Let's Move Away From Social Media and Get Down to Business
Sometimes, it feels like terms we thought had some meaning really don't apply as much anymore.
Take the term "social media," as an example.
It's like every SEO marketer decided that "social media," was the ticket to a sweet consulting gig. Just look at Twitter. You find a lot of social media experts with tens of thousands of followers. Kind of feels like you are looking down a street filled with hucksters.
Social media once served as a term to help people understand the concepts that have risen over the past several years. It helped people understand the tools that can be used to gain a web presence. But the term took too broad of a meaning.
At some point, a nervous rush ensued. Everyone needed a social media strategy. In the process, the term and the rush for "social media" adoption became ripe for satire:
A More Holistic Approach
But that's only part of the story. The other, more accurate story, reflects a trend toward a more holistic approach in the enterprise. Social media may only represent the tools we use but social computing reflects a deeper view of how the enterprise will adopt this new generation of lightweight technologies. We disagree that executives will continue to shun the term "social." If they continue to do so, they will be swept out by a generation of far more modern managers.
Still, companies lack the capabilities and the discipline to develop operations that integrate lightweight applications into the enterprise. They need help. They use the new tools available but lack the experience for implementation. There is a need for more community managers who can help with the overall approach. These people are not "social media" managers. They use social media tools to help join a culture that is fragmented in part due to the "data silo" approach that has become predominant in the enterprise.
We spoke with the people behind two consulting companies about their approach to social computing in the enterprise: Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 and the Dachis Group.
Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0
Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 is a new consulting company started by Dion Hinchcliffe and Michael Krigsman. The enterprise, in their view, is still wary of social computing. They are primarily concerned about risk, control and trust.
To succeed with social computing, the enterprise has to work toward three major goals:
- Address key business concerns
- Demonstrate business value
- Acquire social computing competency
Both Krigsman and Hinchcliffe are respected members of the Enterprise 2.0 community. Hinchliffe is the founder of Hinchliffe and Associates. Krigsman leads Asuret, a company that focuses on project intelligence and risk navigation. They work exclusively with Socialtext, led by Ross Mayfield. Socialtext predates the Enterprise 2.0 movement.
Their approach is a combination of Hinchliffe's 20 years of experience as an enterprise architect and Krigsman's long time work examining IT failure. Sociaitext is their defacto technology environment, which they chose after a review of about 70 companies.
The company begins its project by gathering intelligence, followed by tool integration, community management development and a degree of project intelligence to define the risks involved.
"We gather strategic intelligence to avoid the downsides and reduce project waste," Krigsman said in an interview. "We leverage best of breed social tools and build social computing competency."
Here's a full look at their approach:
Dachis Group
Dachis sees the enterprise going through an age-old transformation. Traditional software is essentially adapting to a new age. They call their approach: "Social Business Design."
Social Business Design, as they view it, is the process of creating socially calibrated and dynamic business systems, process and culture. That's a mouth full but it reflects the enterprise demand for measured systems that show people are being productive and getting the work done.
Unlike Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0, Dachis is technology agnostic, partnering with vendors when it makes sense.
The Dachis approach puts a large emphasis on the need to focus on process, culture and technology. This means creating a plan for systems architecture, helping companies adapt to the cultural changes involved and all the aspects of the enterprise that need to be taken into consideration. This means understanding issues about governance and having a pretty keyed in measurement strategy.
Here's their slide deck. It's a long one but it moves along. Pretty good, overall:
Last Words About Social Media
Social media is still a term we use. But it has become so cliche that it is somewhat of a turn off. It's important to distinguish that the people who have championed the cause for social computing are often deeply involved with the "social media" community. They are important people in the enterprise who should be sought for leadership in bringing the world of social computing to the ways we conduct business.
Social media sounds too much like buzz hype. We need to get down to business. Social computing is a good thing. But even better is the proof that these practices work so we may use tools that help get the work done.
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Great take on this topic. I recently removed the words 'social media' from my online profiles. I found that they hurt my ability to be taken seriously when trying to engage very technical folk. I have also seen a sudden shift as organizations try and make web 2.0 (another new cliche)communications tools more palatable to all players. Seeing 'new media,''social collaboration,' and 'social networking.'
There seems to be increasing push-back on the term 'social media', but I wonder if this is just within the echo chamber.
It also seems like 'social business' is fast on the rise as the latest buzz word for the industry.
