The Benefits of Social Media in the B2B Workplace

It’s been long thought that social media is a major time suck, causing many
B2B companies – small to enterprise – to ban social media sites from
their offices. Employees can no longer check Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
or even LinkedIn in these cases, causing them to be disconnected from
their personal networks.

This is meant to be a good thing. But is it?

Sure, if your employees are spending all their time on Facebook playing Mafia Wars or Farmville and not getting any actual work done,
it’s a good idea to not allow them to access that site at work.
However, there is a lot to be said about social media websites and
tools for effective team building, communication and collaboration, and
we should all be aware of these benefits.

Increased Channels of Communication
It’s true that in business, there are a handful of communication
channels, including meetings, phone calls and emails. But how effective
are these? Sometimes things get forgotten from meetings and phone
calls, and looking for information in a sea of email can be a bit
challenging after a while. By using social media websites and tools,
you are increasing the channels of communication you can use, but also
their effectiveness. Just think how easy it is to send someone a tweet
or instant message and get their response right away. Now you don’t
need to wait hours for an answer to that question, and can get your
work done more efficiently and effectively.

More Collaboration = Better Outcome
It’s been said that two heads are better than one. So then three heads
are even better, right? When you encourage your team to collaborate on
projects and their workload together, the outcome will be greater than
what an individual could have created. By using social media tools, you
are allowing your people to generate and share ideas, to offer feedback
on tasks and documents, and to hold a piece of the project and business
success.

Staying in Touch With Thought Leaders
When communicating and collaborating with teammates, you will be
increasing the overall effectiveness of your team. So it makes sense
that increasing the reach of your professional communication and
collaboration can increase the overall effectiveness of your business,
right? If your team already has connections built with their own social
profiles, allow them to leverage their networks for your professional
gain. They can communicate and collaborate with thought leaders in your
industry, stay up to date on the latest news and connect with these
people to bounce ideas off of them. These connections with others will
help your people, and thus, help your business.

Familiarity Breeds Easy Integration
The people in your business are most likely familiar with these social
media tools anyway, so why not use this familiarity to increase the
ease of integration of these tools? They will know the basics of
communicating online, and can help others learn how to use social media
tools for collaboration as well.

And if you’re worried too much about increased outside chatter and conversations having nothing to do with work, then by all means don’t
allow popular social sites like Twitter and Facebook in your office.
But don’t hinder communication and collaboration either.

Find a team collaboration solution that integrates social networking communication features to increase communication, collaboration and
team productivity. The benefits to these types of solutions are
substantial, and can effectively increase your business success.

Article by http://socialmediab2b.com/