Social Business: Analysis – Part 2C: Reasons To Participate In Social Business: Internal Reasons And Avoiding Social Business

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business
• Internal considerations
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided the reasons to participate in social business into three categories:

1. Marketing
2. Reach & Community
3. Internal reasons & Reasons to avoid social business

Today, we’ll look at prevalent marketing-related reasons to participate in social business.

• Attractive Workplace If your company embraces social business and values its importance, you’ll make yourself a more attractive employer, especially to younger generations.
• Employee Engagement By allowing employees to understand social business and to engage with coworkers and customers online, you’re able to create a more engaged workforce.
• Business Intelligence Just like using social media can help you uncover more details about your brand and your customers, it can also help you stay up-to-date on what’s happening in your industry. Keeping up with industry news and with your competitors allows you to identify threats and opportunities as soon as they break. You’ll also be able to learn from competitors’ actions within the social space.

Social business isn’t for everyone. Many of the reasons we walked through the last few weeks will apply to many businesses, hopefully yours as well. At the same time I realize that social business might not be for everyone. Here are a number of cases where social business might not be for you (right now):

• Privacy and Regulation In industries that have strong privacy and regulation concerns, social business can cause major damage. You could proceed with caution but definitely consider whether it’s worth it.
• Big-Ticket Business If you only have a handful of big customers, you’re more likely to meet face-to-face or over the phone. You could add limited social media but it won’t provide you with the most value.
• Internal Turmoil Whether it’s an unhappy workforce or skepticism from upper management, if it doesn’t seem like your company can’t buy into the social business philosophy, you’re better off postponing any plans.
• Strategic Deficiency If the overall corporate and marketing strategy is not yet in place, it’s harder to find a specific role for social business. Some aspects of the early phases of social business can help plotting a strategy but they don’t carry a strategy.

Feel free to leave any feedback and/or nuggets of wisdom in the comments. Next week, we’ll continue to focus on the internal side of social business by looking at internal considerations.