"Social business"--what does it mean to you?

We just read a mind-boggling, three-page blog post on What Social Business means. It was full of terms that we just don't use socially. We pulled this gem, in particular:

"[Social business] is a sociopolitical historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating."

We're going to be a lot more brief--and more understandable--than that.

First let's look at a business that's truly bought into the social business model.

IBM has crafted an entire strategy around not just using social media, but about ensuring that all of their employees understand what it means to be a truly social business. (IBM no longer sells directly to the consumer, so it has to pay added attention to what its employees want and feel.) Specifically, it's operating on a three different levels:
1. Engagement
2. Transparency
3. Nimbleness
We like this concept. We fully embrace the fact that businesses, even ones that are B-to-B, should be engaged with their employees and their customer base; that we should be as transparent as possible, and that we need to react well and fast to any opportunities and challenges that come our way.

But we don't think it's all that complicated, nor do we think it's all that revolutionary. Our vision is this: People first. That means customers and employees. And really, it can be illustrated at a micro level.

For instance, it used to be that you went out and bought something at a big box store, and that was the end of it. Now it works like this:

1. You're looking for an widget, so you ask your friends on Facebook what widgets they like the best.
2. Your friends recommend several options, but one stands out above all the others.
3. You go on to amazon.com; etsy.com; ebay.com, and search for this particular widget.
4. You find a widget that's been highly recommended by other widget-experienced people, on sale from a seller with high recommendations from other widget-purchasers.
5. You order your widget. The widget-seller tells you when it ships.
6. You get your widget and are happy or sad or just enh about it, so you feed back directly to the widget-seller about your experience.

See? It's social all the way through. There is communication all the way through, and transparency too. At its best, this is the way business should work.

For us at The Hub, that means the following:
1. We maintain as much transparency as possible: Our green standards, for instance, are readily available to our clients.
2. We make sure our clients have ample opportunity to feed back to us about what we can do better.
3. We make sure our employees are encouraged to feed back to our leadership--and each other--about where we've gone right, and where we can do better.

How is your business social?

Hub Day: Social Media and The Hub

We think we're a pretty social office. Heck, we like each other: We go to Center City Sips together; we celebrate our successes and our mis-steps together; we play and we work hard together.
But the social media thing was a whole new quandary. We thought to ourselves, Gosh. We're already social. Do we really need to embark on social media?

Our office social committee is all of us, and we have better ideas than this.
(Webcomic via Shane Johnson.)

And then someone told us that being involved in social media was like having 500 sales calls all at once, and that made us think about it again.

See, here's the thing. For us, it's not the idea of boosting sales that got us into this social media game in the first place. And it's not the idea of having the most friends, or whatever, on Facebook. Honestly, it had mostly to do with the fact that we wanted really good, meaningful interactions with everyone who could potentially mean something to us.

We wanted an exchange of ideas. We wanted them to know what we knew, and we wanted to learn what they know about their businesses. There are meeting planning groups all over the nation. We were dying to find out how they plan meetings in Australia. We wanted to know if they were as serious about green in British meetings as we are at The Hub. We wanted to know how Japanese meeting planners think, and what people learned at MPI conferences that are too far away for us to get to.

We want to share our clients' successes. You don't always get to yell about the cool things your clients are doing. Social media--and we mean everything from the web 1.0-world of blogs and egroups to the current world of Gowalla and 4sq--lets your clients, past, current, and potential, know that you are proud of having them on your list.

We wanted our voice to be heard. Social media isn't the company newsletter, that carefully planned and worded medium of yesteryear. Social media gives your company a voice, an identity beyond its stock symbol and logo. We happen to think our employees are fun and frisky, so our voice is a little uppity. Sometimes weird things happen on our Twitter feed, but that's directly because sometimes weird things happen in our office. That's OK. It's real life at The Hub offices.

We want to have lots of conversations, with lots of people. That's it, really. Social media lets us do that. Why are you using social media in your business interactions?

Don't forget to come on over to our page and fan us on Facebook. We know, we said we didn't care how many friends we had, but it's nice to be liked.