Matt Donnelly: Social Media Mojo

Enterprising uses of social media

This week I'm staying in my own backyard of Boston to attend the Enterprise 2.0 conference, which is all about what you might call social business software and tools. All the big names are here -- IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP -- along with a few emerging vendors, including Box.net and their inspirational CEO, Aaron Levie.

So what's the state of Enterprise 2.0, or social media in the enterprise? Here's what you need to know:

 

• The focus is on social media tools for intranets. There's a lot of work to be done there. Not much focus on customer-facing sites yet.
• There's a debate -- most explicitly revealed in some sparring here between Microsoft and SocialText -- over whether social business software is evolutionary or revolutionary. Is it a game changer, or is it just a natural evolution of tools already in place? The audience here seems to lean toward the revolutionary point of view.
  
• Everyone here agrees that the younger workers are bringing consumer social media tools into the workplace. Younger workers are also wondering why the enterprise tools they have to use can't be as easy or fun to use. Yes, why not? Levie made this point quite forcefully in his session.
• ROI was mentioned, but one attendee made the important point that social media will be like the office telephone and e-mail -- everyone doubted their ROI at first but no one does now. The ROI comes from solving a real business need.
• Yes, and then there's analytics -- everyone also agreed that they were important. Many vendors are starting to bake these into their social media software product suites. A few are also offering consulting services to help enterprises set up the right metrics, which seems like an important idea.
• The role of the community manager seems more important than ever because software can't be effective unless it's understood and used. However, Levie and others made the point that software will be used only if employees find it useful, so there's a balance to strike. Again, it's vital that social media tools solve an actual business problem -- you can't build it and hope they come. Start small and avoid 'big bang' launches if possible.

Some of the sessions from the event are online at e2conf.com.