social media for business
employee engagement + internal communications
welcome!
June 18, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What’s this group about?
• Goals:
• Promote information sharing among
business professionals in NYC
• Provide a forum for networking among
complementary business segments
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Definition of “Social Media”
• My attempt: “Efficient two-way many-to-
many communication and media exchange”
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Mainstream Perception of Social Media?
From: DespairWear
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Sort of...
• Intersection of many discrete fields:
• Information theory
• Computer science
• Publishing
• Sociology
• Management theory
• ....and many more
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Part of a larger picture
• The social web - and by extension, social media - is one
part of the larger picture: the evolution of network
computing.
• III (“International Information Infrastructure” aka the
internet): how computers are connected
• WWW (“World Wide Web”): how documents are
connected
• GGG (“Giant Global Graph”): how people are connected
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Visualizing the social graph
• Most online communities
consist of three social
rings:
• A central “core” of
densely connected
individuals
• Loosely connected
second ring
• Third ring of
disconnected nodes,
or “lurkers”
See: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-blogging-community-outreach
Thursday, June 18, 2009

A closer look...
• “Inner core” is highly clustered
• This group is deeply invested in the
community’s success
• Typically <20% of community
members
• Field of Social Network Analysis
(SNA) measures paths of:
information, ideas, influence.
• Developing a successful community
is more than growing the number
of members or relationships: it’s
about the type, strength, and value of
those relationships.
• Value of relationships: social capital
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What does it look & feel like?
• Highly distributed, decentralized, and democratic
• Extremely low latency: approaches real-time
• Increased information efficiency
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What does it look & feel like?
• Maps virtual relationships to
“real life” relationships
(meetups, SMS, geolocation)
• Self-organized
• Increasingly mobile-enabled
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What does it look & feel like?
• Organizational information exchange
becomes less vertical: diagonal, trending to
horizontal.
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Political effects
• Information efficiency
creates downward shift of
power & influence,
increased transparency
• This is happening within
organizations of all sizes:
small businesses, the
enterprise, countries
Thursday, June 18, 2009

How does it work?
• Platform-based
• Infrastructure is largely
based on cloud hosting,
API’s, and small client
apps
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Some industries have been
disrupted early
• Print and broadcast
media
• PR/Communications
• Advertising
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Highly disruptive to traditional media
Inspired by Fred Wilson
http://slideshare.net/fredwilson
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Some industries are only starting to
feel the effects
• Legal
• Finance
• Education
• Government
• Health care
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What does it mean to companies and
organizations?
• Customer engagement
becomes conversational
• Personality attracts customers.
Letting individuals within an
organization speak on their
own gives customers and
content consumers something
to relate to.
• Giving up control can be
difficult/risky but has big
potential for payoffs
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What does it mean to companies and
organizations?
• Brand identity and
customer
experience become
deeply intertwined
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What does it mean to companies and
organizations?
• Almost all aspects of business will be impacted:
• Operations
• PR/Sales/Marketing
• Recruiting & On-boarding
• Employee communications
• Information management
• Project management
Thursday, June 18, 2009

New Challenges
• Many legal considerations
• Brand & IP management
• Disclosures & representations by
employees
• Usage guidelines
Thursday, June 18, 2009

What tools are available?
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Source: FredCavazza.net
Thursday, June 18, 2009

Questions?
Thursday, June 18, 2009