Attending this week’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference, revealed several things to me:
1) Social Media is real
2) Like any new space --- the pond is crowded
3) Listening, relevant engagement and communication are essential to introduce
and ensure the success of social media in the enterprise.
To put things in context. Let’s answer the question: “What is Enterprise 2.0?”
Here’s the conference’s own answer:
“new tools that enable contextual, agile and simplified information exchange and collaboration to distributed workforces and networks of partners and customers.”
Visiting the event’s Expo Pavillion I checked out the exhibits of circa 45 participating sponsors and exhibitors ranging from major players like Microsoft and IBM to companies I’d never heard about before: BlueKiwi and Yakabod.
My takeaways:
Reading over the signage and collateral literature of the exhibitors-- marketers in enterprise social media are big on words that start with “C”:
Connect, Collaborate, Content, Community.
Given the collision of like-sounding messages I heard and saw in the exhibitors’ booths— some other words that start with “C” sum up the state of social computing:
Change, Confusion, Competition, Choice, Chaos.
While I’m a huge proponent of social media and know that it can bring tangible and intangible benefits to any organization—what I saw was almost 50 vendors building and marketing mousetraps---before their prospects really know or care if they need one.
The extent of the crowded pond was dramatically shown by the London Underground-like graphic above from CMS Watch (an analyst firm that offers head-to-head comparisons of content oriented solutions)
Given that content is just one piece of the overall Enterprise 2.0 ecosphere, the business, IT and marketing C-level and VPs execs attending the show (in hopes of charting their company’s direction) must feel like Charlie on the MTA-- the man “who never returned…whose fate is still unlearned”
Four More C-Words: Challenge, Convince, Communicate, Continue
Beyond the cool factor of social media, and simplistic three.word.taglines (like Teligent’s “Listen. Engage. Measure”—vendors’ product managers and marketers in this massive space have a Herculean communications challenge before them in order to win over and get the initial and repeat business of Fortune 2000 companies.
What “marketers” of social media need to practice in order to engage their prospects:
Differentiation: What makes your company/product/service uniquely
and sustainably different and truly valuable?
Relevance:
What can you do for my unique organization?
Worthiness:
Show me how social media will deliver bottom-line results.
Communicate:
Effective Communications—that let participants connect, interact, share, listen, learn, adapt (rinse and repeat) is more important than ever—to cut through the noise and FUD.
Enlightened PR, Marketing and Communications 2.0 along the lines of that advocated by Brian Solis is the new imperative.
Continue:
Innovation and stability are often at odds. Great new ideas can turn into solid SaaS offerings… but will they scale and will the company still be in business?
Bottom Line:
Communications pros must evolve and themselves practice the inherent elements of Enterprise 2.0 if these potentially transformative technologies for information exchange and collaboration are to succeed. Let's work together to make that happen.
1) Social Media is real
2) Like any new space --- the pond is crowded
3) Listening, relevant engagement and communication are essential to introduce
and ensure the success of social media in the enterprise.
To put things in context. Let’s answer the question: “What is Enterprise 2.0?”
Here’s the conference’s own answer:
“new tools that enable contextual, agile and simplified information exchange and collaboration to distributed workforces and networks of partners and customers.”
Visiting the event’s Expo Pavillion I checked out the exhibits of circa 45 participating sponsors and exhibitors ranging from major players like Microsoft and IBM to companies I’d never heard about before: BlueKiwi and Yakabod.
My takeaways:
Reading over the signage and collateral literature of the exhibitors-- marketers in enterprise social media are big on words that start with “C”:
Connect, Collaborate, Content, Community.
Given the collision of like-sounding messages I heard and saw in the exhibitors’ booths— some other words that start with “C” sum up the state of social computing:
Change, Confusion, Competition, Choice, Chaos.
While I’m a huge proponent of social media and know that it can bring tangible and intangible benefits to any organization—what I saw was almost 50 vendors building and marketing mousetraps---before their prospects really know or care if they need one.
The extent of the crowded pond was dramatically shown by the London Underground-like graphic above from CMS Watch (an analyst firm that offers head-to-head comparisons of content oriented solutions)
Given that content is just one piece of the overall Enterprise 2.0 ecosphere, the business, IT and marketing C-level and VPs execs attending the show (in hopes of charting their company’s direction) must feel like Charlie on the MTA-- the man “who never returned…whose fate is still unlearned”
Four More C-Words: Challenge, Convince, Communicate, Continue
Beyond the cool factor of social media, and simplistic three.word.taglines (like Teligent’s “Listen. Engage. Measure”—vendors’ product managers and marketers in this massive space have a Herculean communications challenge before them in order to win over and get the initial and repeat business of Fortune 2000 companies.
What “marketers” of social media need to practice in order to engage their prospects:
Differentiation: What makes your company/product/service uniquely
and sustainably different and truly valuable?
Relevance:
What can you do for my unique organization?
Worthiness:
Show me how social media will deliver bottom-line results.
Communicate:
Effective Communications—that let participants connect, interact, share, listen, learn, adapt (rinse and repeat) is more important than ever—to cut through the noise and FUD.
Enlightened PR, Marketing and Communications 2.0 along the lines of that advocated by Brian Solis is the new imperative.
Continue:
Innovation and stability are often at odds. Great new ideas can turn into solid SaaS offerings… but will they scale and will the company still be in business?
Bottom Line:
Communications pros must evolve and themselves practice the inherent elements of Enterprise 2.0 if these potentially transformative technologies for information exchange and collaboration are to succeed. Let's work together to make that happen.
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