Why social media matters

Social media is a ubiquitous part of everyday communication but how can companies get maximum value from its use?

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The social enterprise

While media attention focuses on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, enterprise social networking (ESN) is also gaining traction, and bringing substantial business value.

Associate Professor Kai Riemer is chair of business information systems at the University of Sydney Business School, and has been researching enterprise social media since its inception.

Finding ways to predict and measure the ROI of a social media initiative is still a work in progress, with Riemer commenting, “We will have to rethink the way we measure the success of infrastructure-enabled change in organisations as opposed to more conventional tool-driven change.” It might be hard to measure using conventional wisdom, but the business benefits of ESN are clear to see.

Suncorp uses Yammer for enterprise social networking, where it is breaking down organisational boundaries, and creating a united culture, according to Matt Pancino, head of business technology applications at insurance and banking services provider Suncorp.

“When it was introduced, 7500 staff signed up voluntarily, and in the last 28 days 1800 staff have been actively engaged on the platform.

“The Suncorp Group is a collection of brands and products – personal, commercial and life insurance and well as a bank,” he explains. “Our strategy is to create one company with many brands.

“Yammer enables the culture we want to create by getting rid of bureaucracy, and ripping apart cultural and geographic boundaries and allowing anyone to contribute to a discussion.

Matt Pancino, head of business technology applications, Suncorp

He says it can be difficult in large organisations to find the right staff member who can help with a particular problem, and Yammer, along with other enterprise social networks, allow employees to sovle problems more quickly and collaborate across different teams to generate business value.

At Suncorp, the ‘groups’ function is used to harness the knowledge of employees collaborating on projects, no matter what division or where they work. Mobile apps let them tap into the network wherever they are, while external networks allow partners and vendors to be included in project planning. And Wiki-like notes enable teams to easily and rapidly crowdsource documents and solutions.

The platform’s uptake has resulted in a reduction in email use by more than 50 per cent, while improved teamwork helped the Personal Insurance Group meet its target of shaving 3 per cent off the bottom line.

“We shouldn’t underestimate its ability and speed to solve simple problems,” Pancino adds.

One of the reasons for the success of social media networks is that they help address a major flaw in current search technologies, according to Mittelmark.

“A search engine’s search and categorisation functions are limited. Context makes it easier to filter or find specific groups, especially where you don’t know what keywords are associated with the context.

“You may have a specific query relating to your project that cannot be answered through normal sources. By putting the query out there on social media in the right context, you may find a colleague from Tokyo whose existence you were previously unaware of, who is a perfect fit for your project or can reveal IP that you didn’t know was available or valid.”

After a couple of decades of siloed functions, “Every company I know is exploring collaboration, and 90 per cent of the answer is social.

“Generationally, this is still in transition between people who may use social media but aren’t totally integrated and digital natives. Over time, it will come to be second nature.”

Unfounded fears

“Social media is expected by a lot of people. They are comfortable with it and use it everyday as just another channel of communications,” says Pancino.

Even traditionally conservative, highly regulated enterprises, such as financial services and government, are going to have to adapt or lose good staff and business opportunities, according to research by Gartner analyst Andrew Walls that shows by year-end 2014, 70 per cent of large enterprises will permit access to external social media, compared with 50 per cent in 2010.

The move is driven by expectations from job candidates that they will have access to external social media from the workplace and deprecate job offers from firms that do not enable access. Another key driver is new approaches to corporate operations, such as online recruitment, sentiment analysis for brand management and CRM via microblogs, that are forcing organisations to enable at least minimal levels of access to external social platforms.

Yet, despite the success stories and gradual easing of restrictions, a niggling fear remains among some managers that staff will import their behaviours from Facebook into ESN. But Riemer says these fears are unfounded. “They do not chit-chat in ESN; only about 10 per cent of communication is informal talk that would otherwise happen around the water-cooler. It’s healthy to socialise and it doesn’t create too much noise.

“Another fear is that people will push the boundary of normal social conduct. However, when using enterprise social media, everyone is aware that the boss can see what you’re saying so people don’t tend to misbehave,” he adds. “If they do, other users jump in and offenders quickly backtrack and apologise.”

Pancino rees, “There is always the potential that someone can misuse the technology. But we have found that it is self regulating, owing to the large volume of users we have from all levels of the organisation. People have a good, mature understanding of what is expected.”

Other commentators have voiced concerns over losing control of information, Riemer says. However, Pancino, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the platform, says that has not been an issue at Suncorp.

“Any technology we use has certain standards and requirements for use. With respect to IP, Yammer usage follows similar guidelines to email and mobile devices and tends to be self-regulating.”

Monitoring your brand online

Back in the day, companies would use organisations like Media Monitors to keep track of their public profile. Now, the Internet provides the opportunity to monitor not only your own profile, but also that of any competitors, and relevant developments in your industry, for little or no cost. A few simple steps allow you to react, engage and connect with the people talking about your brand.

Search queries set up in tools like Google Alerts and IceRocket can be saved as RSS feeds and allow you to keep track of brand mentions and relevant keywords in different platforms, including traditional media, blogs, social networks and search engines.

Google Social Reports helps understand how much traction your content generated by scoring it based on the number of comments it received, links, mentions, tweets, and other social media metrics such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit.

And if you want to dig deeper, for a price UberVu scans all the mentions and conversations relevant to your brand and detects mentions by ‘influencers’, spikes in volume and sentiment, and trending stories.