Does the Social Shoe Fit?
Do smaller businesses have any interest in being social businesses?
Social business is getting a lot of buzz in the “corporate” circles.
Not surprisingly, IBM is leading the charge with its social networking software,
IBM Connections which lets companies access their professional network, including colleagues, customers, and partners.
The program is designed for companies with thousands of employees. in fact, Nigel Fenwick of Forrester said in a recent article in Backbone magazine that:
“With social networks, numbers count…you have to have a large population for social networking to work well; 10,000-plus employees minimum to get a collaboration network working properly.”
10,000 plus!!! Are we talking companies here or countries?
Do smaller companies have a chance of being a social businesses?
The difference between corporations and SMB’s is that SMB’s don’t need a dedicated social networking software like IBM Connections. They already have them; in fact, a lot of them: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc..
Google+ is especially useful because of it ability to manage teams with Circles and collaborate with Hangouts.
In our eagerness to have businesses adopt social media, we’ve focused so much on getting small companies to adopt the tools that we didn’t demonstrate clearly enough that they weren’t an end in themselves.
In many cases, we were putting lipstick on a pig.
The biggest reason that over half of businesses abandon social media within the first six months, is that it’s seen as an extra task that they have neither the time nor knowledge to pursue.
These are the same companies that start employee incentive programs, company newsletters and customer loyalty projects then let them fall to the wayside because no one wants to take responsibility and the ROI isn’t obvious.
These companies weren’t social before the advent of Facebook, and they’re not likely to be social regardless of how many shiny new tools we throw at them.
“Social must be a mindset before it can become an operational mode.” – Olivier Blanchard
What do you think? Are small companies seeing social media as tools for tweaking their social businesses?
About Ray Hiltz
Ray Hiltz is a Social Media Strategist with management roots in restaurant, hotel and performing arts. A strong proponent for the power of collaborative communication and "humanized" digital networking, Ray writes about social media, social business and Google Plus. His clients include hotels, restaurants, consulting firms, entrepreneurs, writers and individuals just trying to make sense of "social". Ray is a popular speaker on Social Media, Social Business and Google+.
