Value of Social Networking

Recently, I’ve been working with a few clients on the value of Social Networking.  Yes, there is value in the “coolness” of this type of thing but very few businesses can claim budget dollars on it being cool.  Here are the two biggest case studies that I think can be of value to companies.

1. Help me find a key document or other piece of information  somewhere in my company.
2. Help me find a person who has specific knowledge about something.

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I think in many ways, it all boils down to that.   Let me give you an example I just saw in an email exchange.   One of our consultants knew we had done a specific kind of work.   (chargeback tracking using integration systems to be exact).    As you can tell, that’s a very specific topic that you would not term common knowledge.  In our normal non-social networking world, we would think about who we know who might know something and who might know other people who know something.  We would call, IM, or email that person and the 15 other people who might have that knowledge.  They would respond and push you to people who have that knowledge and if you’re lucky, after a couple iterations, you have gotten what you need.

The only thing is that it took anywhere from a couple hours to several days to get at the information. It also ONLY works if you know enough people to kickstart your social network.   What if we had profiles that actually told us something. What if we had people who tagged internal and external content and that told us something.  What if by doing a search, I had access to that implicit knowledge based on a person’s actions.  I’ve just kick-started my social network.

Everything after that is icing on the cake.  It’s probably valuable icing on the cake but I found the right person.  I can follow him or her and when he or she adds new content, posts to twitter, or tags something, it’s pushed to me.  I can find out who my new friend knows and utilize them in my company social network. I can branch out to more content and more things people know. The key part though is getting the connection in the first place.  If you get that, you’ve opened up a world of possibilities all while saving time and money.