Social Media: Enterprise Snake Oil?

I’ve been wondering about Social Media and whether or not to make a concerted push with Social Media as a business proposition to companies. I’m excited by the prospect of it, but also, there’s something that holds me back.

What is “Social Media”?

Ok, let’s just get clear as to what we’re talking about: blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, microblogs etc in fact, anything where content generates conversation and interaction.  Conversation/Interaction is the social bit and content is the media bit. There’s an interesting article on wikipedia about Social Media so head there for more info.

Social Media in the Enterprise

Companies are beginning to wake up to two facts:

1. External – Companies can no longer control the conversation about their company/brand/service (at least not completely)
2. Internal – Companies can no longer control the internal conversation between employees

These 2 types of Social interaction in the enterprise are very different and handled by different business processes. The external is a marketing and PR function and the internal is an HR issue, although other factors including R&D may well play major parts.

Internal Issues

The major reason I believe why Social Media has not taken off is that a lot of the functions of social media are performed within the enterprise by Email, and by IM tools.  Most companies have email lists, and some have internal IM tools, and everyone has a phone number, so why do we need to worry about Social Media?  There are times when shared documents and the like would be preferable, but most people are savvy enough to know how to manage that (even if it may not be perfect).

The workforce is beginning to rely on Social Media outside of the workplace, and as such, are becoming much more aware of it’s usefulness. Email became prevalent because people found that it was better for communicating than fax or letter.  If the Social Media tools begin to outshine email and phone for usefulness, then why not bring them in-house? It makes sense doesn’t it?

There is no sense in my view in just “implementing” social media in the enterprise. If it has no purpose (note: I didn’t say ROI, I said purpose) to the enterprise, then don’t bother implementing it. It has to have a reason for being there.

I’ve watched a very large company throw a trial of forums, wikis and blogs at a trial group of people, with zero help and zero suggestion and watched how those that understood it took over and those that didn’t ignored it. It became a pointless exercise in pushing people apart and not collaborating.

To implement Social Media, you must have a reason for implementing it – e.g. knowledge sharing, information sharing, organising better meetings, providing a better working atmosphere.  Part of the implementation will be training as well. No training, and the tools will almost certainly fail.

ROI: a perspective on Social Software

The Thorny issue of social software ROI

Worth a read imho.  Especially as I think the post it references opens up the main points of Social Media ROI very well.

My business

What does a company want? They want to know that what they are doing is going to add value. At the moment, I’m not sure that many companies, apart from the very large ones, will benefit from internal social media installations. Why? Because it’s only the big ones that will see a massive benefit from social media.

I’d love to be able to go into companies and help them to implement social media and software in the enterprise. Currently, I’m unconvinced of exactly how to do it, and exactly how to sell it. I can see certain ROIs but I can also see barriers to implementation, that may well require significant investment and retraining.

Snake Oil

Many people that I see blogging about “Social Media” are the same who discussed SEO and who are all aiming for the wrong part of the market for the enterprise. The enterprise won’t touch that with a barge pole, because it reminds them too much of Snake Oil.

As an external marketing tool, I think Social Media is very important for every company, but that’s another blog, for another time.

Update: Trying to break the internet – SpamBack Exists

Just taken a look at extremefeedback on twitter and on friendfeed and noticed rather a lot of posts – more than I started with, that’s for sure!

This unfortunately proves a sad point about social aggregation software.  It’s very easy to create information overload and ghost posting of the same data – SpamBack.

Bring on the tools to search my own internet instead of the whole internet.   Otherwise, we’re in trouble!