

"If your brand walked into a bar, what would it start talking about?"

Lisa Moretti, Gartner

Social Influence ≠ Popularity

Social influence and popularity are very different things The technical SME is rarely the loudest voice There are different “tiers” of influence Patterns of influence can shift and change

http://www.traackr.com/faces-of-influence

Patterns of influence can shift and change due to

organizational structures,

available tools, and roles.

A common mistake is thinking that your corporate branding – your logo, tagline, and chosen color palette – constitutes your brand.

More than any design elements, it is you, your company culture, and the reputation of your front-line employees that define your brand and level of influence.

Your Logo

Most companies do not understand who the influencers are within their customer communities, and how to tailor their messages to those influencers.

Even more elusive than a strategy for external influencers is a plan for internal influencers, and yet these people are often the eyes and the hands for an organization.

Just because something is difficult to measure does not mean that it does not have value.

Whether you have someone dedicated to building out your corporate brand, like an evangelist, or you take the time to ensure each customer interaction provides the right branding message, the secret is to at least try to measure the outcomes of influence.

Influence can gain early attention, but long-term success can also be gained through consistency of message and activity

https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-would-ashton-do-and-does-it-matter

“Because the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer, the business enterprise has two—

and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation.

Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

Peter Drucker

Mistake #1: Focusing too much on brand

Mistake #2: Relying too much on metrics

“We have a deep-seated desire to quantify the

world around us so that we can understand it and control it. But the world isn’t behaving. We must consider the possibility

that if we can’t measure something, it might be

the very most important aspect of the problem.”

It is compellingly seductive to try to predict the future

as though it were a quantifiable extrapolation of

the past. Doing otherwise lays us open to critique and ridicule. People are far more

likely to subscribe to our view of the future (next

quarter’s sales) if we can quantify what we are

saying. Hence the need for more data and information. But this can be an addictive

toxin: More information merely creates the demand

for more information.”

“The notion that ‘if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t

count’ is flatly false. You can manage through fear

and intimidation, role modeling, love, random

eccentricities, or mantras. None of those require

measurement. We’re so in love with quantitative

ideology that we’ve quite forgotten what it was

supposed to measure in the first place.”

“Many executives have a love affair with spreadsheets. I am not one of them. In fact, I encourage my team

to approach spreadsheets with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I caution everyone else to do the

same. Spreadsheets are no doubt very useful tools, but too many

executives view them as the be-all and end-all for their planning. They

manage from the spreadsheet, viewing it as an oracle, rather than

as the map that it actually is. Ron Shaich, Panera Bread

Mistake #3: Standing still when you

should be moving

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development.

Modern organizations are (or try to be) agile, opting for iterative development and “scrums”, with increasing emphasis put on change management and governance best practices

“Management’s job is to optimize the whole

system.”W. Edwards Deming

Mistake #4: Failing to have a plan

Message

Delivery

Volume

= Strategy= Influence= Amplification

Building Social Capital

Build Tip #1: Be authentic

Be authentic

http://www.authenticbrandindex.com/

Build Tip #2: Develop trust

Consider & BuyCompanies overemphasize this phase, allocating more resources to awareness through traditional advertising and encouraging purchase with “retail” promotions

Evaluate & AdvocateThis phase has increasingly become relevant. Marketing investments that help consumers navigate the evaluation process and then spread positive word of mouth are as important as building awareness and driving purchase

TrustIf a consumer’s bond with

a brand is strong enough, they may repurchase without cycling through the earlier decision-journey stages, and influence others in this same decision

The Consumer Decision-Journey

Build Tip #3: Be an evangelist

Build Tip #4: Be a broker between networks

http://observer.com/2015/08/the-no-1-predictor-of-career-success-according-to-network-science/

http://observer.com/2015/08/the-no-1-predictor-of-career-success-according-to-network-science/

http://observer.com/2015/08/the-no-1-predictor-of-career-success-according-to-network-science/

In an article by Forbes contributor Michael Simmons (Why Being the Most Connected is a Vanity Metric), he shares some further insights from Ron Burt:A key insight from network science is the power of brokering, the act of

moving information from one group to another. Burt explains, “What a broker does is make a sticky information market more fluid. Great ideas will never move if we wait for them to be spoken in the same language.”Network brokers (i.e. – connectors) have three advantages:

• Breadth. They pull their information from diverse clusters.• Timing. While they may not be the first to hear information, they

are first to introduce information to another cluster.• Translation. They develop skills in translating one group’s

knowledge into another’s insight.Combined these three advantages give an individual an overall vision advantage to see, create, and take advantage of opportunities.

Build Tip #5: Constantly refresh your network

Finding Value by Providing Value

A Balanced Approach Personal Value Business Value Community Value

Building a Social Capital “Engine”1. Love what you do2. Give your time3. Be honest about what you know and don’t know4. Create great content5. Become an advocate for your local community6. Provide product and platform feedback7. Keep competition in check8. Get creative9. Recognize others10. Constantly expand your knowledge

Next Steps

Building a brand is hard. You need to be authentic. You need to be consistent. You need to be have a message and be passionate about what you’re doing. And you need to be there, week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s how you build the trust. Showing up is 95% of it.

http://amzn.to/2f32HME http://amzn.to/2fz8UnJ http://amzn.to/2f2Zqgo

For more on this topic, be sure to

download the ebook (no form)

bit.ly/TapIntoSocial

Christian BuckleyIN/christianbuckley@buckleyplanet

Thank you very much!