Can Social Media Help my Business?

The news is teeming with articles and updates about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the new social media vehicles.

You may find them compelling in that, “it might be interesting to get in touch with my old college roommate” sort of way. You may also wonder if all of this stuff can really help your business. The answer is yes…or no.

The thing to remember about all of these on-line tools is that they are just that, tools. Twitter is not a silver bullet. Having a Facebook fan page will not instantly improve your marketing. These tools are only part of your overall plan, and it’s essential to remember that it’s the concepts these tools represent that are powerful. The concepts of trust, transparency and simplicity, that define social media, can be the leverage points for transforming your business.

Improving social connectivity within your organization is the mechanism for facilitating that transformation. Deployment of social media tools is just one aspect of that process.

Improving the ability for people to connect within your organization will increase your operational effectiveness. Allowing employees and stakeholders to connect and interact freely, beyond traditional hierarchies, will lead to improvements in your organization’s ability to:

• recruit tomorrow’s best and brightest
• engage employees and get the added value of their discretionary effort
• manage your workforce, by being able to easily find the right people for the right role
• innovate
• manage key risk factors around projects
• educate and develop your staff, partners, vendors and customers

In the end, the technology associated with social media may be part of the solution for improving your operations. But for those tools to be effective, you have to first address your willingness to be transparent and authentic, the first steps in generating trust. Trust is the currency of social connectivity, without it, technology alone is kind of like a boat, which is often described as “a hole in the water, into which one pours money.”

Guest Columnist and CED member, Lee White, is the founding member of Decision 3D, LLC. Before starting his own company, Lee worked with GlaxoSmithKline for 14 years delivering innovative operational solutions and facilitating change initiatives. He established Decision 3D to help small to mid-sized companies envision and implement organizational improvement initiatives based on the concepts and tools embodied by the Social Web.