Business of social media

I did a presentation, below, at a Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) forum event on the business of social media. I spoke with Vincent Maher, Andy Hadfield and Ananzi boss Mark Buwalda.

These days, social media is a big part of online media strategy — or rather, website strategy in general. Media see the obvious advantages — but it’s not so widespread in a corporate business context. Some businesses are embracing social media and web 2.0 opportunities with varying success. For example, there are a few Fortune 500 Companies that have embraced blogging as a marketing and CRM tool.

If you think about it companies are “walled gardens”, which is the antithesis of a more collaborative and open social media culture. It’s a tension that companies need to manage, because realistically speaking it would be naive to think that you could have complete openess in a company. My advice was embrace the best that social media has to offer, but don’t compromise your core business principles. It’s pretty much the same for us in the media: Embrace social media but don’t compromise your core editorial principles.

Networking comes naturally to human beings. Add the internet to it and we can do it more efficiently, and on a massive scale. I suggested GIBS should take their forum events and build a social or business network around them. In fact there is a big business opportunity for GIBS to build and be at the centre of an online business network. Go on.