final version: social media for business intro

June 18, 2009

social media for business

employee engagement + internal communications

welcome!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

What’s this group about?

• Goals:

• Promote information sharing among business professionals in NYC

• Provide a forum for networking among complementary business segments


Definition of “Social Media”

• My attempt: “Efficient two-way many-to-many communication and media exchange”


Mainstream Perception of Social Media?

From: DespairWear


Sort of...

• Intersection of many discrete fields:

• Information theory

• Computer science

• Publishing

• Sociology

• Management theory

• ....and many more


Part of a larger picture

• The social web - and by extension, social media - is one part of the larger picture: the evolution of network computing.

• III (“International Information Infrastructure” aka the internet): how computers are connected

• WWW (“World Wide Web”): how documents are connected

• GGG (“Giant Global Graph”): how people are connected


Visualizing the social graph

• Most online communities consist of three social rings:

• A central “core” of densely connected individuals

• Loosely connected second ring

• Third ring of disconnected nodes, or “lurkers”

See: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-blogging-community-outreach


http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-blogging-community-outreach

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-blogging-community-outreach

A closer look...• “Inner core” is highly clustered

• This group is deeply invested in the community’s success

• Typically <20% of community members

• Field of Social Network Analysis (SNA) measures paths of: information, ideas, influence.

• Developing a successful community is more than growing the number of members or relationships: it’s about the type, strength, and value of those relationships.

• Value of relationships: social capital


What does it look & feel like?

• Highly distributed, decentralized, and democratic

• Extremely low latency: approaches real-time

• Increased information efficiency



• Maps virtual relationships to “real life” relationships (meetups, SMS, geolocation)

• Self-organized

• Increasingly mobile-enabled



• Organizational information exchange becomes less vertical: diagonal, trending to horizontal.


Political effects

• Information efficiency creates downward shift of power & influence, increased transparency

• This is happening within organizations of all sizes: small businesses, the enterprise, countries


How does it work?

• Platform-based

• Infrastructure is largely based on cloud hosting, API’s, and small client apps


Some industries have been disrupted early

• Print and broadcast media

• PR/Communications

• Advertising


Highly disruptive to traditional media

Inspired by Fred Wilsonhttp://slideshare.net/fredwilson


http://slideshare.net/fredwilson

http://slideshare.net/fredwilson

Some industries are only starting to feel the effects

• Legal

• Finance

• Education

• Government

• Health care


What does it mean to companies and organizations?

• Customer engagement becomes conversational

• Personality attracts customers. Letting individuals within an organization speak on their own gives customers and content consumers something to relate to.

• Giving up control can be difficult/risky but has big potential for payoffs



• Brand identity and customer experience become deeply intertwined



• Almost all aspects of business will be impacted:

• Operations

• PR/Sales/Marketing

• Recruiting & On-boarding

• Employee communications

• Information management

• Project management


New Challenges

• Many legal considerations

• Brand & IP management

• Disclosures & representations by employees

• Usage guidelines


What tools are available?


Source: FredCavazza.net


Questions?


final version: social media for business intro

Business