Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company

Chapter 15

Business Cases, Pilots, Return on Investment, and Value

Tying Them Together

As social business enters a new stage of maturity after a half-decade of business application, a number of lessons learned stand out. Now that social media are no longer the shiny yet unknown objects of years past, more practical considerations have entered into social business discussions. The focus now is on how to create, manage, and govern social business communities successfully and sustainably. Businesses are also moving beyond initial experiments toward specific ways to deliver measurable business value. Perhaps most of all for middle to late adopters is a desire for proof and efficacy to learn what works best—and what perhaps does not—in social business. ...