Innovation. This was the prevailing theme throughout all the interviews, sessions, and presentations at Pivot Conference, the social business conference on October 15-16 curated by Brian Solis. Thought leaders and industry experts shared ideas, insights, and predictions centered around the question “What are the next steps for companies to create the total digital experience?”
Both days of the conference were full of excellent content, with the first day focused on external social media insights across prominent industries and the second day viewed through the lens of internal collaboration and strategy. Here are some of our key takeaways:
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Social media strategy needs to be holistic.
However, a small number of senior leaders believe this is true. Right now, social is very scattered and therefore has different messaging. The focus is too much on building community on outside networks and less about making social part of the website experience–resulting in a missed opportunity for organizations, which is why many marketing agencies such as IRN and many others are trying to improve the companies website experience for the consumer, instead of networking using outside platforms.
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Social media analytics need to be aligned to business strategy.
Social activity can provide insight into customer behavior through behavioral analytics and help companies make decisions, discover opportunities, and develop organizations. Today companies measure a very narrow set of behaviors (i.e. likes, retweets)–further disconnected by a lack of more meaningful analytics.
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Social affects every step of the customer journey.
Social business should be about enhancing customer experience, and businesses should focus on providing a seamless customer experiences. Companies need to move away from strictly traditional marketing methods–marketing should be perceived as a service to customers and therefore require personalization.
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Social starts with the ability to collect knowledge.
Businesses understand that customers are getting more digital, but do not yet fully understanding consumer behavior. Research shows that businesses want to become customer activated. As a result, it is essential for companies to remove the barrier between employees and marketplaces, identify experts with more collaborative networking, and listen analytically to data to survive and thrive.
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Social is now evolving to the next level of creating the total digital experience.
Previously businesses were focused on lowering costs of transactions, but now organizations have transitioned to focus on becoming the center of expertise and managing reputation and authenticity. To engage employees, business must empower them create “art” at work and give them a platform to talk about the company brand.
The primary focus of the Pivot Conference was not on social media, but rather on how organizations can continue to progress using social tools with a metrics-driven strategy to achieve specific business objectives. It was evident to all conference attendees that more and more organizations are undergoing enterprise social transformation and completely changing the way work is done.
Click here to see photo highlights of the conference at the Altman Building in NYC. To keep up to day on everything happening with Pivot Conference year-round, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, or YouTube.
