Hi Arleen,

An excellent post on a subject of particular interest to me as a business development consultant and small business advisor.

I am surprised that the corporate world has not embraced social media as a mainstream media, particularly as a highly efficient means to gather customer feedback on their websites. Why leading retailers have not followed Amazon's lead with product reviews/ratings is quite strange as it represents an invaluable source of otherwise elusive, difficult and expensive to get hold of marketing data.

Having said that, I noticed recently that Debemhams have created a review option for products sold on their on-line store and expect to see more retailers do the same in due course.

Also, I would have thought it would be prudent (in terms of gaining staff feedback, building internal relationships and offering a highly attractive/competitive staff benefit) for organisations to create their own social media intranets to channel and capitalise on a trend that must in real terms steal much of their employees time from the work they are contracted to do (ie, logging on to Facebook, Myspace during working hours).

In fact, the poor quality of corporate intranets (difficult to use, not up to date, not cool) has been a common complaint on the staff surveys I carry out annually in the financial, construction and engineering sectors. It is surprising that leaders have not 'cottoned on' to this as a potentially powerful and effective means to improve communications across the board. If done properly (and creatively) it could help different individuals, teams and departments to understand a) the corporate vision and mission, b) training and career opportunities and information, c) each others' roles and responsibilities, d) how best to work more effectively together and e) how to interact more on a social level.

If anyone knows of any organisations who have successfully adapted social media or on-line feedback systems for their staff and customers, perhaps you could share your thoughts on this. It would provide a sound basis for further research with a view to identifying a niche market for marketing/social media consultants to develop, and help to implement, such systems for the benefit of small to large sized organisations in any sector.

Sue Cartwright