Social is Collaboration Plus Communication for Small Businesses

"Do we need to be more social?" is a question we hear in various forms from small business owners.  Pressed to explain, their focus is almost always on the realm of 'social media marketing'; the company Facebook page, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Foursquare, Yelp...the usual suspects.  Small business owners want to know how to use these social media tools and if they are 'missing out' on customer engagement and revenue generating opportunities by not being fully immersed in social media.


Let's try to put the whole thing in context.


Companies are, and always have been social constructs - groups of people coming together to collectively create solutions that solve the needs of other people.  Companies have always performed best when all the groups are talking to each other - when there is a free flow of information.  When businesses were predominantly small and local, the information was exchanged in person.  As businesses grew larger and more remote, the information was exchanged via tools that substituted for the face-to-face interaction.


Social media are just another set of those tools.  Just like their predecessors, the choice of tool for a particular business or use is important, and based on their suitability for the task at hand.  It is not too difficult to understand that a hammer is optimized for a different set of tasks than is a screwdriver.  Social media tools should be viewed in the same manner, and chosen for the specific tasks to be accomplished and for which they are optimized.

The definition of a company offers a "social" insight; social media tools need not be only for customers.  They can be used to enhance any type of social interaction - between the company and customers, but also between customers, between company and employees, between employees, and between any other constituencies.


When the interactions are between the company and external parties, we talk about communications, of which social marketing is a part.  When the interactions are between internal parties, we talk about collaboration.


Collaboration tools, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Office 365, recognize this and include functionalities (such as chat) that would normally be associated with "social media" alongside their specific, application-focused offerings.


The correct question for businesses large and small is how to use these new tools to both enhance communications externally and improve collaboration internally.  Communication and collaboration are two sides of the same coin - enabling the free flow of information between all corners of the social construct called a company; driving increased revenue and lower costs in the process.