Top ten issues in engaging with social media
ZDNet’s Dion Hinchcliffe picks up on the recent report I mentioned here last week that claims a positive correlation between a business’s social media engagement and its bottom line.
Hinchcliffe is among the sceptics who doubt whether there’s enough data as yet to go this far. “Despite an growing body of encouraging case studies, evidence, and research,” he says, “the jury is still out on total impact social computing will have on businesses.
“At present, the uncertainty is simply because that there are not enough organizations that have incorporated social computing approaches (which encompasses the full range of social software as applied to business that include social networks and Enterprise 2.0 to things like crowdsourcing and social CRM) across their lines of business for us to get a complete enough picture. Even the ones that have done it, haven’t done it long enough to see what the results actually are.”
But he adds that by now there is plenty of indication from company pilots and initiatives of what the issues are as the larger cultural, IT, and business impact of social tools begins to be felt. He has come up with a list of the top ten issues which he thinks are representative of where we are right now.
1. Lack of social media literacy amongst workers
2. A perception that social tools won’t work well in a particular industry
3. Social software is still perceived as too risky to use for core business activities
4. Can’t get enough senior executives engaged with social tools
5. The divide between IT and the social computing initiative
6. The need to prove ROI first
7. Security concerns
8. The needs around community management
9. Difficulties sustaining external engagement.
10. Struggling to survive due to unexpected success
Hinchcliffe goes into a bit of detail about these, and his analysis is worth a look. He emphasises that they are by no means insurmountable obstacles; they merely represent a cross section of what early adopters typically encounter as they begin climbing the social computing adoption curve.
The last one on the list is especially interesting. More and more frequently lately, Hinchcliffe says he has been coming across enterprise social computing stories that had considerable and unexpected early success. “This led to attention and scrutiny from across the organization and a subsequent struggle to fund a fast growing venture amid internecine turf wars, battles over control, and the battles with competing efforts,” he notes.
