Five Ideas: Social Business

Oracle hosts Oracle Social Summit

On November 14 and 15, Oracle hosted the Oracle Social Summit in Las Vegas. Here, find out more about what happened at the conference, including insights from Profit's editor in chief Aaron Lazenby. Plus, get expert advice about how to successfully manage a social organization.

“At the end of the day, experimentation is key. Just like trying to find that right joke to tell at the beginning of your presentation or that good opening like at a cocktail party, social media messages and interactions can take some trial and error. Don't be afraid to try things, tinker with incomplete ideas, abandon things that don't work, and engage in the conversation. And make sure your heart is in it, otherwise your audience can tell.” —Aaron Lazenby, editor in chief, Profit magazine

“The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you've set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat.” —Mike Stiles, Social Marketing Manager at Oracle

“Right now, as social goes from consumer to enterprise technology, it is mostly a point solution market. There are vendors who do social media monitoring, social marketing, or social network, but nobody has really stepped up to establish a broader social platform with an end-to-end view of this market. So Oracle's big strategic bet is to bring together some of the best-of-breed capabilities into a single, unified social relationship platform.” —Abhay Parasnis, senior vice president, product development, at Oracle

“Executives need to know what their brand is today — and what their aspirations are for it to be. This is an important fundamental piece of work. If your brand voice isn't clear, then the people doing social media on your behalf, whether that’s an internal communications manager or an outside agency, won’t be able to communicate clearly as a consequence.” —Ric Dragon, CEO of DragonSearch and author of Social Marketology

“Email isn't a good collaboration platform. Sometimes, it's good for one to one messages, but it is not very efficient for finding subject matter experts, transferring knowledge or aligning everyone in a particular department or group around the same goal.” —Jacob Morgan, principal and co-founder of Chess Media Group and author of The Collaborative Organization