Social Media

Very informative article on how social media is being used in the corporate world. Though each of the 35 examples cited vary in approach there seem to be some common themes - entertainment and online forums frequented by users who act like "fans" are among them.

Social media is one of those things that gets tossed around a lot in meetings by corner office types. CIOs would love to see it used and frequently challenge their direct and indirect reports to find out how to harness the power of this medium to serve their specific business domain, not to mention leap frog the competition.

Often, that can be quite a tall order. While it is easy enough to do a Facebook variant and generate some buzz in the marketplace, the real challenge is to take a tried and tested business model and use social media as its growth engine. Unfortunately, there is not a play-book to do that just yet. The author says :

Some are likely to generate more discussions with the company while others might result better connections between customers. Some will fade away over the next 6-12 months while others will continue to grow and evolve.

While any or all of those outcomes are nice, what businesses would really like to see happen is a better and more durable connection between customers and their product or service.