Talking to people isn’t much of a business, except it is. Customer service has some talking in it. Sales has talking. Hmm, okay, so maybe there’s lots of talking in business.
Blogging, podcasting, video, microblogging, presence platforms all help facilitate communication.
Following the happenings around you in your industry won’t help you get ahead, except that it probably will. Knowing where people are, what they’re interested in, what they like and dislike, as well as understanding shifts and trends and news seems like a good way to stay up on what might impact your business.
Twitter and Facebook and all those social networking sites facilitate sharing of information.
This blogging and social media stuff is just for marketing and PR types, except it’s not. Building networks of interaction, delivering new tools for collaboration, empowering knowledge compilation are all opportunities for the use of these tools that don’t fall into the hands of only the communications team.
Status and presence and wikis and collaboration tools are useful to business teams, and not just marketing and PR.
It’s not immediately obvious why some of these tools apply to some businesses, and it’s DEFINITELY true that not all these tools will be useful to all businesses. But to not even consider how your organization can improve their productivity, their customer service experience, their product design, their hiring processes, and more, well, that just seems like a ticket back to 1996.
What do you think? Is there a business application to all this? Why are big companies delving in? What will convince businesses to dig in and experiement a bit more?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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