Social Media Marketing For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Energizing Employees within Your Company for Social Influence

In This Chapter

• Connecting employees with social tools

• Using prediction markets to pick winners

• Making decisions collaboratively

Until the beginning part of this decade, enterprise software looked and felt very different from the software that was designed for consumers. Enterprise software helped businesses manage customer relationships, handle knowledge management, communicate internally, and handle company operations focused on addressing the needs of IT managers more than the employees who were the users of the software. Emphasis was put on security, compliance, system control, interoperability, and maintenance — and strangely less on what employees wanted or needed. The fact that the software buyers (the IT managers) weren't the users (the employees) was largely to blame for this state of affairs. And then something changed.

When employees went home in the evenings, the software that they were using for their personal lives (Web or otherwise) was progressively a lot better designed and easier to use. And more than that, the software allowed them to contribute content, share, comment, and connect with each other. Savvy technology companies realized that there was an opportunity to make enterprise software more like consumer software and social-oriented Web sites to better meet the needs of companies.

Steadily, these consumer-centric solutions gained traction in the corporate world, as employees started to discover ...