If it has yet to become obvious to your organization, social media adoption and integration is a vital part of your overall business strategy. As social media management tool Hootsuite (which now integrates with IBM Connections) writes in their recently-released whitepaper on the necessity of social media education for organizations, titled Social Media: The New Edge For Success, “Social media is the place where qualified customers spend their free time and make decisions about what to buy.” While that may be an oversimplification of the basic functions of some businesses, the sentiment is applicable no matter what your business: social media is where your customers or end users are, and as such it needs to be where your business is.
“Companies that are not digitally prepared to handle the social media arena will not be in a position to benefit from this financial windfall. In order to take advantage of this massive influx in digital communications, today’s professionals must have well-honed social media skills.” This statement opening the white paper serves to frame the rest of the research, stating quite specifically that businesses, in order to move to the future of composability, must ensure their employees have the proper social media training to successfully traverse the platforms they engage in.
Engaging directly with the mindset that social media should be relegated to the business’s dedicated social/community employees, Hootsuite argues “All teams (not just marketing) are responsible for their company’s social media monitoring and engagement…The company-wide relevance of social media has decreased the need for a singular social media manager role, and increased the need for social media expertise in every role. According to CNN Money, the once burgeoning rate of social media manager hires has slowed to a grinding halt. Managing social media is now everybodys business.The necessity for a true grasp on social media was exacerbated by the explosion in the use of hand-held digital devices as a communication and information search tool…The complexity and rapid growth of the social media landscape demands strategic planning and mastery of social media dynamics.”
