Even two years ago, most enterprise IT organizations were not spending time discussing "social" tools.  Facebook and Twitter were often looked at as employee-time-wasters and certainly not tools for enterprise collaboration.  But social had already entered the enterprise in the form of wikis and blogs.  It was common for companies to provide some digital employee profile on the intranet, but often functionality was limited to displaying a name, title, phone number, and photo.  Often employees were looking outside company-provided tools to build their profesional network, connecting to co-workers on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.  Without a company-provided secure means of collaborating with their co-workers, they looked to other ways of communiating. 

But companies are realizing that controling and using that social network information has value to the business.  Like many other aspects of technology, the consumerization of IT is present in social media.  Enterprises are taking what works in the consumer world and using it in the corporate world.  We've begun to see a shift in how social media is used as a tool within the enterprise and a number of social media tools for the enterprise have recently made their way onto the market.  Of course there is Salesforce Chatter - a very Facebook-like experience for Salesforce.com users that facilitates secure enterprise social networking.  Another offering is Jive - offering an "enterprise-scale social business solution" that includes social networking and collaboration tools.  Yammer offers many of these same collaboration and social networking tools, but lists "enterprise microblogging" as one its key features, offering a more Twitter-like tool for enterprise customers.  A quick review of the Wikipedia entry for Enterprise Social Software reveals that this is still a developing and losely defined set of tools with many large, like Google and Microsoft, as well as small players. 

We'd love to hear from you on your experiences with social and the enterprise.  Please join in with comments and join us for the "Social & The Enterprise" panel discussion at 4:45 on Thursday, January 13th.

This is just one out of a dozen of examples of companies struggling to understand the impact of social media in our day to day lives. Thriving companies are just beginning to measure the impact of social platforms when analyzing behaviors of prospects and learning or shaping customers opinions. And companies who don’t feel the need to decrypt new communication patterns and leverage this knowledge may lack with time some competitive edge…

On December 2nd, at noon, the Center for Digital Strategies is very fortunate to host Josh Bernoff, Senior VP at Forrester, (also co-author of Groundswell and Empowered). Josh will explain not only how companies should manage their customer relations, but also how customers and empowered workers are influencing these companies – sometimes even by re-defining their marketing strategy. Enjoy!
 

Though most Americans were talking about those commercials, it’s easy to underestimate the impact that social media is having on business – especially the business of marketing and advertising. This panel will help us understand and appreciate the importance of social media in driving engagement and how the desire of marketers to interact with customers is blurring the line between marketing and advertising. Tuck’s own John Marshall T’92, Professor of our Marketing in the Networked Economy class and Senior Partner & Director of Brand Strategy at Lippincott will be moderating the panel which will also include Doug Neil T’91, SVP, Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures and Collin Douma, Vice President Social Media, Proximity BBDO.

I think the most important question they will help us answer is how enterprises and their marketers should evolve their strategies to enhance customer engagement and how should the impact of engagement campaigns be measured. Will marketers shift budgets away from traditional forms of advertising to invest in viral campaigns? Do consumers really want to be Facebook friends with brands? Well, the Levi’s brand is “liked” by over 2 million people on Facebook!

If you didn’t think that the world of marketing is changing, you’re wrong…and for current and future marketers – you better be prepared for the social revolution. Just ask Isaiah Mustafa.
 

We hope you join the conversation and we look forward to hearing your thoughts.