We have social media, social gaming, social lending, and social learning. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that ‘social business’ is now entering corporate lingo, with C-suite executives (often reluctantly) turning their attention to the trend. Unlike social media, however, social business does not appear to be something that you can merely assign to your PR or marketing department. Instead, it is more of a business philosophy that translates into an increasingly open, highly communicative, corporate culture.

A social business, according to IBM, isn’t just a company that has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle. It is one that embraces and cultivates a spirit of collaboration and community throughout its organisation, both internally and externally. Werner Lindemann, executive for Global Technical Services at IBM South Africa, says 57 percent of South African companies that have invested in social business consistently outperform their peers. IBM’s Global CEO Study found that only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years. The company forecasts that although social media is the least utilised of all customer interaction methods today, it stands to become the number-two organisational engagement method within the next five years, a close second to face-to-face interactions.