How social media has caused the scope of marketing to expand inside organizations, why customer service needs to pay attention to customer influence, the concept of relinquishing oversight as a way of regaining control, aligning social media policy with business strategy and integrating social media into destination websites featuring Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang).     

SHOW NOTES

01:03 -- A discussion of the different speakers lined up to present at the Digital impact conference. 

06:27 -- An overview of the broader trends in social media based on Jeremiah Owyang's research at the Altimeter Group.

07:41 -- Heather Armstrong's experience trying to fix a broken Maytag washing machine, and how she finally managed to get results by warning her twitter followers  "so that you may never have to suffer like we have: do not ever buy a Maytag.

I repeat: our Maytag experience has been a nightmare." Interestingly enough, Forbes.com story about the incident quoting Pete Blackshaw, the previous guest on this podcast, "The problem with call centers and consumer relations departments is that they tend to look at consumers in a vacuum, independent of influence," which suggests that organizations need to look beyond individual customer interactions to try evaluate the customer's social media influence, which is one of things that social CRM attempts to accomplish.  

The take away, according to Jeremiah, is that what happens in support can quickly become a marketing or public relations incident. 

08:27 -- "Customers don't care which department you are in.  They just want their problem fixed. The scope of marketing has grown significantly... Companies are siloed and it's very difficult [for them] to think holistically about their overall customer experience," says Jeremiah who will address this theme in his keynote at the Digital Impact Conference.

09:25 --  A discussion of analysts Charlene Li's upcoming book "Open Leadership," which explores the theme of how leaders can let go of control in order to gain more power back, because the power has shifted to those who are using social computing platforms and organizations need to acknowledge this.

10:24 -- Glassdoor.com, a new website where employees can rate their employers and Unvarnished, which allow you to rate your colleagues and the quality of their work, both reinforce the notion that there are no more secrets.

11:00 -- According to Jeremiah, social media policy is a key component of effective online organizational communications, and he says there are actually three different policies that organizations need to consider developing. The first is a corporate policy, which would address how to deal with the social Web, and in particular, during a crisis.  

The second is an employee disclosure policy, which would tell employees what they can say and what they can say in public spaces online.  And the third one, which he says most companies don't have in place and which might have kept Nestle out of trouble, is a community policy, which would dictate how community members should behave and describe to dos and don'ts.

11:56 -- An example of a community policy Jeremiah's seen that he thinks is well done is Dogster's Community Guidelines.  He also says early adopters like Intel, Microsoft and Sun have had community policies in place for some time now.

12:51 -- Best Buy is good example of an organization that has an effective social media policy designed to work for employees who may not have advanced degrees.

13:20 -- Inside the enterprise, legal is a common pocket of resistance.