Social Media Success in the Enterprise

Let’s face it. Social media in the enterprise and social networking are two almost completely different animals. Some of their functions may be similar, but it’s the application of these features that tend to blow your typical social network out of the water.

If you know of people who hear “social media” and think Facebook or LinkedIn, do us all a favor and have them visit this blog post. Thank you for your support.

The fact of the matter is many of those in decision-making positions at companies, non-profits and/or government agencies either see the value of social media through applications like Facebook and LinkedIn, but don’t know how to fit it into their own businesses; or they’ve heard about social media, but they don’t see how it could work for them.

In devouring a recent study (July 2008) from The McKinsey Quarterly (free registration is required to see the whole report) on enterprise social media, I quickly determined that if you want to benefit from it, you need to be in that former group — the “see the value” group. What’s more, you need to understand the “how” of social media to truly get something out of it. But don’t sweat it if you’re in the latter group, as all is certainly not lost. More details after the jump.

One of the survey’s many interesting points is that you have to know how to such technologies can work within your enterprise for them to not just succeed, but to make your company thrive as a result. While that may seem obvious, it’s really about pushing one’s knowledge base above and beyond what can be learned from a Facebook or LinkedIn.

To that end, here’s some of the take-aways I had from the study:

• Enterprises use social media — and as an extension, Web 2.0 technologies — more frequently for internal than for external purposes. I say internal collaboration is great, but to truly take social media to its next level, it needs to be use for interfacing with customers and partners/suppliers. And according to the study, more are doing just that in 2008 than they were in 2007.
• Unfortunately, a few others are actually abandoning their use of social-media technologies. The reason? A lack of understanding at the top levels of an enterprise about how they work, which leads to a lack of participation among employees, customers, etc.
• Inversely, “(t)hose who express satisfaction with these tools — either overall or solely for internal or external purposes — use them more intensively and say they are less likely to stop using them.” And of course, satisfaction comes from understanding. For example, at the one-quarter of companies surveyed that are mostly satisfied with their deployment of Web 2.0/social media technologies, more than half of all employees are using them.

I’m sure that most of the execs at companies using social media have “bought into” the concept. But they need to take it a step further — they should understand what social media can do for them, and then communicate that to employees. What’s more, as social media gains traction, “it could transform the way companies organize and manage themselves, leading to what some have dubbed Enterprise 2.0.”

I don’t know if companies need to go quite that far. Sure — some may benefit from Enterprise 2.0, but I’d bet most are probably fine with just adding social-media tools to facilitate interactions among employees, customers, partners and/or suppliers. The key, though, is understanding what these technologies can do for the enterprise.

For more, I encourage you to register at the McKinsey Quarterly site and read the whole report (it can be downloaded as a PDF as well). There’s too much good information in it’s 10 pages to go over here. I assure you, it’s a good read. And it’s guiding us here at Portalfuze to educate as well as build, when it comes to social networking and the enterprise.

So … what if you’re in that “heard about social media, but don’t see how it could work for you” group? A great start in piquing your interest is to download the report and go over it. It’s not “Social Media 101,” but I hope it is enough to get the ol’ mental gears grinding. I’ll be covering more of the “how it can work for you” angle in this blog in upcoming weeks, though. Stay tuned for those posts.