A recent survey by Proofpoint revealed that 8% of organizations in the US have fired their employees for their use of social media. One of the reasons for the firing was the sharing of sensitive information across multiple social networks. While the statistics isn’t surprising, it highlighted the upcoming challenges nearly every organization have to face in terms of people, technology and processes as social media fuel the ever changing landscape. Here are some of the challenges we believe businesses must start preparing for right now. If your competitors have not, you better be.

Integration

Transforming your organization into a social business will impact every function in your business. Marketing, PR, communications, HR – every supply chain and every customer service officers. So where does the integration start? Is it in the department? Do organizations now hire a Chief Social Media Officer the same way they would hire a Chief Technology Officer? Wellt doesn’t matter where you start. Eventually, yor organization will integrate social media into every function of the business.

Governance

Many organizations we talked to now understand that anything that will be spoken about them online, the good, the bad and the ugly, will be, with or without their presence. The content will also not only be created by the public, but by employees as well. Therefore, organizations need to begin listening not only to keep themselves abreast of the situation, but also to have rules of engagement. How will they deal with detractors or employees posting sensitive or inappropriate content online?

Culture

All organizations fall somewhere between been “open” and “close”. Meaning to say that some will find it easy to be transparent and sharing information and some will hoard knowledge internally. Amazon.com recent bought over Zappo and most people speculate that it’s because of Zappo’s notoriously open culture that result in the deal. On the other hand, Apple, known for protecting their intellectual property very fiercely. However, they too open up their iphone application ecosystem and started embracing the people. Organizations have the potential to reap the benefits by been transparent and embracing their customers and employees , but they have to do it intelligently and with a purpose.

Human Resources

In order to truly be called a social business (really participating in social media and not just using it as yet another marketing channel), organizations should start upgrading their HR protocols. it is likely to be an on going process as new technologies continue to hit the scene. Before Twitter and Facebook became popular, organizations are already scrambling to come up with blogging guidelines. Now, a wrong tweet or Facebook updates could get you fired. Organizations not only will have to update their guidelines regularly but also train their employees on using social media for work. Customer service department will be the first to go through such training.

Measurement and ROI

Almost every organization will struggle on how measurements are made and how ROI should be reported. However, this question can be answered with another question: What is the ROI of an email? Still, it’s a question that won’t go away. New methods will be developed to measure the social initiatives such as the amount of time spent, the pass on rate etc. Since social media is all technology based, technically, it can be measured. One of the most challenging part will be to tie it to revenue made or costs save.

So what are your thoughts in the future challenges social business will face?

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