Comments on: Social business and the valley of disinterest

By: Vaughan Rivett

Vaughan Rivett — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:46:29 +0000

Thanks for your post and for sharing those statistics with us. I am interested in how the uptake of ‘social’ seems to be with the extreme ends of the market, either smaller or larger. Based on the businesses I talk to I would expect that ‘social’ means different things according to the maturity of a company.

A smaller company may see social as being a cost effective way of marketing and engaging with customers and emerging markets. To them this is commonly where ‘social business’ starts and ends.

A larger company typically has a different view. While the smaller company has a focus on external engagement, the larger companies will also have an internal strategy. For instance, engaging employees more effectively, gaining social trust within the organisation, aligning business goals with social, incorporating social into its processes etc.

I like your use of the word ‘nimble’. This is probably the strongest characteristic of a social business. It is the differentiator which provides the competitive advantage, allowing companies to be more innovative while reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

You might be interested in reading a recent post of mine, maybe not my post, but more so the comments left be someone called Aroha. Aroha provides a reality check when it comes to human interaction. For a ‘social business’ it is much more than the way we use technology, it is all about people. People don’t do business with businesses, they do business with people. http://bit.ly/IYW6RJ

By: dominique2

dominique2 — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:52:39 +0000

I was just participating at the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco which was all about social in the enterprise (social selling to be specific). What really struck is me is how early it still is for social in the enterprise. I guess these numbers support it. More important than the difference between the large/small and medium companies is in my mind that apparently 80%-90% of enterprise do NOT think social business is important. So while in Silicon Valley it sometimes feels that the social race is over, truthfully in enterprise it is only just beginning. I wrote a blog about it where I expand on this idea and six things enterprises could do with social selling today: http://bit.ly/Hj8WZ0.

By: Aurelian Sonea

Aurelian Sonea — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:05:02 +0000

of course that small companies will always try to appear larger and better market entrants and do it primarily because of social tools, and some of them even do this and become a power market

By: WorkSimple

WorkSimple — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:39:29 +0000

Although social only now seems to making a mark, companies have been harnessing it’s power over the past 10-15 years…since the internet has come into existence. And yes. Absolutely social media gives voice to smaller companies and allows them to give the appearance of being a larger company. I’ve run a small business for 10 years and can speak to these kind of results. Social media is an amazing and powerful medium and it’s about time that people start taking notice!

Jocelyn Aucoin
WorkSimple

By: Mike Sheridan

Mike Sheridan — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:54:54 +0000

Interesting stats Jessica. I think you’re right, smaller organizations see a strong social presence as a way to narrow the gap with their larger competitors while larger companies can get caught up in the perceived dangers of social vs. the benefits. One think to expand on here is the idea that social business can be viewed as not just social technology in the enterprise but can also be looked at as social empowerment of the employee. Letting employees use the tools like information acquisition in real time, crowdsourcing decisions, contextual intelligence, and knowledge sharing that they use in their personal lives, in ways that creates deeper customer engagement and customer satisfaction in their company lives.

Mike Sheridan
Aspect
@MikeonUC