and need of enterprises to have an Enterprise Social Media

Move over Coffee Machine!

Gone are the days when all the gossiping was centered around the coffee machine (or the photocopy machine or the lunch break).

The coffee machine gossiping has over the period created its own credentials, reputation of being full of information and sometimes unproven facts. Right from office affairs, layoffs, new joinee; coffee machine has seen and hear all.

People Gossiping at Coffee Machine

Image courtesy: http://blog.execu-search.com/post/2010/08/23/Topics-to-Avoid-Discussing-at-Work.aspx

But with emergence of Social Media, the gossiping has taken a new platform where it emerged from region/ department to whole company wide, capturing talks from every nook and corner of the world (read company’s every branch and office).

It is Human basic need to be social. It is deeply rooted inside a human being to aspire for an identity. Much better explained Maslow’s Need Hierarchy, viz;

Need - Hierarchy

Deep rooted need is about identity: the beliefs, values, culture, religion, family, history, and imagination that form the core of an individual and by extension, their group. All these can be described as human identity needs.

Gossip@Office

When a person has to sit majority of his day in a 4 X 4 cubicle against a computer screen, the ‘Self Actualization’ need is bound to get expedited along ‘Esteem’ need. The need to connect, the need to reach out; all emotionally and physiologically needs to be satisfied.

Recently eMarketer.com published a research report, “Social Media in the Marketing Mix: Budgeting for 2011”, and results showed that people have moved to Online Social platforms in staggering numbers. This got expedited by Social Network enabled mobile phones or Social Media Apps enabled Touchpads. With Call Centers booming young generation who started donning corporate jackets become major players in carrying forward the Gossip through the Social Media.

The Knowledge Sharing was another aspect which was fast recognized by companies like SAP, DELL and many more to enable Enterprise 2.0 model.

Companies esp. Marketers are seeing Social Media as a new platform for marketing and cost reduction opportunities with some companies like TCS (India) even going for recruitment and resume shortlisting through Social Media. Companies are evolving the marketing strategy the way they market across all media on online through these Social Media channels.

Just to trap this trend many a companies (read startups/ dotcoms) have came up over night to build a database for a strong advertising publishing platform.

Some Social Media Channels

MouthShut.com is just another example how people have used Online services.

Infact they have evolved and co-created forums where in they centralise all such conversations, portal like ConsumerComplaints.in and a lot more Online Free Services taking Gossiping to a new level making it more formal.

For the companies it has become, in this highly competitive economy, to protect their identity and to portray a good image to project with this Gossiping.

Here is yet another interesting finding;

• 53% of companies are making reputation monitoring a strategic priority in 2010
• Yet, only 42% have any kind of online reputation plan in place, and
• 55% of those polled say they are not adequately prepared to handle a reputation crisis
• 63% of companies do not have a formal policy in place regarding employee blogs

The formal levels of this new platform based Gossiping is more interesting and the Consumer-generated media have faces in form of: blogs, micro blogs, forums, message boards, social media sites, podcasts and chat rooms etc.

More to see in coming time with Broadband coming on TV and people now are no hold barred..

So Watch OUT, Enterprise 2.0 is here…