The 'social media thing': will it catch on in your business?

• Author: De Laurentis, Nicholas J.
• Position: The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business - Book review

The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business Authors: David B. Thomas and Mike Barlow Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Publication Date: 2011 Price: $45 ISBN-13:978-0-470-88602-1 Source: www.wiley.com

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Since the advent of "Enterprise 2.0," a phrase coined by Harvard School of Business professor Andrew McAfee to describe the impact of social networking, social computing, and social media on business, many organizations have been slow to adopt its use, doubting its practical value for business. And, among those who have adopted, many lack the strategy for leveraging the capabilities of these tools to elevate business results or for understanding how to measure success.

The authors of The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business address these issues, exploring the foundations of social media strategy, the structure required for success in using it, and its practical applications for business today.

Even though the authors' primary audience is leaders in marketing, human resources, public relations, information technology and web development teams, legal, product development, sales, and customer service, traditional records and information management engagement is also addressed in the book's discussion about tools for tracking, capturing, preserving, monitoring, and measuring social media content.

The Grand Scheme of Things

The first section of the book, written by Mike Barlow, focuses on the landscape of social media, its value for productivity, and the definition of "social enterprise." Barlow walks readers through the stereotypes and reservations people often have about social media. He also discusses its internal use for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Perhaps the best and most practical example the authors provide about the usefulness of social media is a 10-minute series of tweets and bet pings between Twitter and an organization's customer relationship management system that allowed integration among personnel in customer service, sales, marketing, and inventory and enabled them to detect a potential need and respond before an order was even placed.

Without social media, this process could take days--possibly weeks--of calls, messages, meetings, and numerous follow-up actions without any guarantee that these would result in the organization having a correct...