The bigger question in my mind is if Bank Of America is listening to the conversation online about their business decision. Since last week, Twitter has blown up with conversation from outraged customers telling the world that they aren’t happy and will be switching banks; and others starting a petition (over 20K signatures). Their competitors are even joining the conversation and reminding their customers and the general public that their card services will remain free.

I have been talking a lot lately about the growing influence of the social customer; and how through “organic” conversations, they affect others’ purchase decisions – whether good or bad. One would think that after the Netflix issue last month, that business leaders would start realizing this.

Learn more about social customer management on social business news.

She describes that “social” is more than just Facebook, Twitter and even gives an example of a conversation she had with a CIO of a large bank during the internet era many years ago. The CIO told her that banking would never be done over the Internet; and if it did, he would give her his year’s salary.  She never collected it.

She explains that companies should use social media in every aspect of their business, not just Public Relations and Marketing in order to gain a competitive advantage and to increase their business metrics – productivity, revenue and profits. Sandy is a great speaker. Enjoy.

IBM is one of those companies that I can probably count on one hand that has truly embraced social business not only from a technology perspective but also cultural. For example, they have been advocating that their employees engage in social media (and the Internet) for well over 10 years and have close to 25,000 employees on Twitter, 300,000 employees on LinkedIn and 198,000 employees on Facebook.  This accomplishment certainly didn’t happen overnight and it’s certain that internally, IBM has governance models, process workflow and policies established that govern and empower employee collaboration.

With the book sales, admission to the tweetup and a generous donation from someone who wanted to remain anonymous, we raised over $3,800 for Not For Sale! WOW! Also, I wanted to personally thank my two very good friends and co-founders of Silicon Valley Tweetup Gabriel Carrejo and Jennifer Leggio. Over the last 2+ years, we have done so much for people that have far less than us.  I am humbled to be your friend!  Also, wanted to thank our awesome sponsors who helped make the event happen.

• Collaborize Classroom – An online learning platform that allows teachers to extend their classroom discussions to a structured and private online community.
• Streamzoo – A mobile photo and video sharing app for iPhone and Android.  It’s a great way to share and connect with people all over the world, discover interesting things, and organize your mobile photos and videos with #hashtags
• Bizzy – A mobile app that lets you “check out” from the places you go. When you check out, you can share ratings, mini-reviews and photos of all the places you go.  They also happen to have one of the funniest community managers around.

And, lastly thanks to everyone who came out and supported. And, if you bought a book, please do write an Amazon review!

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A social business is built upon 3 pillars – people, process and technology. People are the most important despite the rhetoric #socialbiz

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Change management, culture and leadership are the most important attributes of social business transformation, the rest is fluff

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Social business transformation requires employees to change their behavior starting with top leadership of all organizations #socialbiz

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Technology and processes play only a small part in social business transformation #e20 #socialbiz

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Organizational leadership needs to do more than just say “we believe in social” they need to live it everyday #socialbiz

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Technology alone cannot change business. Leadership and change management is what facilitates true change #socialbiz

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Many people talk about social business but very few have actually lived through the organizational chaos #socialbiz

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People are key drivers of organizational change, process improves it and technology facilitates it #socialbiz

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Humanizing a brand means that organizations should first humanize its operations – finance, support, sales, supply chain #socialbiz

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A social brand is when any product or brand uses social technologies to interact with the social customer

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It’s easy to be a social brand; more difficult to be a social business. It requires internal teams to actually communicate with each other

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Businesses cannot have effective, external conversations with the customer unless they can have internal conversations with each other first

Communicating and sharing successful failures are only effective if an organization actually learns from it

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A fully collaborative social business empowers cross functional teams to take ownership of social media; silos are non existent #socialbiz

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A centralized organization rarely communicates across job function & geography. Silos reign and social media policies don’t exist

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Social media was bred from decentralized organizations; chaos reigns, no governance, no social media polices whatsoever

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Social business is not a trend; it’s a necessary evolution to required to innovate, increase collaboration and stay competitive

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Smart companies are beginning to plan for social business; others are forced into it due to the growing influence of the social customer

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Social business planning occurs when an organization wants to change and actually puts their money where their mouth is #socialbiz

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