When the first day of TechnologyWorld09 came to a close yesterday, the last session of the day addressed the question on the lips of every CEO looking to crack the world of Web 2.0: How can businesses use social media to create value? Unfortunately for all the companies at TechnologyWorld09 and beyond, the answer can’t yet be summed up in less than 140 characters.

For a start, the audience signalled that the question required definition. Just what is social media? Marketing and Communications expert Helen Keegan summed it up neatly as ‘media that is two-way instead of one-way’; Redcacto Director Benjamin Ellis reaffirmed this idea by explaining that the reason many companies are afraid of setting foot into the social media arena is that we are ‘obsessed with controlling brands’, something that is impossible to do in an open dialogue.

Next, we need to define ‘value’. And here comes some key advice: judge your social media success by the value its activity has added to your business or the amount of additional product you have sold, not the number of followers you have on Twitter. But, unfortunately for those hoping to hear the secret, nobody can yet guarantee how to add that value using online communities.

One message came from the panel loud and clear: there are no experts. Not yet, anyway – in a field so young, with rules as yet undefined, there is no hard and fast, step-by-step process to social media success.

And this was reflected in the differing standpoints of the panel. Helen advised companies to ‘join in. There’s people already doing it. You can learn from what they’re doing by joining in.’ However, Toby Constantine, Marketing Director of Market Evolution, reminded us that there is no need to rush, describing the opportunity as ‘an opening door’, and recommending that businesses only ‘get involved when you are ready’. Just as the world of social media is itself a dialogue, the ‘rules’ for businesses within social media are still very much up for debate. 

Tags: Social media, TechnologyWorld09, TW09