social tools Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

A new report by McKinsey shows that ‘fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.’ Or, in non-consultant speak – by being social inside and outside your company, you’ll make more money, and be able to get higher profits.

Networked enterprises are using collaborative technology and techniques to connect internal employees, and also to improve communication with customers, suppliers and partners. And the report also notes that the trend for using these tools is following an S-curve, which means rapid adoption by a lot of companies as they realise they can earn more.

Want to become social?

There are a couple of elements missing from the McKinsey report summary – firstly, it’s not just enough to roll out some new social technology. It won’t do anything for your business just sitting there, and that includes customer social outreach like blogs, social media, video sharing etc.

Ideally you should plan for the best and most effective social technologies which will have an impact on your employees and your customers, and the ways in which they will need to be encouraged, maintained, and evolved over the time. That might sound scary, but it’s actually a part of the process which I love – essentially putting together what your customers want, what your employees want, and how that can create revenue for your business. And if you’d like some assistance, then look for someone with experience of rolling out new social technology and knowledge transfer.

Then there’s the willingness to experiment, take risks, and also embrace the occasional failure. Too many companies are paralysed by fear of failing, when any social iniative carries an inherent flaw which you’ll never get rid off – dealing with humans! The effective route is not to avoid collaboration and social initiatives, but to start simple and plan 2 or 3 initiatives in the short term. One of those new ideas which takes off will more than compensate for the others – and in addition to productivity and revenue increases, it’ll also pave the way for more successes in the future, as long as you continue to evolve and progress it.

There’s an almost overwhelming abundance of opportunities out there, and keeping it simple and effective is key, with the agility to help it evolve and change your business for the better.

As always my plans to spend a weekend dedicated to catching up, and even getting ahead, on my blogging etc seem to have been destroyed before Friday is even over, thanks to a horrible noise from the exhaust on my car. I guess that’s what you get for buying something cheap and unusual!

And that clumsily links into the amount of change that’s occurring at the moment to major sites:

New look Facebook has been talked about a lot, and it’s now available. And to be honest, I’m really undecided about the design. It certainly makes it more blog/lifestream than profile page, and it moves applications out of the way, which is good for dealing with application addicts. I’m surprised the advertising is moved out to a column where it is easier to ignore over time, although it did catch my eye the first time it logged.

And there’s new look Delicious. Notice the lack of del.icio.us, as it’s now become www.delicious.com, as they were seeing all sorts of versions of the name being used. A bit of a shame in some ways, as it was one major way to stand out from the crowd. Ma.gnolia might feel a bit silly now! Again the design is cleaner and more modern, and a little lifestream-esque.

And you may have heard the tiniest of whispers around the web that tiny new startup Google is being challenged by a new search engine called Cuil, which claims to index more pages than Google, and return more linked results. One interesting ploy is that they promise information for each search will be anonymous – fine in theory but what will happen in the event of a court case? At the moment, returns a bit flakey, like this one for Dan Thornton. But I’m going to give it some time before making a judgement – I was initially unimpressed with Mahalo, but I’ve grown to like it more and more as time goes by. The best thing about Mahalo’s human-powered search is that the official plugin allows you to display an information box alongside your Google results – meaning it can save you a few clicks if you’re researching something which is covered.

And rounding off a pretty quick skim, is the news for social media marketing, research and business people that Forrester has bought Jupiter Research, which is pretty big news in that space.

Now if I can just stop the exhaust falling off the car, I might be able to catch up with a few things.