Social Commerce: If You Build It, They Will Come...Eventually #wbf10

You've set up your Facebook page; you hired some kids to Tweet and blog for you. And you have a "social media" strategy session every week. It's all well and good, but when do the dollars start to roll in, and how? We tend to be impatient with movements of any kind. Heck, it takes decades for one persecuted minority or another to achieve civil rights. But companies with stakeholders need change right away. And if you're going to have a social media strategy, it needs to pay off, like, yesterday.

But take a step back, and think about the process you're going through. Remember how long it took for eCommerce to take off? The zeitgeist had to catch up with itself. Back in 1999, start-up upon start-up assured investors that eProfits were right around the corner. Most of those start-ups went the way of Boo.com and Geocities. When the panic set in, Amazon's stock plummeted along with the rest. But look at Amazon today. Exactly what the seers predicted came about, and today, just ten years later, Amazon and scads of other survivors are a seamless part of the economic fabric and marketplace. Shopping online isn't even special anymore. The question you're asking is whether the social media revolution will play out the same way. When will your social media strategy turn into social commerce and justify the resources you're pouring into it?

Charlene Li thinks about this question on a regular basis. That's why we invited the Founder of Altimeter Group and resident of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People 2010 list to speak at World Business Forum 2010. Li knows everyone is desperate to figure out how to make a buck off social media. But she isn't afraid of the process--she revels in it. The author of Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Change the Way You Lead contends that to become as ubiquitous as simple eCommerce, social commerce must pass through four phases that constitute the The Rise of Social Media:

1. Social for the Sake of Being Social: This is where most companies are now;
2. Enlightened Engagement: "In this phase, social processes extend horizontally across the organization to spawn new outside-in processes.  Companies learn how to listen, test and learn and then respond.  Tactics include integrating social into a Web site, changing customer service to include social listening, and using community feedback in the design of products and services";
3. Store of the Community: "As product development organizations learn that they can trust the voice of the community, open innovation processes accelerate and your customers, suppliers, and partners all help to determine the four Ps of marketing. Which Products/services are delivered, what Price is paid, how it’s Promoted, and finally, how you Position within existing and new channels to maximize presence";
4. Frictionless Commerce: This is the final step, which, like eCommerce before it, will result in the "redesign of the shopping experience to improve the commerce experience."

So while there may be no definitive answer as to when your social media strategy will pay off, you have to be a little Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams about it (or more in the real world, a little Jeff Bezos). If you build it, they will come, eventually. As it was ten years ago, the zeitgeist has to catch up with itself.