Research by technology consultants Gartner has indicated that social networks such as Twitter and Facebook will be the main form of interpersonal business communication for a fifth of organisations by 2014.
In coming years, most companies will be building up their own online social networks, allowing business use of employees' personal accounts - or both. Gartner identifies social networking's advantage over email as:
Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and expertise location.
The same research identified a number of other trends that businesses need to know about now. In particular:
- By 2012, over half of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging (but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5% penetration)
- Through 2015, only 25% of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.
In other words, businesses will increasingly use social networks as part of their communications and marketing mix, but it will take a significant amount of time before the majority begin to measure their commercial effectiveness. In the same way, it is taking a long time for many medium and small businesses to understand that search engine optimisation, based on measurable website analytics data, will increase performance and profits.
So, by all means - build up your social networks now. But make sure you do it with a long-term strategy in mind. Speak to us if you'd like some expert help.
