The power of social activation is unleashed when others advocate an organization’s message in their own words to their network.

Over the years, the focus of social business has shifted from measuring volume to monitoring sentiment and, now, toward changing perceptions. In today’s recommendation economy, companies should focus on measuring the perception of their brand and then on changing how people feel, share, and evangelize. Companies can activate their audiences to drive their message outward—handing them an idea and getting them to advocate it in their own words to their own network.

From passive to active tense

Organizations have spent the last several years chasing the tantalizing prospect of “social.” Within the enterprise, social represents a bastion of hope for productivity and collaboration—a chance to effectively navigate who knows what, who knows whom, how work gets done, and how decisions get made. We’re still in the opening frames of a broad wave of social-driven enterprise transformation,1 as a recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte confirms. That study revealed that 69 percent of executives thought social business would be critical to their organizations in the next three years.2

Social businesses3 ideally rally around well-defined business problems, supported by committed communities with well-defined incentives for participation. To take full advantage of this potential, age-old organizational constraints need to be identified and rewired. Hierarchies, biases, standardized operating procedures, rigid job descriptions, and other embodiments of institutional inertia can stunt progress.

Meanwhile, the flurry of activity around external social channels continues. Social media has become a frequent online destination, commanding 27 percent of global time spent on the web.4 Not surprisingly, social monitoring and listening were some of the earlier investments companies made in the social arena. Social efforts leaned on the enabling tools that allowed passive data collection, tracking the volume of surface-level activity and broad-stroke awareness—followers, likes, mentions, and click-throughs to their own corporate channels. As the numbers grew, premature victory was announced. But volume doesn’t tell you much—good, bad, or indifferent.

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