These days, if it seems as if everyone and their dog have a presence on social media, it is because it’s true. Social networking giant Facebook recently revealed that, out of the 955 million Facebook account holders around the world that are active on the site every month, 8.7% (or 83.09 million accounts) are fakes – including millions that have been created by users on behalf of their pets.
Yet there are plenty of legitimate users that have helped to turn social networking into the roaring success that it has become. According to reports, 91% of adults that are online use social media regularly, contributing to the 100 000 tweets that are sent every minute and the 30 billion pieces of content that are shared on Facebook every month.
The amount of social media users across all networks are forecast to continue growing exponentially throughout the world in 2013; by as much as 21.1% in the Asia-Pacific region (which includes China, India and Indonesia), 12.6% in Latin America and a whopping 23.3% in the Middle East and Africa.
It is nearly impossible to ignore such stratospheric statistics, so it is no wonder that businesses want to get in on the action and replicate that success. That is why there has been a push to extend the reach of instantaneous, real-time, always on social networking into the enterprise.
But it is important to note that not all enterprise social networking (ESN) is the same, says Dayle Wheeler, Managing Director of Modern Business. “Although ESN is the umbrella term used to describe all sorts of social networking in a business environment, there are various types that need to be differentiated,” he explains. “ESN can be external, where members of a company’s sales, marketing and PR teams engage and interact with their vendors, or with the public and with customers, singing the praises of new services and products and getting feedback from consumers. Then there is internal ESN, a platform on which collaboration and idea swapping among co-workers and their team members are encouraged and fostered.”
Wheeler himself is the creator of an ESN platform. Called ‘ideas’, he describes it as being a unique approach to ESN. “Inspired by all the successful search and social media platforms, ideas is a modern way to communicate and for enterprise employees to have relevant information at their fingertips and the ability to instantly access it across various devices.”
He says the secret to having a successful internal ESN is really very simple: focus and planning. “Everyone knows that ESN holds potential value for their company, but they don’t necessarily know how to implement it,” Wheeler notes. “It doesn’t help to just roll out a set of tech tools and tell your employees to go forth and collaborate. Companies still need to work out a strategy and approach it with some planning. Collaboration needs to be deliberately designed and managed in order to maximise its effectiveness. If it isn’t, it will just be another thing to do on your desktop or mobile device that will clutter up your time and detract from your productivity, instead of enhancing it.”
