For Social Business, 2011 was a year of exploration, experimentation and in some cases innovation. Both small and large organizations in a variety of verticals globally began to realize the power of bringing social behaviors, processes and platforms behind the firewall. According to a 2011 AIIM survey, over 50% of organizations now consider social business to be imperative or significant to their business goals.
As 2011 comes to a close, it’s time to look ahead to what’s next in social business for 2012. IBM’s Alistair Rennie, GM of Social Business, has three predictions for what we can expect to see in social in 2012:
1. Social Analytics
“In today’s highly connected global business environment, the way people communicate, find and share information and work together has changed dramatically. In 2012, social analytics tools will become the must have to gain insight and make better, faster business decisions and improve customer satisfaction. Whether it’s analytics of an internal social network, or gaining customer insight through analysis of external social networks, organizations will increasingly rely on social technologies to listen, examine, and connect to act.”
2. Gamification of social networking in the enterprise
“Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game systems to improve business outcomes, has the opportunity to transform how employees work inside the enterprise and will certainly be something social businesses explore in 2012.”
3. Community Managers Rule
“Just like the Internet opened up a world of new opportunities, the rise of social business is creating new jobs. With the adoption of these new internal and external social business tools comes the increasing need for staff to manage the new processes and communities, to measure their effectiveness, and to educate and enable the workforce to participate. Corporations are quickly realizing they must create new roles like the community manager to take on these new responsibilities. Watch for this role to take off in 2012, with organizations of all shapes and sizes, in a variety of industries calling on experts to help to build, maintain, and activate members in an online location around common interests and topics. Key skills required: Ability to be transparent, drive sharing among members, and listening and shaping conversations.”
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