{"id":5903,"date":"2015-05-20T16:52:23","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T16:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=5903"},"modified":"2015-05-20T16:52:23","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T16:52:23","slug":"lets-concentrate-on-learn-learn-vs-win-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/lets-concentrate-on-learn-learn-vs-win-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Concentrate on Learn-Learn vs Win-Win"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"win_win<\/a><\/div>\n

My friend\u00a0Niklas Myhr<\/a>, the \u201cSocial Media Professor<\/a>,\u201d recently blogged about something I\u2019m very passionate about,\u00a0Social Media and Quality Management<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>In his post he discusses tapping your social advocates early on in the product and\/or service development phase, listening to what they have to say and learning more about what they want and how you can deliver it to them.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s room for much more of this type of thinking. The old concept of keeping things close to the vest until they\u2019re launched is not only short-sighted, it puts brands at a severe disadvantage in today\u2019s hyper-competitive world. And yet, if you look around, there are still many brands that stubbornly refuse to change. I think that\u2019s because they\u2019re not thinking about advocacy from the inside out.<\/p>\n

The socially nimble company tasks its employees with \u201copening their listening ears\u201d and tapping into\u00a0community intelligence<\/a>\u00a0(both the company\u2019s and the employee\u2019s communities), then acting on what they\u2019ve learned. This can put you in a much better position than your competitors in two ways: 1) getting a well-focused product to market much faster, and 2) earning a higher level of marketplace trust and identification with your brand.<\/p>\n

Everybody knows that the faster you can innovate and get things moving, the better\u2014and every brand wants to build trust\u2014but identifying and listening to social advocates is still not considered a \u201cbest practice\u201d in much of the corporate world, much less empowering employees to take advantage of opportunities outside the company\u2019s social community. Instead of looking at social advocacy from a \u201cwin-win\u201d standpoint, brands would be much better served to adopt \u201clearn-learn,\u201d as their social philosophy.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the same thing as crowdsourcing. Some big brands are investing and experiencing success in crowdsourcing. PepsiCo increased its initiatives by more than 300 percent in 2014, and Reckitt-Benckiser (a leading pharma brand), bumped theirs up by 200 percent. But you don\u2019t have to invest in crowdsourcing platforms in order to listen and learn from your communities. It can (and should) be done on the individual level, because companies aren\u2019t faceless business machines\u2014they\u2019re made up of individuals\u2014and in any community, people like to interact with other people.<\/p>\n

I think it comes down to changing your brand\u2019s social goals and habits from the top down. Everyone from C-suite execs to customer service employees can practice listening and reaching out to individuals to expand conversation and deepen relationships. There\u2019s no substitute for this. While there are enterprise advocacy platforms out there (just Google the term and you\u2019ll get around 1,500,000 results), anyone can invest a few minutes a day practicing focused listening on any social platform. We\u2019re just not making it a priority. Why? It comes down to the old ROI argument, and that\u2019s where I think many brands are falling short. They\u2019re still trying to silo social listening within marketing and sales departments (and measure effectiveness in terms of sales, versus relationships), when it should be a company-wide practice that envelopes all business functions.<\/p>\n

Every business function depends on the quality of the human relationships needed to perform that function. The more we practice using social to learn more about who makes up our communities and how we can serve them better (at every level), the more in-tune we\u2019ll be and the more harmony we can create both inside and outside our companies.<\/p>\n

Want your brand to be more successful? Wrap social around every business practice. And while you\u2019re doing so, ditch the win-win mentality, which denotes an ending\u2014not a continuation. Embracing learn-learn increases the value of relationships for all parties.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This post was originally posted on\u00a0Inside CXM, April 20, 2015<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously posted at TedRubin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend\u00a0Niklas Myhr, the \u201cSocial Media Professor,\u201d recently blogged about something I\u2019m very passionate about,\u00a0Social Media and Quality Management.\u00a0In his post he discusses tapping your social advocates early on in the product and\/or service development phase, listening to what they have to say and learning more about what they want and how you can deliver … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1370,1899],"class_list":["post-5903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tedrubin","tag-ronr","tag-tedrubin-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5904,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5903\/revisions\/5904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}