Businesses using Social - Part 1

I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that so many businesses are still tip toeing around the social media space... but for me, I'm surprised everyday by just how many really smart business people are still afraid to broach the subject. And frankly, how many really smart people are disregarding the subject as "Twitter/Facebook fluff", deeming it irrelevant for their level of business. Its understandable to disregard something when its so overwhelming - remember Waltzing with Bears?. Just getting you're head around what it is and what it means is a big leap. Unless you're in MarComm or Social Tech the huge shifts in communications probably hasn't reached a recognizable threshold yet.

During a meeting last week I found myself answering a frequently asked question "So who (in business) is doing this (going social)?" The question's been qualified with "tell me only about best in class companies". Folks want examples and ROI which is completely understandable but if we're being honest, not completely practical or tangible in the ways we're used to.

The answer isn't simple because many organizations have been embarking on enterprise social media strategies that are not really visible to the public but that have had tremendous impact on their corporate culture, especially multinational organizations. Some of the effects have been great and many have had to learn from mistakes or struggle. But the idea that what we're talking about doesn't fit the traditional evaluation criteria is tough.

I've put together slideshares that can answer some of the basic questions but the rest require lengthy conversations to bridge the knowledge and understanding gap. The learning takes time and so the more that can happen up front and independently the better everyone is served. We need hyper-relevant material that we can provide to these very smart people so they can be learning on their own without feeling overwhelmed or being distracted by the "buzz stuff".

So I started thinking about writing a Fortune 100 blog. Researching and collecting what the Fortune 100 have done with social media, internally and externally. I know my clients' questions are not unique and I'm sure many other folks like me can put that kind of resource to good use in answering their customers' questions.

The catch is...its going to be a lot of work to collect all of this. That said, I've decided to keep it public so it can be shared for anyone else who can benefit from it and if you're in-the-know, have a blog or article on any of the Fortune 100 that is focused on their initiatives in social media, especially at an enterprise level, then please contribute here (feel free to post a link in the comments). I'll post as often as I can and will hopefully be able to act as a digital curator on the topic and produce a meaningful collection of business resources for us all.

Twitter Feed for Tweets containing Fortune 500 and Community or Social

Usability vs. revenue? Nope. Usability = revenue.

Over at BeyondVC, Ed Sim wrote

It is this battle between usability (simple and clean) vs. revenue (balance between getting what you want vs. being cluttered) that is constantly fought behind the scenes.

It's interesting that there's a perception that making a site usable is separate from doing revenue generating activities (like adding banner ads or splash entry pages, as was pointed out at Forbes.com. Even more interesting was the idea that there exists in many companies a battle between the two.

I'm not really surprized. But, I do know that there are more and more "enlightened" sites out there. They understand that usability is directly tied to revenue. Usability goes up, revenue goes up. And the other way around. Adding a few banner ads might get you some small short term revenue gains, but if you upset your paying customers, they're gonna go somewhere else (unless of course, your site is devoted to banner-ad seeking customers). There might be a few web sites that people will continue to go to even when they're hard to use, but yours probably isn't one of them.

There's lots of good examples out there, like 37signals. Take a look. Then make sure that your usability effort isn't competing with your revenue.