Alot of business executives are asking the same questions these days. What should we do on Facebook? How can our company take advantage of Facebook and other social media platforms? How can we improve relationships with customers/partners/employees/suppliers using new technology? How can we use Facebook to sell more, improve processes and cut costs!!

The principles for success are simple. The  challenge is (and has alway been) how to implement in real life!

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave us some advice when he was asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few years ago about how companies can succeed with Facebook. Here´s a revised summary of Zuckerberg´s response:

“Your customers, employees, partners, suppliers already doing what they want to do. What you need to focus on is to make it easier for them to do what they already do.” (Details are on page 48 of the book WWGD written by Jeff Jarvis).

Facebook can help your business in many ways. It’s not about creating Facebook pages. It´s not about writing status updates, posting pictures and running competitions. Don´t  outsource the task to  “social media experts” and communications advisers. As a business you need to focus on how you can make life easier for your customers, employees, competitors and partners to “connect”.

Your job as a leader is to point out the direction, make sure you have the right people on the job and move in the right direction. Management Guru and longstanding CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, says that strategy is about choosing a general direction and implement like hell. This mindset has worked for many companies for over 30 years. It will work well for your  Facebook activities as well. The details will fall into place after the first activities have been implemented! Therefore, the main advice is to get started! Just do it!

If you don´t know what to to, here are five specific tips for business leaders who want to succeed with Facebook.

1. Don´t block Facebook for your employees

How can your business succeed on Facebook, if you deny your employees access? Some companies have chosen to block Facebook for employees at work because they think employees waste time on Facebook or because IT says it´s a security problem. This is almost never smart. If you treat your employees like kids, they will behave like kids.Denying access to Facebook can become a frustrating annoyance – especially for young people. Most people have smartphones where they can use Facebook anyway. If you want motivated employees you should treat them as adults. If your employees are spending too much time on Facebook, Facebook itself may not be the problem!

2. Create an informal intranet for your employees on Facebook

Most of your employees are already on Facebook without you having to invest in expensive IT systems, boring training sessions and costly internal meetings. Take advantage of it. Create a closed Facebook group for your employees and let your employees communicate with each other there. You will be amazed by the benefits. Suddenly old and new employees can get to know eachother easier than before. People who know each other work better with eachother and often deliver better results (ref: Goretex and Dunbars number ). Just like there are formal and informal rules in the lunch room, you can introduce some simple rules for the closed Facebook group.

3. Create closed groups for better collaboration

E-mail is the biggest time waster in many companies. E-mail is, believe it or not, an outdated form of communication. Facebook (and other social platforms) work better in many cases. Think how many times you’ve received an e-mail CC and a long discussion dialogue on e-mail. Is it effective? Also check how your kids communicate on Facebook. A simple “like” is often easier and better than responding to all that you have read and agree but you have some questions. An e-mail from you can often end up stealing several hours working time from your staff! Explore how your business can use the modern social tools (not necessarily Facebook) instead of wasting time on e-mail!

4. Create open groups for your customers

People are talking about your company and your products already. Your business can use Facebook to gather customers in one place.  Pick up valuable feedback from your customers and use the feedback to improve your products, customer service and marketing. There are of course other ways to do this, but why not use a tool that most people are familiar with already? You don´t need to invest in complex IT systems and expensive contact management software. Test it out on Facebook. If it works on Facebook, you can consider other options. Create an open group for your customers.

5. Create a Facebook page for your business

A company Facebook page is the tip of the iceberg. Facebook gives companies opportunities to market products and services. To get started with this you need to register a Facebook page and start producing relevant content for your audience. The content will often come as a result of the first 4 tips in this article. When people begin to communicate internally, relevant content and good ideas often bubble up to the surface.

Good ideas alone are worthless. To be successful, both the ideas and the capacity to implement be present. So therefore: Point out the direction and follow up with an extreme focus on implementation. This is according to Jack Welch, the recipe for success in business. Success on Facebook is about the same principles.

Focus on implementation: Make it easier for people to do what they already do!

Sources:
* Bringing elegant organization to the work place: http://tribes.no/2012/11/02/bringing-elegant-organization-to-the-workplace/
* Ideas are worthless without action: http://stammen.no/effektivitet/ideer-er-verdil% C3% B8se-no-action
* How to get 100,000 fans on Facebook: http://www.inma.no/ARTIKLER/Blogg/innlegg/Hvordan-fa-100-000-Facebook-fans-pa-under-ett-ar

During the last few months, two large Norwegian news organizations (Adresseavisen and TV2) have published articles where they explain how to get rid of ads on Facebook. From a consumer stand point this makes sense, but in a time when newspapers are struggling to find profitable revenue models online, should they be sabotaging the revenue model of a competitor?

