Connie Bensen

Over the years I have presented many new ideas. It’s always a challenge to offer new methodologies along with compelling reasons for adoption of them. With social media this usually requires the implementation of a pilot on a small scale. For some the ideas are threats and for others the concept of change and the related fear is more than they can handle.

Over time I heard myself repeating key concepts. Combine this with my habit of providing mentorship sessions and I happened upon the solution to more effective presentation of ideas. It requires the creation of charts and diagrams to structure the presentation of your material. Executives and managers want to see the ideas presented in a simple straightforward manner. This affords the highest probability that your proposal will be understood, well-received and adopted.

I came to this realization during the sessions when I provide mentorship. I sit with paper and pen and talk through my methodologies and philosophy. It allows an interactive approach as well as pushes me to structure the conversation. The result is a much more compelling story for the listener and has greatly improved my presentations.

The following show two concepts that I have expressed in charts to show how marketing has changed:

My role is the convergence of Corporate, Field marketing (lead gen) and product marketing. I work to span these three areas and interconnect them.

This chart shows a concept that has been expressed in a number of ways:

old (push marketing, outbound marketing) and new (pull marketing, inbound marketing)

But what does that mean? How has it changed and how does it affect the marketing organization overall?

Here are some tips on how you can do this:

1. Make an outline of the concept

2. Talk through the steps and jot them down using scratch paper

3. Explain them to someone else and start with the first point and work through to the last (this is where it falls into place in a more graphic manner)

4. Over time the refinement will become apparent

5. Remember that less is more!

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Sean McDonald, former Director, Online and Marketing at Dell, about his vision for community. We had a very similar philosophy about the shortcomings of having a community manager or a team of them and how the concept of empowering the organization would be necessary. We agreed that staff across the organization needed to be trained and empowered, but we pondered what that looked like in regard to a culture shift and the huge challenges that presented.

That is the objective of my present day job. I just published my tenth white paper in a series on the ROI of Social Media on the topic of ‘Creating A Social Business Through Listening’. It is a culmination of over two years of direct focus in the social media monitoring industry. My work with Alterian SM2 (formerly Techrigy) has contributed to evolving online listening based on customer needs and industry requirements along with the measurement of value and ROI. So this was indeed a momentous occasion for all I evangelize and represent!

My vision is that every company needs a community strategist to guide the culture shift in a company so that the organization can embrace and leverage social channels in order to meet it’s business objectives. It is only through building community internally that the company can realize the full potential of the social web and build an external community along with realizing all the benefits.

Dell gets this! and they are executing on a massive community building project internally. They have trained 5,000 staff of their 100 k strong. And they are listening to their community (both internally & externally). I see the new listening control center as a statement to their commitment to not only listen to their customers, but to make sure that change happens. As we all know, Listening is the first step and the most imperative!

It was amazing to hear the passion that these people have for socializing Dell and making their brand strong. I was touched to see Michelle Brigman, Social Media Listening & Engagement Operations Sr. Manager, get emotional when talking about what they’re trying to accomplish. I watched her express how they want to provide their customers with the best service in the upcoming seasonal rush when everyone gets harried. They are working as fast as they can to empower their teams company wide to provide the best customer experience possible. Imagine the scope of this project.

In the near future I will be sharing some videos that imparts the efforts and passion of this amazing project that Dell has taken on. Manish Mehta, VP Social Media & Communities, asked me if I thought other companies would be doing this and my response was, “Absolutely! This is the future!”

Thank you to the Social Media team for inviting me to join your celebration of Community Building and Listening. Special thanks to Lisa Grimes for coordinating it. I appreciated the opportunity to be introduced to Michael Dell and shake the hand of a man that is leading such a huge change in the profession and industry that I’ve been pioneering. Congratulations to Dell on making great strides in setting a new organizational standard.

More information from Dell’s perspective can be found on Mashable. And you can read about my experience with Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel:

Dell Takes Listening to a New Level with #DellCAP

What companies do you think are doing a good job in operationalizing social media?

I appreciate that Chuck Hemann invited me to join a panel on social media ROI.

Ken Burbary moderated the panel. David Alston and Don Bartholomew joined me in sharing their ideas on how organizations can measure and realize ROI from social media engagements.

David pointed out that there is no magic button that calculates ROI. Measurement for every organization will be different. We agreed that a social media strategy needs to be meeting business objectives and be measurable. It’s important to speak in the language of the C-suite in order to sell social.

Don also talked about utilizing social data for market research creating models to anticipate behavior.

Here’s the deck that I put together.

How are you measuring your efforts?

Jeremiah Owyang and John Lovett have provided another great resource!

In March Jeremiah and Ray Wang of Altimeter published their report on Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.

Altimeter has partnered with Web Analytics Demystified to provide frameworks for social media analytics.

Measurement is one of the biggest challenges facing community managers and social media specialists. How can you quantify the progress of your efforts?

Jeremiah & John have created a report that outlines the main areas and also have provided a simple equation to calculate each one.

Make sure that you benchmark and choose the ones that make sense in your case. Then track your metrics from month to month against those.

Here’s the complete report and you can pop on over to Slideshare & download a copy there.