After a while in hypes (a new means to achieve the same goal), means are mistaken for goals. Then people start criticising the hype because their perception of it (it is a goal) doesn't allow for a business case, or ROI
Then, the people who think it's just a means start redefining the meaning or even completely rebranding the initial term that has become tainted
Julie Cottin has a great slap-in-the face blog post (http://brandtwist.com/?p=982). This one post helps us all sober up too (tnx David). I smell another blog post...
its the evolution of social media, not the extinction
social media has always been about a more holistic approach, its where we moved beyond blogging before twitter. the emphasis on any tools or technology is merely a mistake of new entrants, not a fundamental problem of the idea or space itself. its a challenge that needs to be created.
as early entrants into the social media space, many are growing tired of the term, turned off by new entrants who are bastardizing it and using it for a gold rush moment, but this isnt the case of a few bad apples spoiling the whole barrel.
the real challenge is all the people trying to create a new namespace to refer to the same sort of principles and ideals as are embodied in the area we refer to as social media, whether applied to enterprise 2.0 (which is more of an IT focus then a social/human focus despite containing elements of it) and/or a shift to calling this something that one person, and one firm wants to own (I understand from public interactions with members of the dachis group that they are trademarking the phrase "social business design")
Now, there is owning an industry and a movement by being real leaders, and then there is the kind of owning which is about spending lots of money on lawyers and preventing other people from talking about the space through trademark protection and cease and desist letters. If anyone wants to own a space again, as O'Reilly attempted to do with Web 2.0, I dont think many people are going to be supporting it as a valid term to use to describe what is happening on a macro level.
While social business design is more prescriptive and descriptive of the work being done as opposed the broader meme that describes whats happening at a macro level, if anyone company wants to 'own' the language around it, it isnt a meme or a description I can support as an industry standard.
meant challenge that needs to be addressed in opening graph, not that needs to be created - DOH!
The jargon itself isn't the problem, it is the behaviour underlying it. As with the early days of Web 1.0, people are doing a lot of experimenting, and jumping on bandwagons. Some will survive; most won't. Ultimately, businesses need to decide:
a) are they the sort of company that needs to be seen at the leading edge, in which case they should be mucking about even before it is clear with the profit potential will be, or
b) are they better off watching for best practices to emerge and figuring out how those practices and tools can help them in a concrete way.
Most will fall into the second camp, but invariably there's a frenzied rush to get into the first.
Let see where we are in the hype curve of Social Media Marketing?
Near the top? Twitter seems so
Over the top and descending fast? Maybe
That video was hilarious. I've turned down social media projects recently because everyone and their mom thinks they could benefit from a social media campaign. Truth is, some industries just don't need to be in social media.
So funny that this article is just NOW being written. This past year at SXSWi, every other person I met would ask me what I do and I would reply a UI Engineer/Hacker and I would ask them what they do and they would say "I'm in 'Social Media'" and I would cringe and walk away...politely.
The term is a buzzworthy as Ajax is in web development and we should see an evolution of the term as it is almost "scammy" at this point..
Sure...in addition we find social media to be one of the best tools for "unlocking" the value/offerings of an enterprise and getting their intellectual property into the market and getting attention (paid)for it.
Whatever removes "friction" from accessing a firm's IP is good.
It took awhile before the ROI on the fax/web/email/etc was uncovered.
....oh yea...Twitter is the only way to stay current in people's lives, (ie, on their smartphones)now ......
I think even the word "social" is still foreign to many business owners. It doesn't help by them seeing how social media is predominately used by the masses which is to say poorly.
The tools are certainly in place but I am not sure if the culture is. When we start to shift toward sharing quality experiences about quality products and services and consumers begin to demand businesses to share more about their offerings then we will see business owners climb on board.
Once quality becomes the norm and the not the exception, then maybe we will see mid to small sized business embrace it's enormous potential.
excellent, both-feet-on-the-ground post and attached slideshows were really well done... good wrap-up for insiders and primer for E2.0 novices!
Social media is growing very fast.
AMEN! I have been too many events that tell everyone "just tweet it, that's the key to your success." So, not true. Especially for small biz entrepreneurs who have limited time, resources to meet their target market. Key is back to basics marketing. What's your customer? What do they want? What do you have? How do you tell them?
The value of blogs is to give information. The value of the rest of social media????? Maybe to share that information, but in reality, it's become a "look at me" or a whine fest.