How best to harness social networking

Companies are still struggling to find a compelling business case for social media, although you wouldn’t recognise this problem from the rush organisations are in to have a presence on social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Indeed, despite the hype, content management provider Jadu recently carried out a study that found that developing a business case for social media is the number one challenge for the technology’s proponents in the education sector. Other challenges it highlighted are overcoming cultural issues and dealing with current software compatibility issues.

With companies falling over themselves to provide a solution to a problem they haven’t fully identified, how will social media ever progress from being a bit of fun to becoming a serious business tool?

One part of the challenge in developing a business case is clarifying the role of the individual employee and that of the organisation. Policies need to be put in place – and enforced – to ensure that if staff set up their own Twitter presence and tweet about what they are doing at work, they do not harm the interests of the organisation.

No business wants its employees spending all afternoon tweeting about what they did at lunchtime, but on the other hand banning social media can be just as counterproductive. How else can businesses discover what social media can do for them if not by letting staff get to grips with the technology?

Of course one reason for the lack of a business case is that it is almost impossible to quantify accurately the benefits of social networking in financial terms. Thousands of brilliant and profitable business ideas will have begun as a casual chat by the coffee machine or over a drink after work in the pub, but does anyone develop a business case around these interactions? No. And perhaps that is where social media should remain: as a means of informal interaction rather than an officially sanctioned communications channel.