GigaOM Pro’s Report on Social Media in the Enterprise

The social web has created new expectations from people and new channels for audience growth, marketing and communications. We saw this wave hit the first beachhead a few years ago with media & entertainment, and are starting to see that wave break in the enterprise in a big way this year.

GigaOM Pro published a very thorough report written by Rachel Happe (someone I’ve come to respect a great deal in this industry) of The Community Roundtable entitled, Social Media in the Enterprise. The report takes a deep dive into how the enterprise is utilizing social software and its impact on “content authoring, content management, communications and CRM.” The report explores the way different functional groups within the enterprise would benefit from social software, including HR, marketing, support, sales and engineering.

Our belief is that enterprises, regardless of their size and reach, will see this transform their businesses dramatically over the next few years. Today, that’s starting with online marketing and communications where the multilogue is becoming the norm and customer engagement is the most effective and efficient weapon in a marketer’s arsenal. We’ll see this extend into real-time, one-to-many, feed-oriented communications that will power internal and external communication and collaboration.

Using KickApps, brands and marketers in the enterprise can now easily create and manage engaging social, interactive, dynamic and distributed web experiences that change B2B and B2C marketing from a monologue to conversations. These same experiences are being created to provide customer support and also enable product teams to communicate with, listen to and learn more effectively from their customers in a collaborative environment.

If you’re in the enterprise and are developing your company’s social software strategy, I’d recommend subscribing to GigaOM Pro and downloading a copy of the report (it’s 65 pages of goodness for just $79!). If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should join us at our June 17th seminar on Social Media in the Enterprise at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. We’ll have presentations and discussions led by people like Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester and Sandy Carter of IBM who will share the lessons they’ve learned. You can register for the seminar here.

Finally, if you’ll indulge me for another minute, I’d like to gloat a little bit about KickApps being ranked 2nd, next to Lotus Connections (the Big Daddy of enterprise collaboration software), as having the most Strategic Potential for Enterprise Social Software Leaders. This validation of our vision and approach—putting the power of engagement in the hands of our clients and innovating around the breadth of our offering—makes us very excited about the enterprise market in the years to come.