IBM’s Social Business predictions for 2012

2011 has been a year of exploration when it comes to Social Business, experimentation and in some cases innovation.  Both small and large organizations in a variety of verticals globally began to realize the power of bringing social behaviors, processes and platforms behind the firewall. According to a 2011 AIIM survey, over 50% of organizations now consider social business to be imperative or significant to their business goals. As 2011 comes to a close, it’s time to look ahead to what’s next in social business for 2012

Here are just for you my dear readers,  IBM’s 3 predictions for what we can expect to see in social in 2012:
1. Social Analytics
“In today’s highly connected global business environment, the way people communicate, find and share information and work together has changed dramatically.  In 2012, social analytics tools will become the must have to gain insight and make better, faster business decisions and improve customer satisfaction. Whether it’s analytics of an internal social network, or gaining customer insight through analysis of external social networks, organizations will increasingly rely on social technologies to listen, examine, and connect to act.”

2. Gamification of social networking in the enterprise
Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game systems to improve business outcomes, has the opportunity to transform how employees work inside the enterprise and will certainly be something social businesses explore in 2012.Companies are increasingly turning to gamification to accomplish a number of real world goals and they’re not simply turning everything into a game.“Gamification should be about rewarding people for what they already want to do, not tricking them into doing something they don’t want to do.”
3. Community Managers Rule
Just like the Internet opened up a world of new opportunities, the rise of social business is creating new jobs. With the adoption of these new internal and external social business tools comes the increasing need for staff to manage the new processes and communities, to measure their effectiveness, and to educate and enable the workforce to participate. Corporations are quickly realizing they must create new roles like the community manager to take on these new responsibilities. Watch for this role to take off in 2012, with organizations of all shapes and sizes, in a variety of industries calling on experts to help to build, maintain, and activate members in an online location around common interests and topics.  Key skills required:   Ability to be transparent, drive sharing among members, and listening and shaping conversations.

You see, as I keep saying…  it’s not just about ‘going social’. It’s about becoming a social business. It’s realizing that marketing doesn’t work like it used to. Today, successful brands become social ones.

And here is to a Social 2012 !