Questions from the client base #7: "What is a 'Social Organisation' and why will becoming one help us..?"

I write a monthly column on Social Selling & Influence for OGV Energy, the UKs leading Energy Sector publication.

This month I chose to write about the topic of ‘The Social Organisation’.

Let me explain why…

The scale of growth in the use of Social Media worldwide is amazing.

Social Media is involved in so many aspects of daily life that often we don’t recognise it. 

When you exercise and put the results on Strava…you are posting ‘content’ on to a platform where people can like and comment on your content.  People can ask to join your network and share their content / exercise data…your network grows, you keep posting content and extend the conversation with your followers and people that you follow.

Sound familiar...?

When you are going on holiday and want to book accommodation, you can go to Airbnb where people leave reviews of their stay and rate place and the experience – people leaving comments which influence your decision….the same with Trip Advisor, Uber and even TV channels which tell you what other people like you are watching and what you might like…

Social Media runs deeper than just the big, well-known platforms.

62.5 % of the population of the world are internet users and 58.4% of the population use Social Media.

4.62 Billion people and growing.

People from across of the world posting enormous amounts of video, text, pictures, documents, adverts and links.

Entire industries of people floating billions of bits of data on the Social waves, every second of every minute of the day…. every day.

The corporates, the SME’s, the start-ups, the sellers, the creators, the ‘sharers’, the gurus, the thought leaders…. all adding to the massive explosion of colour and sound...around the clock.

Headache or opportunity…?

4.62 Billion people, think about that for a second.... Take out the young posting Tik Tok dance videos and the retirees posting on Facebook about their Social club and who is left...? 

You and me…our next colleagues, our new investors, our bankers, our future partners, our suppliers, our next Joint Ventures associates, our prospects, our clients, people who influence for us, people who amplify our messages….and our competition. 

Simon Kemp and the good people at DATAREPORTAL, who produced the slide above as part of their ‘Digital 2022: January Global Snapshot Report’, tell us yet again all the indicators point upward.

424 million people have joined Social Media in 1 year…

For some, all of this is confusing, some are terrified at the very thought of getting anywhere close to involved.

For some, it’s interesting and brimming with possibility. 

Others are interested and really want to get in and on but, they have no idea where to start.

Those who get this are connected; they have networks and use them. 

They share, connect, collaborate, and discuss. 

They meet and have conversations that others never get the chance to have.

It might sound odd but Social Media is becoming glue that holds modern organisations together. 

It should be obvious by now that transferring your Sales, Marketing and Business Development processes and activities to Social is transformational. 

In parallel, moving other key function to Social brings significant improvement across the board. Social Media directly improves Marketing, Business Development, Sales, Employee Advocacy, Supply Chain, R&D, HR, Safety, Technical and Engineering and Quality and more…. all organisational functions that require people connecting and growing relationships with people.

Patrick Saracco is the Chief Revenue Office at Cyberhawk, a global leading drones inspection and visual data organisation.

Patrick is one of our clients at Crux and is quoted my article in this month's OGV Energy magazine.

I asked him what he now understood as the difference between a company simply posting corporate brochures and hoping....and a true Social Organisation, his answer:

“A social organisation recognises that building a more humanised relationship with all of its stakeholders from customers to investors and employees, develops trust and a sense of belonging to differentiate from an ever-growing digital marketplace.”

So, this is different. 

This is seeing the idea of The Social Organisation as the driver for achieving a more humanised relationship with many groups of people. 

Patrick sees Social Media as a conduit to developing trust with people who can assist Cyberhawk with its mission. 

This is going beyond simple ‘leads and visibility’, Patrick is a commercial business leader using his Social Organisation to build a sense of internal and external belonging, as well as actively working to have his organisation stand out from the competition, who are all racing to look and sound the same.

So, the idea is not to look at Social Media as a bolt on to what you are doing today or a series of individual solutions but place it right at the heart of the organisation.

I asked Patrick Saracco what changed since Cyberhawk became a Social Organisation…

“The daily information overload we are all subjected to prevents us from discerning the right from wrong and not easily identifying a business’s unique selling points. Since we’ve become a social organisation, our communication has evolved and simplified, allowing us to diversify and get closer to our audience, this in turn has helped us expand our marketing outreach and strengthen existing relationships”.

We often find that for an organisation to become successful with Social Media, the senior team might have to suspend some preconceptions or beliefs and create a space where what needs to be done, can be done.

Think less about “…needing to do more on LinkedIn” and think more about becoming a Social Organisation.

As always, I’m happy to explain this to you and your team should you wish to get into the details and the expected results.

Live Social ‘22s

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite