Exposure is Given, Manage your Behaviour not Exposing Medium

Lousy product reviews on FB or Twitter and whole efforts on product and marketing fails.  On the contrary superlative reviews can boost the sales and brand image beyond imagination.

Therefore companies have stared focusing on their social bushiness strategies.

Bigger question or issue is: With Social Media (SM) is taking center stage companies need not only design their social media strategy but has to change business strategy altogether.

Yes, emergence of SM, organisation is exposed to the world i.e. potential customers, existing customers, suppliers , potential employees and investors, everyone. Therefore advertising and marketing campaigns will have to be realistic and under claiming.

Ad Guru David Ogilvy has said “Great Marking only makes weak /lousy product faster .”  This was in times of no SM. Imagine what can happen in times of SM?  Movie JOKER is the latest example. Earlier this week Volkswagen (VW) ad in TOI was talk of the town, now suppose VW’s  product is not up to the mark or people reads not so good review about their other products, what will happen to so brilliant advertisement? Though its is unlikely for VW but not for majority of the companies.

When the company is exposed to masses about their behaviors, it has to change the behavior and not only strategy to deal with exposing medium. With people to people contact , what company says is hardly of any significance. Its time to get real. Its time to revisit objectives and mission statement  again. Its time to revisit business processes, people soft skills, HR policy, product innovation and afters sales service. Its time to check the air in all the four Tyre (people, process, product and communication). Puncture in any one will curtail the speed and end products/outcome. All companies NOW has to work towards creating brand advocates. Yes that is the ultimate thing that all companies must aim for and best things that can happen in favour of the company through SM.

Now its a time to work towards not triple bottom-line but SINGLE bottom-line through happy customers, motivated employees, supporting vendors, community building, active CSR , concern for environment. Every activities will be watched and  discussed on SM. Now is the time BRANDS will be built by company business strategies and not by advertising and marketing team.  Measurement parameters MUST include other  parameters than only financial share holder driven parameters. Net Promoter Scorecard, Customer SATisfaction, Employees-SAT, Community-SAT etc etc.

When EXPOSURE is given , you don’t try to strategies to defend mis-behavior but certainly-try to behave and put up EXPO-SABLE show.  Brand building is NOW everyone’s role in the organisation. Happier times are here not again for the first time.

Number ONE Business Strategy - Missing Completely from Agenda

Customer Experience is core of every business activities. Every enterprise either creates plain, awesome or miserable customer experience by its initiatives, day in and day out, everyday with every customer. WITHOUT FAIL. Irony is; still most, yes most enterprises do not have someone completely in charge of customer xperience alone. People are functional in-charge and CEOs are too thinly divided in various acts.

End Results: Endless run around to achieve targets, daily fire fighting, stressed employees, unhappy customers, unhappy employees, unhappy suppliers and of-course unhappy share holders.   Today’s enterprises are creators and perpetrators of Mass Unhappiness.

Delivering Happiness is the slogan of US online corporation zappos.com. Of-course they enjoy clear cut mileage over competitors in attracting customers, suppliers, talent and investors. They FOCUS on HAPPINESS of all the stake holders and naturally all the other relevant elements are taken care off by keeping HAPPINESS at the core. Just shift in perspective and they are in different ORBIT ( they do huge business and financially very sound also  ).

We have plenty of Business Strategists around but still - How many businesses have applied Happiness and Delightful Customer Experience as their Business Strategy??? { Company focus, actions & results will change , dramatically }.  There is something GROSSLY wrong the way today's enterprises are being managed. 

Further Required Reading : Seven Days Weekend (Written by Business Owner) , Happy Hours r 9 to 5 (Written by Happiness Consultant) , Delivering happiness (Written by Business Owner) .