I read with interest every article I can find on companies that are struggling to value the ROI of social technologies. Many of these complain about how hard it is, while others swear by solid sales gain analytics. I am now becoming more and more motivated to roll my eyes in frustration. If people would actually just implement organized processes to take advantage of some very basic tenets, the returns are high. I think we overcomplicate it in many ways. Allow me to give you an example using just one concept…

I speak a lot about the concept of building Rivers of Information using social tools. This is simply using tools like Google Reader, email, and mobile devices to harness streams of information on your field of work so it becomes possible to increase your visibility from 3% to 25% of what could be important each day. The reality is that we have an exploding amount of information on just about every area imaginable yet we are doing very little to be strategic and disciplined in creating rivers of information into our brains so that we can leverage that flow of information to provide a continuous learning system.

I think it is pretty obvious that we live in a knowledge economy and as such, the smarter a person is, the more he or she will excel. It is not only important to gather as much information as possible into our brains, it is also critical to gain that information faster than our competitors. There is an advantage to being able to react to new information faster than others. Twitter provides immediate information streams for example, yet many people still act as if they have no idea how Twitter can be valuable. It is the fastest source of news – on just about anything. That is if you follow the right sources, and that seems to be the rub for many. With all the index systems out there for Twitter, you would think people could figure out whom to follow – other than their family and friends.

If a company is worried about how to get value from social tools, I suggest institutionalizing the process of building rivers of information for their employees. Develop lists of the top 40 or 50 sources of online information streams in your industry and pass it out to everyone. Whenever you onboard a new employee, give them the list so they know who and what to follow to get up to speed on the industry quickly. When you do employee reviews on people ask them to describe the river of information they have built and check out how diligently they consume it. Help people learn to be filters of critical bits of information and have the discretion filter to know what should be passed on to others so everyone is aware of critical new developments. There is a multiplying factor if a large team is digesting powerful streams of information because they can act as amplifiers to each other and pass along the powerful bits.

Too many organizations look at social tools as simply the path to more top line revenue and ignore the more subtle ways these new tools can be utilized. The irony of it all is that building improved rivers of information costs nothing other than a little time, and pays back in ways that can make all the difference in the world…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com