I do work with businesses to develop social media strategies, just as I work with nonprofit corporations. Yesterday, I gave a presentation at Nefesh B’Nefesh on the topic of Integrating Social Media Into Essential Business Functions. It was a lot of fun to think about using social media to support other business functions besides marketing.

Guess what? Social media is not just a platform for marketing and sales.

In fact, the idea for this presentation was formed when I began to investigate collaborative internal communication technologies for working on team projects. Then I started to wonder: what other business functions are supported by social media? Do social technologies actually increase efficiency in business functions? What would be the ROI of using them?

In a previous life, I was a small business consultant – thus, this presentation was created to answer these questions.

I looked at human resources, training, internal communication, product development, customer service, and sales/marketing. I purposely omitted a few areas (accounting, IT), but please chime in with your ideas for integrating social media platforms and technologies into all areas of business. At the end of the presentation, I offer the examples of Best Buy and The American Red Cross, two companies that have embraced social media.

I’m now beginning to to think about a similar presentation for nonprofit organizations. What are the essential organizational function areas that would benefit from social media integration? I’m thinking (out loud here) about member/client/organizational recruitment, program development, membership engagement, internal communication, human resources, and of course…fundraising. Do you already integrate social media into certain function areas at your nonprofit? Are you exploring this now? What are the ROI metrics? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and experiences.

Update: For some reason, I cannot embed this presentation into my blog, I’m linking to it instead. If you see a “tv” icon next to the link, hover over it and the presentation will pop up. (Some days, technology doesn’t work like you want it to.)