As the world becomes more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent and the population continues to embrace social computing, today’s enterprises face the dawn of a new era – the era of the Social Business. Just as the Internet changed the marketplace forever, the integration of social computing into enterprise design represents another enormous shift in the landscape. Organizations that successfully transform into a Social Business can potentially reap great benefits – among them the ability to deepen customer relationships, drive operational efficiencies and optimize the workforce.

According to a recent Gartner prediction report: “By 2014, 90% of organizations will support corporate applications on personal devices. Support for corporate applications on employee-owned smartphones is impacting an increasing number of organizations and will become commonplace in four years. The main driver for adoption of mobile devices will be employees who prefer to use private consumer smartphones or notebooks for business, rather than using old-style limited enterprise devices. Enterprises will no longer be able to standardize on one or a few corporate mobile device platforms, but instead will have to support a variety of mobile platforms for which they will have to choose an approach that enables selected corporate applications while enforcing IT policies through management tools and capabilities. Organizations that do not support personal devices and fail to set and enforce policies will experience an increased number of security exposures and incidents.”

These tools are asking our workers to change the way in which they work, and the transparency with which they do that work. It is shifting business and leadership culture in ways enterprises have not seen in the past. It’s new. It’s scary. And it’s hard. And the part that’s hard is NOT the technology. The part that’s hard is the culture, the behaviors, the new skills we want workers to have innately.

Businesses are feeling the impact from employee social networking communication. Newly emerging issues surrounding social network communication, such as loss of intellectual property, compliance violations, and HR lawsuits, as well as productivity of the workforce all threaten the health of the business causing loss of revenue, reputation and potentially, customers. Corporations today are spending billions of dollars to mitigate such risks from email, instant messaging and other established methods of communication.

In a recent market research social networking related exposure incidents for US companies have increased to seventeen percent in 2009 from twelve percent in 2008, and is expected to continue to grow. In a separate market research, twenty four percent of the companies indicated that they have disciplined an employee for his or her activities on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Guidelines and policy alone are not sufficient in eliminating the risks.

With proper planning it may be possible to take advantage of the new media’s strengths and mitigate the risks that your company will end up in the headlines.

Companies including Gatorade and Dell are turning to technology to take advantage of what’s being said about them on Twitter and Facebook. A look at the options facing business leaders debating between inexpensive listening tools and more pricey data mining software like Crimson Hexagon (one of our partners). (Source: Bloomberg)

Social media can be a powerful tool for communicating with your customers and reaching new prospects. A survey by Mashable found that 84 percent of social media programs don’t measure return on investment (ROI). It also found that many individuals and businesses don’t know how to measure the ROI of their social media strategies and campaigns.

Social Media ROI: The Conversation

I was fortunate to be included in a panel discussion on the subject of ROI.  The event was produced by the Sacramento Chapter of the Social Media Club with the intention of covering the topics:

• Best practices in social media measurement
• How to calculate ROI with social media campaigns
• When social media should be a part of a comprehensive communication strategy

Innovative marketing pro, Gordon Fowler, President & CEO, 3Fold Communications (@Gordon3Fold) and Josh Hilliker, Director of Social Media, Intel-GE Care Innovations (@JoshProStar) were co-panelists.  Josh is the Director of Social Media at Care Innovations, an Intel-GE Company. He is responsible for the company’s Social Media strategy, online communities and product evangelism. Gordon is CEO of one of the few growing interactive marketing and public relations firms in Sacramento.  He is a thought leader in brand strategy and generational marketing.

With well over a hundred attendees the conversation de-railed a bit into tools and tactics.  It proved to be somewhat of a frustrating experience for some, considering the need for strategic thinking.  The audience did get what they wanted.  I’m just not sure it’s the information that was (is) really needed. There were plenty of salient points covered and I encourage you to view the Social Media ROI panel discussion in its entirety here.

Hopefully, we see these events as only the beginning of the dialogue. Continuing the conversation is the first step toward collaboration, real results and real answers.  I’ve curated some resources and will provide some perspective with the hope that it will be discussed and augmented by those of you that want to know where and how you should be spending your time online in social media.

You can view  see the  conversation on twitter  from the event by searching #smcsac on Twitter.

Much of our thinking applies first to larger companies.  The notes I prepared for the panel discussion apply to any size organization, as the membership of the Sacramento Social Media Club skews toward smaller businesses.

15 Principles of Agile Social Business Projects:

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable social business solutions.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in the delivery lifecycle. Agile processes harness change for the stakeholder’s competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working solutions frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Stakeholders and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a delivery team is face-to-face conversation.

Businesses and organizations have become more strategic about how they engage with their customers, employees, partners, and followers to build long-lasting relationships. Social media has matured into a meaningful solution for businesses to develop those relationships whether it’s through online communities, blogs, tweeting, or other channels. Above all, companies that actively provide value through these channels to their community gain tangible business benefits that leads to better communication, stronger brands and significant cost savings.

Join Acquia and our partners for our upcoming event and networking reception where your peers will gather to hear from individuals who successfully use social business technology to engage with their communities. Attendees will hear from industry experts from organizations including PayPal and C7, and a special presentation from Dries Buytaert, the Founder and Project Lead of one of the largest online technology communities, drupal.org. Learn best practices for building your social business strategy and gain tips for choosing the right solution to meet your objectives – without blowing the budget.

Here’s one way to find out how engaged your enterprise is. Use the Capability Maturity Model.

Most companies somewhere between nowhere (level 1) and really trying hard with some successes (level 3). Very few companies are at a level 4 (don’t need our help).

Where do you think your company stands?

The deal will give Jive the ability to offer enterprises an easy way to make Microsoft Word and Outlook instantly social and tightly integrated with Jive.

For those who’ve wondered whether it’s really possible for an enterprise to embrace Social Business, you can stop wondering. With this acquisition, Jive is bringing Social Business to you, where you work, to your desktop, to the applications and emails you live in eight hours a day. Our customers no longer have to choose between collaborating on Jive’s Social Business platform or the familiar Microsoft Office UI.

“The integration is very deep,” Antebi says. “You can see edits as they happen. This is social document collaboration as opposed to old school document management where you check in and check out a document and come back two hours later and wait for it. That’s the ’90s.” - Jive Software

Social media can be a powerful tool for communicating with customers and reaching new prospects. Despite the rising popularity, a survey by Mashable found that that many individuals and businesses are unsure how to measure the return on investment (ROI) of their social media strategies and campaigns.  It also found that 84 percent of social media programs simply don’t measure ROI.

There are already over 100 people signed up for this event presented by the Sacramento Chapter of the Social Media Club, and C7 Group Managing director Mark Bean will be on the featured panel of Sacramento-area social media experts who will discuss why new media may call for new methods of measurement, including:

• Best practices in social media measurement
• How to calculate ROI with social media campaigns
• When social media should be a part of a comprehensive communication strategy

C7group is excited to launch the first webinar, Why the CEO Hates Facebook and What The Enterprise Must Learn from It, in our social business webinar series.

Topic:

• 33% Higher Customer Satisfaction
• 27% Reduction in Email
• 26% Less time spent in meetings
• 34% Less time to find information and experts

(Results from Jive Software Customer Survey)