Collabo.com

The Four Golden Rules of Social Business

1. Focus on people when planning your social business strategy. Social business is not about technology, it’s about people engaging, communicating and collaborating. Technology is a secondary mechanism to support these interactions.
 
2. Design systems and technologies around people and the way they work. Technology is still crucial to business communication, but it needs to be designed around how people naturally function. The ways that we distribute, search, and reference information are rapidly evolving into real-time over the Internet. Real-time means no-time for complex processes; simplicity is the key.
 
3. Engage and interact with your employees and customers. The concept behind creating value for your business through a social model is relatively straight forward: talk with your employees and co-workers, talk with customers, talk with prospects, and sincerely listen to what they have to say. While the concept is simple, relationships build over time, which requires that you dedicate resources to fostering them along the way.
 
If you’re still sitting around waiting for consumers to come to you, most likely a handful of your competitors are engaging them already through popular social media channels. Companies who “get it” are creating communities around their products, brands, industries, and services. These communities are not in isolation on branded domains but rather integrating through API’s, apps, widgets, and feeds across the Web.
 
4. Profit from your connections and communities. In a social setting everyone expects to benefit from building relationships. If you think “it’s all about you” then count on being alienated quickly. In general you should follow the 80/20 rule which encourages focus on others 80% of the time while using the remaining 20% for personal objectives. You will profit from the connections you make, the trust you earn, and the communities you build.