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We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”.  We’ve come to learn which companies are advanced and why.  Secondly, I meet a variety of companies who tell me they are “Very advanced, having done this for a few years, and have dozens of Facebook efforts” but when I ask them some specific questions on their sophistication, they often retract their statement.

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity
Corporations that have these and other following elements in place, may truly be sophisticated when it comes to social business:

1. Clear understanding of customers’ socialgraphics. Clear understanding of how their customers use social media by knowing the socialgraphics of your customers.  Granular knowledge of where their customers are, which behaviors they use, who they trust for information, and how they influence their peers in the context of their own products.
   The true test? Your company can adjust budgets of your integrated social strategy based on data –not gut feel.
2. Your organization is in Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic formation. Social technologies enable all employees that want to talk to customers to do so.  This means a massive change inside of your organization to get ready.  Your company is sophisticated if you’ve organized in the Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic and all employees clearly know their role, process, and contact points.
   The true test? A product crises has emerged on YouTube on a Friday evening before a three day weekend and you can sleep peacefully.
3. Corporate website integration: Social sign on. When customers come to the corporate site, they can see which one of their friends uses which product, and what they think about it.  Common technologies would include OpenID, Facebook Connect, and other social sign on technologies.  See my keynote presentation on the maturity roadmap to follow.
   The true test? You can disable your corporate registration page and use social logins instead without fear of reduction in leads.
4. Personalized corporate website based on social data. When a prospect (someone who’s never logged into you website before) arrives to your corporate website, they receive a customized experience based on their social IDs.  This would be based on Social CRM infrastructure, social sign on technology and a large inventory of personalized content.
   The true test? The voices of the consumers real world friends emerge above that of the brand right on the corporate website, see Levi’s foray.
5. Thriving advocacy program: customers are actively selling on your behalf. The sophisticated marketing program isn’t really the company talking much at all, instead they’ve a thriving advocacy program and word of mouth program that encourages customers to recruit prospects for them –all unpaid.  Learn how to do this, by reading this piece on Forbes.
   The true test? most leads are coming in through existing customers –not your sales team.
6. A community of customers supports each other, reducing support center calls. A company that has a thriving branded community where customers are self-supporting each other with little aid from the brand or the support team is a sign of a sophisticated social support program.
   The true test? A majority of customer support issues are resolved by community faster, with greater satisfaction than your dedicated support team.
7. Anticipation of prospects and customers using Social CRM technology.  Brands can anticipate before a customer has a problem, or grab leads “right out of the air” by using brand monitoring software, intelligent keyword monitoring and responding to be faster than real time using Social CRM strategies.
   The true test? sales and marketing are getting leads before the consideration phase, and the support team reduces inbound calls by triggering the community to resolve a potential issue before it’s escalated.
8. Innovation of new products with customers using web collaboration.  Companies that use these same tools to glean input from customers (ethnographic data collection) or create private communities, or use collaboration and innovation tools like Ideastorm or Uservoice and build new products and services demonstrate true sophistication.
   The true test? faster time to market on products because consumers have dictated the specifications, and less inventory as the product is built on spec.
9. Supply chain is influenced by social data in real time. Social media isn’t just about marketing and support, but is very valuable in listening to customer signals then to anticipate which products, services, and teams should be when and where.
   The true test? Your company is sophisticated if you’re using social data to adjust your supply chain in real time based on customer signals from checkins, tweets, and plancasts.
10. Real time reporting of revenues, costs and efficiency:  I’ve met with some of the most advanced teams, and they have clear reporting and can measure the increased revenues (over the total cost of the program) to tell their executives the true ROI of their business program.
    The true test? Real time dashboard measures the health of all social channels revenues, CSAT, sentiment and overall program costs.

We’ve done research on the roadmap for companies to reach these 10 levels of nirvana, but have found few companies that have done a few, or even a majority of them. If you know of any companies that have achieved five out of ten of these criteria, we’d love to know, please leave a comment.

Update: I asked folks in Twitter which brands are scoring well, here’s what they said (I’ve not done analysis to confirm):

• Intel’s Bob Duffy says they score over a 5
• Dell’s head of social Manish Mehta emailed me to tell me they are a 6.5 and will continue to improve

Watch our live broadcast from the press conference in china, which is just to begin. Everything looks great and we are expecting and exciting event. There are 3 cameras rolling and we have established several independent live streamings. Two internal only streams for our employees and remote locations in apj, where our managing directors are watching the press conference with local journalists (e.g. in japan, vietnam, singapore, malaysia, etc.) Also there are two external live webcasts, which are accessible globally. Some of the encodings are done directly onsite in beijing, some others are initiated in germany for saftey reasons and to guarantee a backup out of china. In addition journalists can dial in via telephone or listen to an audio only webcast.

The press conference will start 12:45 pm china standard time, which is 6:45 am in germany and 0:45 am est.

Feel free to join! You can find all information about the different dial in options on www.sap.com/press

For the past 2 months, I've been producing and directing an incredibly exciting fund-raising campaign film for the Courtauld Institute of Art. 

The Institute is pre-eminent in art history and many of it's alumni go on to hold some of the most distinguished posts as Art Historians, Curators, and Museum Directors at institutions across the world.

The Institute relies on a third of it's annual income from the generous donations of art lovers and philanthropists worldwide.  As you can imagine, a post graduate degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art doesn't come cheap, especially when you consider that to become a fully trained conservator for example takes around 7 years to complete! But without courses like these, our cultural heritage is going to suffer enormously, because many of these students that come directly from the Courtauld Institute of Art go on to work on and restore the wonderful paintings collections within the National Trust and English Heritage.

Without any kind of financial backing, it's be difficult for a young student to fund a course in art history at the Courtauld, particularly those taking MA's or post doctorate research.  While the money raised by this campaign film will of course be used to pay for the ongoing annual costs that keep the doors of the Institute open, it will also fund scholarships that will directly benefit a young student, who would otherwise may have not had the financial means to develop him/ herself in this way.

To find out more about the campaign and donate, please click here.

Since I am currently in the throws of putting the finishing touches to edit, I’m afraid I can't provide a link to the film as yet. But … my very next blog will provide a link and will look at how the final version of the film has been received by our very prestigious client.  What I can confidently say right now is that the film will really have the wow factor – it's not everyday that you get to film a Van Gogh in very close up detail!