And if removing unwanted ads is considered newsworthy for the readers, shouldn´t the news organizations also publish articles on how to get rid of ads on their own websites? Or should Facebook be treated differently?

Facebook: Ultra Local newspaper or direct mail?

Per Ravne Bugten the Consumer Ombudsman apparently believes that Facebook should be treated differently. He believes that Facebook should be covered by the same rules that apply to e-mail marketing and text messaging. The quote in the article indicates to me that he does not understand the underlying nature of the Internet. By definition everything that happens on the internet is direct marketing (if you define that all the information from commercial interests as advertising).

Facebook is a combination of ultra-local newspaper and a personal messaging system. It is completely voluntary to use Facebook and users accept the terms and conditions when they register. If Facebook is to be covered by the same regulations as e-mail marketing and text messages, it is quite natural that newspapers (Aftenposten, VG, TV2 and other advertising-funded agencies) are also covered by this legislation.

Individuals, media and advertisers must cooperate relevance.

The well-know Norwegian entrepreneur, Idar Vollvik and Netthandelen.no, a large Norwegian e-commerce company  buy ads on Facebook in a similar fashion as they and others are buying ads on TV2 and VG. The difference is that Facebook requires that companies be  more personal in their communication. In addition Facebook has obtained a massive amount of voluntary data from their “readers”. This allows for extremely targeted advertising far beyond what the newspapers will ever be able to.

The challenge for Facebook is that people have an expectation that Facebook should be personal and without advertising. This will change over time as people get used to advertising on Facebook and Facebook fine tune the way ads appear on. If you do not want advertising on Facebook, you can simply opt out or decline to login. It is not solely the advertisers responsibility to protect people from advertising! The advertiser, consumer and media must take responsibility for how advertising is presented.

Is all advertising bad?

The most critical people would argue that ALL advertising is undesirable and that companies should stop advertsing.

Thankfully most people have a more nuanced view on advertising. When you ask people: “If we stop advertising, how will you learn about new products and services?”. The answer is as often. “I will search for it online .. “Or” I hear about stuff from friends .. “. Google takes care of the first (search), while Facebook has made it easier to get news / tips / suggestions from friends and acquaintances.

In reality, Facebook is an improved newspaper where your friends are the news and your friends produce news for you. It is also a place where you can more easily get to know about products and services from commercial operators. It’s annoying that commercial messages are popping up increasingly mroe in the news stream. It’s also a bit scary that this news platform (and data) is controlled by a major U.S. company. These are the issues we need to continue to focus on! Let’s do it in a constructive way.

Many people ask me how companies can take advantage of “social media”. In this blog post, I present some examples of how how you can bring “elegant organization” into the workplace.

In 2009, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the head of a powerful news company asked Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook: “How can we start a community like yours?”

Mark Zuckerberg answered: “You can’t.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain: “You don’t start communities. Communities already exist. They’re already doing what they want to do. The question you should ask is how you can help them do that better. Bring people “elegant organization“.

Strategy

Before I dive into Zuckerbergs concept of elegant organization, I want to share the single most important factor for delivering success in the business world. It is a quote from Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electrics for 20 years.

He says:

“In real life, strategy is actually very straight forward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.”

This means that you don’t need a perfect plan before you begin, you just need to point out a general direction, get people on board, and start implementing like hell.

As you get started, things will change and you will see the results and new opportunities. If you never start, you won’t succeed.

This is the single most important factor to win in business. When you implement something, you motivate others to take action as well.

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Back to social media and the concept of “elegant organization”

Bringing people elegant organization

During the last few years, we have seen developments in several social services:

Facebook for Personal networks

Facebook enabled people to do organize their social networks; who they are, what they do, who they know and what they look like. This is what Mark Zuckerberg calls elegant organization of people´s social network. It´s not complex – people are just not used to it.

Linkedin for Professional networks

Linkedin has made it easy to organize our professional networks; who you know, how you want to be contacted, what you´ve done and what you want to do in the future.

Facebook and Linkedin have changed the way we manage our personal and professional networks. Now it´s time to apply the concept of “elegant organization” inside companies. It´s not rocket science and it may overlap with existing methodologies, but I am not aware of any article that takes a practical approach to Mark Zuckerberg´s thoughts about elegant organization.

Elegant organization at work

Most of us work in an office, we have colleagues, customers, partners and suppliers. The social network at work already exists and we must apply the concept of elegant organization to our community at work.

