![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.brasstackthinking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/infrastructure-300x199.jpg\" "\\"infrastructure\\"")
It\u2019s inevitable that in many discussions of social media and social business development, someone will ask:<\/p>\nIt\u2019s inevitable that in many discussions of social media and social business development, someone will ask:<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the next big thing? What happens now?<\/em><\/p>\n The next big thing isn\u2019t big at all. Well, at least in terms of flashiness or bombastic, noisy fanfare. It\u2019s not even likely to be sexy.<\/p>\n If you care about where social is going next, it\u2019s time to get your sleeves rolled up and dig in. Because the era we\u2019re approaching is in the merging of social at a superficial level, and social at a foundational and organizational level. And that\u2019s going to get messy.<\/p>\n There is and always be a bleeding edge for things, and people that somehow manage to make their livings and livelihoods from predicting what that edge will look and feel like. But there\u2019s precious little room on the brink, and when it comes to building something sustainable that applies to your existing business, there is much work to be done.<\/p>\n In the next year to five years, we\u2019re going to be having conversations about things like:<\/p>\n We\u2019ll be breaking down overly simplistic questions like \u201cwho owns social\u201d and instead figuring out how social integrates into all roles and at what level, be it functional or strategic or both. We\u2019ll be having discussions about whether existing roles in our companies may be becoming obsolete, which may be experiencing a renaissance, and the reality of staffing everything from robust listening strategies to internal communication systems that have a social core.<\/p>\n People are what will drive social business, and while efficiencies may be found here and there with technological means, there\u2019s no escaping the investment in people and education that will be required.<\/p>\n Disparate systems cannot survive the long term if they\u2019re ever to become routine enough to seamlessly integrate into our daily work. Moreover, businesses can\u2019t have each department or team working with tools that are so niche, fluid, and personalized that they become cannibalistic to themselves by diluting and weakening the ties between information that they\u2019re meant to enhance.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve got to focus on the purpose behind having certain kinds of tools in our arsenal, namely collaboration; integrated, fluid, and rapid communication; and data mining for information that can yield insights upon which evolved and more nimble business decisions can be made.<\/p>\n The more content we produce, the more relationships we forge at speed, the more our brands depend on the personalities of those that build them, the more complex it becomes to leverage the networks of your individual and give them the freedom to achieve independently while still benefiting the collective.<\/p>\n We\u2019re going to have more and trickier conversations about who gets to lay claim to what and how; culturally advanced companies will worry less up front and deal with isolated instances of abuse as they come, understanding that these relationships are largely mutually beneficial. Conservative, even paranoid businesses will get more restrictive before they become more open, and there will be turf wars, defections, and culture clashes that are visible and difficult.<\/p>\n The future of social business isn\u2019t in campaigns and Klout scores. It\u2019s not in checkins or photo contests or live streams. It\u2019s not even in some mythical measurement standard by which we can score some perceived definition of \u201csocial media success\u201d.<\/p>\n All of those elements will play their own role in the same way that technology has always impacted and changed how we work. But the legacy work for building social organizations is in the foundations, in the wiring, in the infrastructure that\u2019s often overlooked for unsexy. It will be in the people themselves \u2013 their mindset, their passions, the new tradespeople we are teaching and carving from familiar but outdated molds. And in taking the intent behind the techniques<\/em>, and baking the fundamentals of those ideas into business models that can adapt to changes in the technologies themselves.<\/p>\n The work for us will be in examining and fortifying the very structures we are building, even when that means actually doing the work over and over again until we get it right<\/em>. Success will be in how we understand and define a thriving, adaptable organization<\/em>, one that is poised to not only embrace the challenges and opportunities we see today, but to open their eyes to what is certain to be a mind-boggling array of innovation in the few years nearest us.<\/p>\n There is real work in this. Hard work. Anonymous, invisible work. Incremental, meticulous, tedious, agonizing, sometimes paradoxically slow moving work. But these are the new foundations upon which our own futures reside and the businesses of our children will evolve.<\/p>\n The flash of a new whizbang may shine shards of light on potential, but make no mistake that the social business we so passionately claim to envision is made of simple ideas strung together with the extraordinary power and complexity of information itself. And the steadfast labor of our own hands and minds is what will make it unique, and decidedly real.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve touched on just a few of the areas that I think will emerge in the coming months and years as social business moves from an ideal to a practice. But I\u2019d love to hear what you\u2019re thinking, experiencing, and seeing around you.<\/p>\n Surely there\u2019s more of the nitty gritty work to be done. What is it?<\/p>\n Amber Naslund<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s inevitable that in many discussions of social media and social business development, someone will ask: What\u2019s the next big thing? What happens now? The next big thing isn\u2019t big at all. Well, at least in terms of flashiness or bombastic, noisy fanfare. It\u2019s not even likely to be sexy. If you care about where … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,55],"tags":[1113,548,1214,896,59,1215],"class_list":["post-2920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-ambernaslund","tag-future-of-social-media","tag-innovation","tag-organizational-design","tag-social-business","tag-social-media-adoption","tag-strategic-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2922,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions\/2922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Human Resources<\/h3>\n
Technology and Communications Infrastructure<\/h3>\n
Intellectual Property and Individual Brands<\/h3>\n
Elbow Grease Powers Innovation<\/h3>\n
What Else Do You See?<\/h3>\n