The impact of social capital on the future of work, Tim Hughes

In this article "The Neighborhood Effect: Implications of Hybrid Work" by Michael Arena, he talks about social capital and the impact on work today.

We all know the world has changed, the internet, mobile, social media and Covid 19 have all played their part.

What is social capital?

Michael explains there is a difference between human capital and social capital.

"Human capital is best described as the summarization of one's skills, experiences, and knowledge, while social capital is how well one is positioned to leverage these attributes."

Here at DLA Ignite we see there is a connection between using social strategically within a business and the creation of revenue / EBITDA.

Our definition of social selling is

Using your presence and behavior on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction.

Social capital is all about what you do on social, your contacts, your network, your audience, what you offer to those people and how they interact with that.

Social bonding and bridging social capital

Michael explains ...

"Strong bonding social capital occurs when individuals are highly interconnected with one another, such as within a team where each individual actively interacts with every other individual. In contrast, bridging social capital helps to facilitate across-group interactions."

If you think about this from a sales and marketing context. Employees tend to be connected to their colleagues within their department, but can gain greater benefit by being connected cross-line of business. This is a digital equivalent of meeting people at the water cooler. It creates digital cross-fertilization of ideas.

This also happens when people are digitally connecting with people outside of the business. This is where "best practice" ideas can be digitally shared company to company. Or in a social selling context. sales people can provide insight to gain conversations with target buyers.

Through connecting and building relationships employees can build influence in their chosen market or sector. Why is this interesting? Because employees can become the "go to" for businesses. Just think, having a sales team that are seen as experts who prospects walk towards to have their problems solved. It turns the old way of selling on its head.

Example from an Engineering company

Michael uses this example of an engineering company, where you can see the different departments in different colours. But you can see the bonding and the bridging.

In our world of sales, we talk about "grid selling" it could also be account-based marketing (ABM) this is where the people in the business connect internally, but also bridge to networks in their target markets.

Michael states

"During the early stages of the pandemic, this engineering organization seemed to be functioning well in the new, virtual working environment. Indeed, it was well positioned to innovate by having broad access to information and ideas through bridging social capital, and it had solid bonding social capital which helped to facilitate strong execution, while also enabling them to move quickly in building out new ideas."

The neighbourhood effect

This is where people leave, move departments and the social capital and bridging gradually breaks down. This impacts the cohesion of a business.

Michael says

"In fact, according to one survey, HR leaders believe employees are 41% less connected to colleagues and 32% less connected to their organization’s purpose, according to research from Reward Gateway. Perhaps this phenomenon is contributing to the Great Resignation, as employees are more willing to step away from their respective organizations and colleagues when they feel disconnected from them."

"Such fragmentation affects both the breadth and depth of work, because as broad based, bridging connections erode, an organization limits its access to new ideas and insights, resulting in greater insularity."

This is way that social is strategically critical to a business especially in the days of remote work, managing people through computer screens. As strong internal network, creates innovation and provides purpose.

Conclusion

Michael says

"Understanding the neighborhood effect and its implication on hybrid work is essential for HR professionals. Our centricity toward human capital solutions that narrow in on the development of an employee's skills, experiences, and knowledge must shift toward social capital centric solutions. We will need to become much more focused on how well someone is socially positioned to leverage his or her skills, experiences, and knowledge, and we must intentionally facilitate the building of bridge connections, in a hybrid world, to span the network voids across neighborhoods. Finally, we must cultivate an environment that will help to restore the local bonding connections that fuel trust and tacit learning.

That's a great conclusion by Michael, I think it's important to add that being social (social capital) is an expected way to work today. Employees, EXPECT to us social and collaboration tools, such as Slack and Teams to create social capital and bridging.

What is social selling?

Here at DLA Ignite, we define social selling as

"Using your presence and behavior on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction."

It's not witchcraft, it's enabling your salespeople to work from home, (or the office) and create conversations with prospects and customers. Conversations on social media and conversations that convert.

The problem with the name "social selling" is that people think that this is selling on social. All these pitches that you get on social are not social selling, they are spam.

The other thing you need to know about social selling is that this isn't about "putting out some videos" or "putting flowers on your profile" or "going viral" this is about revenue, EBITDA, you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

With anything you do on social there are two questions you need to ask

1. How many leads / meetings / conversations will I get from this post / blog / activity?

2. How much revenue / EBITDA am I getting as a business?

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

Andrew Ferrier who is the CEO of Display Technology Ltd and in this article it talks about why Display Technology have adopted social selling. His team have also created a social media strategy with help from our partner, Crux.

Their social media mission statement is

“We want to position ourselves as a forward-thinking, knowledgeable team of individuals who are all experts in our own right, therefore, collectively awesome!”

Andrew also says in that post

"Adopting this (social selling) strategy has taken all of us well outside of our comfort zones but the rewards we have seen in a short period of time have created an excitement within the business development team (new term for sales team).

Because of the nature of social media, quite often you can get instant results. Even if that is just a comment left on your post, or a like, or someone taking the time to want to connect with you.

The excitement around the sales team is infectious, it’s no longer a chore to reach out to the market place because the results can be instant and are there, right in front of you."

What sort of results can you expect?

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

Here at DLA Ignite, we work with our partners such as Crux, Little Bird Marketing, Funnel Amplified, Accelery, EDPE Consultants, etc. We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate provided by an independent qualification body (OfQual) and sponsored by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP).

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project