We have a work description and we do stuff at work. We sit by our desks, we answer e-mails, we attend meetings, we talk on the phone, we report to our superiors, we work with partners/customers/vendors. We plan and execute activities. We send instructions to co-workers/partners/vendors. We take breaks and throughout the day we communicate and we produce. How can we bring elegant organization into our daily worklife?

Elegant organization: Practical use

Hurtigruten is a Norwegian cruise company. It has existed since 1890 and has been through some tough times of reorganization and cost-cutting. In 2009 we began an online journey. Since the cruise industry is a bit behind, we chose a general direction and started implementing like hell based on experience from other industries. We wanted to make things better for customers and for people internally. Here are some of the things we did to bring “elegant organization” to Hurtigruten:

1. Making it better for agents and customers to book online

Our first focus was to make online booking for our customers and travel agency partners better. The current Hurtigruten booking engine is far from perfect, but we were able to launch it and then improve it. The numbers show that we made online booking better.

We created an ad-hoc global web team. Our goal was to maximize online revenues, take advantage of global synergies and make life more fun for customers, fellow workers and ourselves.

The team consisted of people from France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Estonia and the US. We worked across time zones and we worked with multiple vendors. We were forced to be effective and creative.

2. Skype chat rooms to communicate better internally

Most people know Skype for free calls on the internet. Few people know that Skype is excellent for  group chat at work.

At Hurtigruten we used Skype for a variety of tasks. We reduced number of meetings, e-mails and phone calls by gathering all team members(developers, web team and support) in different chat rooms.

When issues arose, we posted a question in the chat room. Within minutes, you would have an answer. This was much better than e-mail or phone calls because it doesn’t interupt people and you take advantage of crowdsourcing.

Each person chose when they wanted to contribute and when they wanted to interupt their “flow”. Nobody was on Skype all the time, but someone was usually responsive. This solved issues quicker and reduced number of unnecessary meetings.

We also created ad hoc chat rooms when needed. During the ashe crisis, a team member created an adhoc chat room so that everybody could easily communicate. We avoided lots of e-mails, reduced waiting time and all relevant people got the information quickly.

We thought about creating one chat room for all people involved to take full advantage of crowdsourcing, but we didn´t figure out how to motivate people to contribute. In many ways, a crowdsourcing chat room internally in a company is similar to how Twitter(or Yammer) works.

3. Blogging makes it easier to share, discuss and inspire

People sometimes laugh at blogging, but the web team blog has been a platform where we could share stories, practice our writing skills, publish news and discuss ideas. Major stockholders and people from senior management contributed to the discussion. Suddenly one of the blog posts was published on 37Signals product blog and we had 140 readers in one day. It´s interesting to note that research shows that people that blog at work are actually more productive than people that don´t blog!

Other advantages of blogging:

• It motivates people, because they can share expertise
• It explains to people internally what we do
• It improves internal communication
• It documents and summarizes our work for future team members
• It shows people externally that we are working on improvments
• It helps us develop our writing skills
• It´s a great way to keep the staff curious about new developments and improvements

4. Basecamp – better than e-mail

Basecamp is a project management tool that helps us eliminate CC e-mails. Whenever you CC a person on an e-mail, you steal some of their time. With Basecamp, Messages are connected to projects and you drastically reduce the number of e-mails being sent. It’s much easier to follow discussions and it seems that people are more likely to contribute. We used Basecamp in connection with our bi-weekly global web meeting. Before each meeting, each team member would list 3 completed activities and 3 upcoming activities. We saved meeting time by doing personal updates in the order the updates were listed in Basecamp. We shared documents, designs and more. It’s was easy to upload and comment on performed work.

5. Snapengage – better for agents

Snapengage is an online chat tool that makes it easier for travel agents to get immediate assistance in our travel agency booking solution. We know that the main reason why people prefer offline booking is because they prefer dealing with people. In fact 59% of offline bookers state that they prefer offline booking because they want to deal with a person. By offering chat in addition to our online booking, we made it easier for our travel agent partners. Agents are more comfortable with our Agency solution because the chat makes what they do easier and better.

6. Superoffice Ejournal

Superoffice Ejournal is an e-mail support system that makes it easier to handle  high number of e-mails from customers. The system gives every incoming message a reference number and routes the e-mail to the right person. By using the system it´s easier for management to staff up with the right number of people and get accurate statistics on the e-mail volume.

In summary:

Many people ask me how companies can take advantage of “social media”. Facebook´s founder suggests we start focusing on making it easier for people to do what they are already doing. This applies to all aspects of business and in this blog post, I´ve presented some examples of how how you can bring “elegant organization” into the workplace. The strategy is simple.

• Choose a direction
• Get people on board
• Implement like hell
• Help people do things better