Social Media Command Center

To provide some context to the social business trend Dell recently opened a Social Media Command Center which follows Gatorade’s earlier launch of a very similar looking facility. Dell will be using the Radian6 as its platform to  power its data collection and  The center will track on average more than 22,000 daily topic posts related to Dell, as well as mentions of Dell on Twitter. The information can be sliced and diced based on topics and subjects of conversation, sentiment, share of voice, geography and trends.

For major brands this makes sense, with the noise that they generate online, the ability to listen, engage and then act upon the 22,000 plus conversations daily is vital.

Is It Necessary?

For other companies that level of  investment in becoming a social business is not justified but there a lot of ways you can start to make your business more social so that you can not only respond to your customers in real time but also leverage the power of the social web to promote your brands message and content.

So what are the major areas you need to look at to make your company a more social business?

20 Brainstorming Ideas To Create A Social Business

The Website

Brochureware sites are still in the majority with a lot of brands still having a static website that quite often provides nothing more than a boring catalog style site with a contact us form being the lonely interaction point with their customers. So here are some ideas  to push some boundaries and to start you thinking.

• Highlight your people and let them be contacted via other channels such as company Twitter account and not just email. Promote their expertise via a link to their LinkedIn profile or even a link to their blog.
• Put Retweet and Facebook share buttons everywhere there is great content in various media  formats that you want people to share with their friends and colleagues
• Install a forum so your customers can start providing crowd sourced answers to problems that your technical people would normally have to answer
• Add a YouTube channel (online video) that allows people to comment and like so that they share your multimedia assets
• Add a Slideshare account that embeds company PowerPoint presentations in your website and allows other people to spread your brands expertise

More reading:

10 Key Strategies To Make Your Website an Online Marketing Machine

The Blog

Company blogs are often just a place to put an article once a week and allow comments. How can you make your blog more social?

• Add social share buttons for Facebook and Twitter this is vital as blog posts are typically interesting and newsworthy and you need to remove and minimize any friction for sharing on the web.
• Include a Tab or section that links to your YouTube Video Channel
• Include buttons that allow people to follow your company on Twitter, Facebook and email
• Add a Facebook social plugin

More reading:

How To Increase Your Blog Traffic With Just One Button

The Online Store

Online stores are a great place to integrate and optimize for social media as specials and great deals need to be made easy to share.

• Your marketing email offering specials should provide email to a friend and a feature to share on Facebook and twitter
• YouTube video reviews should be  available for your top products
• Make it easy for people to follow your online store with Facebook and twitter buttons on multiple pages especially your homepage
• Allow comments and reviews as part of your stores feature set customers want to read other people’s feedback

More reading:

How Zappos Plans To Use 50,000 Online Videos

The Social Media Channels

This is social media 101 but there are still many companies who are not participating on the top 4 social media channels or even have an initial presence. You are holding back the growth of your brand if this is overlooked. Here are the social media accounts you should start using today.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

More reading:

Facebook hits 500 million Users: 5 Predictions For The Future

The Marketing

Start thinking about using traditional marketing less, especially where it is costly and increasingly ineffective and start utilizing the power of social media to market your brand.

• Advertise on Facebook with banner ads that can tightly target your vertical markets demographically and geographically
• Advertise on LinkedIn especially if you have a highly technical product used by professionals
• Market test  Twitter for a sponsored tweet promotion

More Reading

How To Advertise On Facebook In Ten Minutes For Less Than $10 A Day

So how else can you weave the social into your business? Like to hear your thoughts

Jeff Bullas Blog  - Link to original story