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Beyond Viral: Generating Sustainable Value From Social Media
Social media provides the fuel for unpredictable, temporary mobilization, rather than steady, sustainable change. To reverse this trend and reap more enduring benefits from social media requires a fundamental change in focus. Research shows that incentive networks are an important middle layer between ideologies and activity in online digital platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. So, too, is a focus on establishing loyalty and stickiness rather than just "likes" and retweets.
Digital, Frontiers, Marketing, Digital Marketing
Manuel Cebrian, Iyad Rahwan, and Alex "Sandy" Pentland
How Transparency Changes Business
Magazine: Winter 2016
The Winter 2016 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review explores how increased transparency — and, in particular, the ready flow of information in a digital world — is changing the environment in which corporations operate. Transparency also is changing the distribution of power between large organizations and those who challenge them. Executives need to anticipate the possibility that any issues related to their company could someday be public knowledge.
Strategy, Leadership Skills, Financial Management & Risk, Marketing Strategy, Social Marketing
Martha E. Mangelsdorf
How CEOs Can Leverage Twitter
Research Feature
Rather than waiting for impressions about a company to be driven by others in social media, CEOs of large companies can help shape the conversation by becoming active on Twitter. Journalists often check a CEO's Twitter account before covering the CEO or the company, and certain types of business-related CEO tweets — including tweets about new management initiatives; strategy and performance; and new products and services — have even correlated with positive movement of company stock prices.
Frontiers, Leadership, Marketing, Leadership Skills, Digital Marketing, Social Marketing
Claudia Kubowicz Malhotra and Arvind Malhotra
Using Social Media in Business Disputes
An emergent defensive strategy is being used by both upstart players facing established competitors and by newcomers (such as Tesla, Airbnb, and Uber) facing government regulators. Called "lawsourcing," the strategy advances legal and public relations goals through social media campaigns, online petitions, and boycotts to draw attention to disputes. These tactics are often framed in moral and ethical terms, and they are being initiated by even very small players.
Frontiers, Strategy, Executing Strategy, Digital Marketing, Social Business Adoption
How McDonald's Cooked Up More Transparency
Big Idea: Digital Leadership
The McDonald's "Our Food. Your Questions." campaign engaged customers on social media and the web. As manager of brand reputation and public relations for the U.S. McDonald's Corporation, Lainey Garcia helped put the campaign together. "We had to align those responses across a variety of functions — whether it be legal, supply chain, communications — and really prepare for what we knew consumers were going to ask," she says. "That was new for many members of our organization, to really understand the nature of social media."
Digital, Social Marketing
Lainey Garcia (McDonald's USA), interviewed by Gerald C. Kane
The Risks and Rewards of Brand Personification Using Social Media
Social media offers businesses the chance to connect with customers in a unique way — by giving their brand a "persona" with attributes that attract the target audience. But companies need a sound social media strategy if they are to create positive associations and avoid negative ones.
Digital, Digital Business, Digital Marketing, Social Marketing
Jay I. Sinha
Thinking Outside the [Penalty] Box
Big Idea: Social Business
When you think of sports teams using social media to great effect, you probably don't automatically jump to the NHL's use of Pinterest — but you should. The league has far outstripped all other sports leagues in gathering a following on the fast-growing social media site, with nearly 50 times the followers of all other leagues combined. Impressive as those results are, its path to success involved following some fairly simple, basic rules of social business.
Social Business, Social Marketing
Erin Hughes and Gerald C. Kane
Customizing Social Media Marketing
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for social media marketing. Instead, companies need to tailor campaigns to fit their products. Recent research suggests that one key question that can guide the approach is whether a company's products are primarily useful or fun. For instance, consumers expect to encounter messages about fun products on platforms like Facebook. In contrast, they will only glance over recommendations for useful products. Because reactions differ, so too should the social sharing mechanisms used to promote these products.
Marketing, Social Business, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Marketing
Christian Schulze, Lisa Schöler and Bernd Skiera
An Audio Summary of "Moving Beyond Marketing"
An audio briefing by Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane, co-author of the 2014 social business research report by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte. The report indicates that that measurement sophistication is finally taking hold in social business. More than 90% of "socially maturing" companies actively measure their social business efforts. The authors explain why C-suite leadership is crucial to reaping value from social business.
Social Business, Digital Marketing, Social Business Adoption
Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane
After a Social Media Gaffe: How to Recover and Not Dig a Bigger Hole
It was late at night when a staffer from the American Red Cross accidentally sent a personal tweet from the organization feed. Unfortunately, it was a tweet about beer. Immediately, there were thousands of tweets in response saying, "The Red Cross is drunk." Wendy Harman, director of Red Cross information management and situational awareness in disaster cycle services, says that what happened next was a product of being prepared for social media mistakes and trusting that a little humor would help.
