Business Gets Social

As yet there are relatively few examples of big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives. One exception is Best Buy's Twelpforce, which leverages hundreds of employees to provide customer support via Twitter. Cost and service pressures will see more firms developing business-wide social media engagement strategies that encompass customers, prospects, suppliers and partners.

Internal Social Media Policies

Internal Social Media Policies Tighten - With user rates booming across the social media platforms, and growing pressures on headcount, we could see growing restrictions on the internal use of the social networks. Even where the company understands the benefits and is making an investment in social media, strict controls may be adopted on how much time staff can spend visiting such networks in company hours.

Social Networks Harvested

Social Networks Harvested - A number of models will emerge claiming to offer approaches to monetizing individual or corporate networks. While some will be transferable from one business to another, many will not prove to be portable from their originators to other entities.