Social Media ROI Doubts R.I.P.

Never mind that the following blog post was written by one of my favorite bloggers (Marshall Kirkpatrick) at one of my favorite blog sites (ReadWriteWeb).

As another Marshall explained (McLuhan), “the medium is the message,” and the message IBM delivered yesterday with its social business services and education announcement is that social is here to stay.

As our own study cites from McKinsey, “…9 out of every 10 businesses using Web 2.0 technology are seeing measureable business benefits from its users.”

And as someone who jumped on the “Cluetrain” back in 1999, this isn’t a surprise to me.  What is a surprise is the continued hesitance to “cross the chasm” (thank you, Clayton Chistensen) and to start to throw more  organizational weight, not to mention real budget, into the social business realm.

It’s no longer just about having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, boys and girls.  It’s about fundamentally reassessing and optimizing your business processes end-to-end to take advantage of the enormous collaboration and business process productivity that can better bring all your value chain constituents into alignment, like so many stars in the solar system.

From here, I’ll hand it over to Marshall who did a really elegant job of capturing this announcement.

But for those of you who will be in Orlando starting next Monday for the Lotusphere and IBM Connect events, you’re going to have the opportunity to learn about this immense opportunity in much more detail.

Follow me here on the Turbo blog for extensive coverage, and also via Twitter at #ls12, #IBMConnect, and #IBMSocialbiz.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Rest in Peace, Social Media ROI Doubts: 2006-2012