Social Business, Digital Marketing, Social Marketing
Leslie Brokaw
Rejuvenating a Brand Through Social Media
Magazine: Summer 2014
When Nestlé UK invited customers to vote for a new chocolate bar flavor, the company's target customers participated in droves. By leveraging social media for the Kit Kat brand, the company was able to build positive word of mouth through consumers who became brand advocates; increase sales; and generate a higher return on investment. The process followed a four-step framework that any company can use to extract valuable information from the vast amount of data generated by social media.
Social Business, Digital Marketing, Sales & Business Development, Social Marketing
Matthew Mount and Marian Garcia Martinez
The American Red Cross: Adding Digital Volunteers to Its Ranks
The American Red Cross has become an excellent example of how to use social media to connect people during the three cycles of disaster: preparedness, response and then recovery. Its digital volunteers help calm people in the middle of events, and its community mobilizers help coordinate services afterwards. "We want to blur that line about who's a Red Crosser and who's not, to say, 'actually, this is up to all of us,'" says the organization's Wendy Harman.
Social Business, Teamwork, Executing Strategy, Social Business Adoption
Wendy Harman (American Red Cross), interviewed by Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane
How to Avoid a Social Media Fiasco
If you think social media crises are uncommon things that happen only to other companies, you're kidding yourself. A panel at the 2014 South by Southwest festival highlighted some of the most prominent recent fiascoes and offered a compelling view of just how commonplace these events have become. Five key takeaways from the panel offer suggestions for keeping a company from being the next entry on the steady parade of social media disasters.
Gerald C. Kane
Inside Renault's Digital Factory
Engaging with the digital technology in consumers' lives creates unique challenges for traditional companies. Renault hired Patrick Hoffstetter, an executive with extensive Web experience, to shape its Digital Factory concept — a new way of marketing its cars. Hoffstetter says Renault must shift its mindset about the auto business and uses pilot programs in test markets to help the company respond more quickly to consumer interest in things like content for their cars or shopping online.
Digital, Digital Business, Technology Implementation, Quality & Service
Michael Fitzgerald
How Digital Acceleration Teams Are Influencing Nestlé's 2,000 Brands
Nestlé is taking digital vitamins, using a leadership and social media training program called the Digital Acceleration Team to spread knowledge of how to operate brands across different mediums. Pete Blackshaw, global digital marketing chief at Nestlé, talks about the benefits of spreading digital vitamins, discusses adaptive marketing. and acknowledges the ongoing "torture tests" social media presents for companies.
Digital, Marketing, Digital Business, Digital Marketing
Pete Blackshaw (Nestlé), interviewed by Michael Fitzgerald
Turning a "No Comment" Company into a Social Media Advocate
Danish shipping and energy company Maersk Group had nearly 100 years of history as a strong, silent type before corporate brand manager Anna Granholm-Brun came along. In a conversation with MIT Sloan Management Review 's Robert Berkman, Granholm-Brun explains how the company has shifted from one end of the transparency spectrum to the other, why there's so much value in a good story and what it took to sell social to company executives.
Social Business, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Marketing
Anna Granholm-Brun (Maersk Group), interviewed by Robert Berkman
Procedural Versus Strategic Approaches to Social Media
Is your company's social media team grounded in the culture of your organization? Younger employees often have a procedural understanding of social media tools but need strategic vision, argues Boston College's Jerry Kane. The most effective social media initiatives may be partnerships between younger employees experimenting with social media technologies while more experienced employees harness their enthusiasm and ideas to give them strategic direction.
Social Business, Social Business Adoption
The Emergence of Chief Digital Officers
The emergence of social media in business, along with related digital initiatives, is causing more organizations to appoint a chief digital officer, or CDO in the C-suite. While the position was initially found in media, education, and retail, an increasing number of industries of all types are considering the position to consolidate and focus its social and other digital activities. Many feel that the CDO needs to report directly to the CIO, but that reporting relationship may not fit all cases.
Robert Berkman
Is Viral Marketing a Myth?
That ideas can go viral is now a given in corporate marketing. But new research suggests the term "viral" marketing does not describe well what happens in the market.
Sharad Goel, senior researcher at Microsoft Research, and fellow researchers wanted to see whether messages spread via social networks virally, "like the common cold, some sort of biological contagion. One person gets infected and their friend gets infected and a friend of their friend gets infected."
That wasn't what Goel found.
Risky (Social) Business
A new study released by the Altimeter Group helps companies identify, manage, mitigate and even prevent the risks that come with embracing social media.