According to Anthony Bradley, the co-author of The Social Organization and a group vice president at Gartner, the number of “likes” on Facebook, is not a measure of success. Gartner’s research has been derived from a study of 400 organisations worldwide that have utilised social media technology, software tools, and techniques.

Speaking at the recent Gartner’s ITxpo, Mr Bradley said that “It is very difficult for companies to understand how to do social media. How do you build a competency in mass collaboration?” Moreover, in his experience the vast majority of marketing in social media is actually marketing communications, using new channels.

“People can say whether they “like it” but what does that really mean? You have their attention, but you have not formed a community?”

One of the key recommendations also echoes Excellis’ own recommendation that businesses should focus on customers – particularly customer engagement. “Look at how you turn customers into an extension of your sales force, for next generation business practices”, says Bradley.

In line with Excellis’ observations, he also warned of a common poor practice, whereby, companies provide some social media activity and pray something good comes of it. “You are providing access to a technology and hoping a community forms. We found this has a 90% failure rate. Most of the time, people don't interact.”

Mass collaboration is currently believed to be the next major stage of industry evolution, following mass production. According to Gartner, mass collaboration allows businesses to amplify the capabilities of the organisation. For example, as in the case of Proctor & Gamble - the consumer packaged goods giant – which realised that the smartest people were not necessarily in the company (a point also noted in our article Stay Hungry! Stay Foolish!), so it is using crowd-sourcing in product development.

Read Part 1 of this series of articles »

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