Add “social” to just about anything and you’ll boost interest in your topic by at least 50%. While many consultants appear to be employing that tactic to boost their interesting-ness, it’s not the case with the topic of social business.
As companies work to figure out what role social media will play with external marketing and communications, there’s a rapidly growing trend with progressive companies that are also viewing social media internally. By that I mean, they’re looking at social technologies as platforms to connect people within the company for the purposes of collaboration, tapping into the collective wisdom of the organization and bringing internal social media literacy to a level that enables external communications to scale.
Implications for social business run the gamut of organizational structure from operations to customer service to accounting. And of course, marketing and PR. The fact that social technology can facilitate connections across groups of people world-wide is pretty amazing, especially with Facebook nearing 1 billion users. What’s equally interesting (to me) is the application for surfacing and connecting internal company expertise, collaboration and the multiplier effect of scaling internal resources for external brand social media participation.
If you’re also interested in the topic of social business, here are a few resources I’ve found useful.
Presentations from Altimeter Group, Edelman, Dachis Group, Ant’s Eye View, and IBM.
Also take a look at Rawn Shah’s excellent presentation: Understanding Social Business Excellence.
For those of you who want to dig deeper into the principles and guts of social business, here are 5 excellent books on the topic by authors: Michael Brito, Anthony J. Bradley, Mark P. McDonald, Mike Barlow, David B. Thomas, Jay Baer, Amber Naslund, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Peter Kim.
Books on Social Business
Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization
Michael Brito
The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees
Anthony J. Bradley, Mark P. McDonald
The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business
Mike Barlow, David B. Thomas
The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social
Jay Baer, Amber Naslund
Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company
Dion Hinchcliffe, Peter Kim (Out May 1, 2012)
I will likely update this post with reports, infographics and events in the coming week. So be sure to revisit the post next Monday.
Even if it has been many years since I studied Sociology and Organizational Development at University, I’d still be interested as a marketer in the trend towards social business. Think of the transformations that have happened across the globe by connecting common interests through social channels. What transformation is possible for companies that could release the same spirit of change and improvement within their own organizations, amongst partners and customers?
Rather than looking at this from a pure OD perspective, I’m seeing the marketing opportunities. As our agency TopRank matures and brings on more consulting expertise, we’re definitely elevating our practice areas to include the marketing and public relations aspects of social business. In fact, we’re already doing consulting in the area of online marketing optimization for social business initiatives right now.
To me, social business is a natural evolution of how companies can internalize the social tools and means of collaborating that are becoming the norm for communications with the next generation. It’s a way to tap into expertise more efficiently and effectively to boost organizational intelligence as well as the ability to act more competently as a brand advocate on social platforms.
When it comes to marketing and communications, one social media manager and a social strategist can only do so much. Most companies don’t even have one full-time person dedicated to their social media efforts. What if a company could educate, train and support internal staff to facilitate certain types of external social media communications and even support ala Best Buy’s Twelpforce?
What do you think? How would your company do in an assessment of organizational social media readiness? Are you already leveraging internal social tools like salesforce.com Chatter or similar applications for internal social collaboration?
You can read about how SEO and Content Marketing affects Social Business in my book Optimize, coming out soon. (Wiley) Get a preview of chapters here.
Thanks for the resources Lee, excellent content. I’m looking forward to getting ‘Optimized’ soon. A couple of these books look worthy of a sit-down as well.
Thanks for the resources Lee, excellent content. I’m looking forward to getting ‘Optimized’ soon. A couple of these books look worthy of a sit-down as well.
Thanks Christopher – I’m looking forward to you reading Optimize 🙂 Glad you liked the roundup on social business.
Thanks Lee! This is a powerful collection of resources. Thanks for curating!
Glad you like Steve – lots to learn in this area.
Excellent information and resources. Thanks Lee!
You bet Jacquie, thank you for checking it out 🙂
Thanks for mentioning Dachis Group and our book, Lee! Looking forward to yours as well.
You bet Peter – just about anything can be optimized 🙂
Thank you so much for this
comprehensive message! Yes indeed most companies seem to be behind and quite a
few of today’s fortune 500 should read this article and hire a full time team
to ponder and reflect on the study carefully presented here while implementing
an internal “social corporate culture” (à la Zappos).
Transformation is mandatory
while a clear vision of company culture should be defined with a “one
heart, one mind” approach, where everyone works in a cooperative way in
order to first quantify “social results” inside! Thank you for this
report and making it available for us to download. Bruno P. Gebarski, Hamburg,
Germany.
Glad you liked it Bruno – there’s a major shift in business and social happening and these companies are leading in many ways.
Lee, I have been reading your blog for sometime now and always appreciate the value that you deliver to your readers. Thanks for providing some fantastic resources. I will be doing some extra reading today! 🙂
Thanks Julia, I’m glad it’s helpful to you.
Very good info, thanks for sharing. I’m wondering where the stat in your first sentence came from? Was it one of the resources? I’d be interested to read about the testing behind that! 🙂
Hey Leigh, do you mean “Add “social” to just about anything and you’ll boost interest in your topic by at least 50%.” That’s a made-up, cynical stat. It’s not real. 🙂
Lee,
Great collection of resources. Would be interesting to see your roundup on current technologies companies could use in order to knock down barriers between communication, both between departments and between the project life-cycle between development stages. As many people are grasping towards creating truly integrated social businesses, I think there’s often a lack of information out there about solutions that can make it a reality (and here I am trying to change that!). Thanks again,
Luke Winter
Community Manager
http://www.onedesk.com