This compact article by Christine @comaford tells much of there is to tell about how vital it is for a business to engage with social media, and how to go about it. It’s a challenge and a primer (scroll down for link).

And in a context in which most business organizations are either not engaged or engaged in a sloppy and amateurish manner, it points the way to significant competitive advantage that, pretty much independent of industry, will follow from closing with the opportunities of social.

Two disturbing points I have noted in the past.

1. There is growing evidence that businesses are  not anywhere near where they need to be in their use of social data. So, 69% of B2B companies have no way of systematically assessing social response. https://futureofbiz.org/2012/06/05/69-of-global-b2b-orgs-ignore-social-feedback/

2. Back of this, the evidence is that very few CIOs are personal engaged/competent on social media. The numbers are dire. Of the Fortune 250 CIOs, 25 are on Twitter, and 4 have their own blogs. They are therefore quite unable to make informed judgments about social, even if they hire people to handle it.

https://futureofbiz.org/2012/04/13/social-risk-seems-cios-think-social-is-beneath-them/

If You Aren’t Social, You’ll Shrink: 10 Steps To Becoming a Social Business – Forbes.