I was working on a Prezi for a presentation next week by the same title as this post and as I worked through the flow some ideas that had been hanging around in my head sort of came together. The nature of an analyst is, I suppose to try and fit things neatly into a taxonomy, especially technology. We've tried to sort out social business in those terms over the last year but in many ways it just won't fit, mostly because the technology is secondary to the overall business cultural change that is the real focus. That said, I have started to fit things into three categories and now that I've done it visually I think it might be useful to share. The three broad categories are technology enablers, social output and social outcomes.
Let's look at tech enablers first. These fall into three categories, social platforms, social applications and embedded social features. Here is an excerpt from the Prezi that explains this in more detail:
The next focus area is social output. These fall into two categories (at least), social media and social networks.
And lastly the outcomes, customer engagement, employee empowerment, partner enablement and supplier engagement.
And lastly I've embedded the entire Prezi so you can see this in context. Some of the introductory material you might recognize from my recent Directions Prezi but I think the whole flow is useful. Also, if you haven't heard my CardScan customer service story, which is only represented by a pic in the Prezi, then the short version is that I was turned from a disgruntled customer to a brand advocate through rapid service via the channel I preferred, Twitter. Take a look and let me know what you think: