If Coca Cola were a person, would it be your friend?  Or better yet, if it could talk, what would it say?

Well, the truth is, companies such as Coca~Cola are very much like people in that they are doing what millions of people do everyday, and they are doing it big. Yes, I’m talking about social networking. Or, to put it in a business terms, marketing.

Now, to answer our first question, yes, Coca~Cola would absolutely be your friend; all you have to do is log onto Facebook and like their page.

As for the second question, what they would say is, just about anything a person needs to hear to buy their brand.

This, my friends, is one aspect of the rapidly growing space of the social enterprise.

I mentioned Facebook first, but the truth is, Facebook seems to be a less favorite way for corporations to run market research off of social networking. Number one is Twitter, with YouTube as a close second.

For that reason, we are now going to examine the fairly obvious reasons why Twitter and YouTube are top picks for big businesses to perform the endless task of staying on top of the game.

Twitter’s Role

Let’s start with Twitter. Clearly, this is the most efficient way for anyone to entertain an audience on a regular basis. With the ability to constantly update their followers, companies like GE can offer constant reminders that you, the consumer, need (want) what they have. The mere fact that you have gone out of your way to follow them is all the assurance they need.

From there, it’s all just about keeping you interested. With an endless supply of giveaways, hot gossipy news feeds, and discount offers, it seems all but the most effective form of marketing ever invented, because really, who ever heard of someone asking for commercials between their favorite show? Somehow, with Twitter, companies have figured out a way to turn people’s lives into one giant commercial.

Not that these companies are simply utilizing social media to network for the sole purpose of upping their sales. That is actually a very common misconception of the definition of social enterprise. Andreana Drencheva of SustainableBrands.com noted in a recent article, Social Entrepreneurship: Still a Misunderstood Concept Among the Public, in an online survey done in the UK at the end of 2011, YouGov, a global opinion center, found that out of 2107 UK adults only 33 percent respondents could identify the correct definition of social enterprise, while 30 percent didn’t even make an attempt to define the term at all. More than a quarter (28 percent) felt that social enterprise is a marketing ploy. Understandably so. If you look at the words, social and enterprise, put them together and try to understand how they fit into our world of social networking, it would logically seem that a business involved in social enterprise would be doing so simply to serve their bottom line.

Luckily, I love to visit Wikipedia to gain clarity on what things are, as opposed to what I think they are, so, let’s turn again to wiki for an accurate definition of social enterprise.

“A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises can be structured as a for-profit or non-profit, and may take the form of a co-operative, mutual organization, a social business, or a charity organization.

Many commercial enterprises would consider themselves to have social objectives, but commitment to these objectives is motivated by the perception that such commitment will ultimately make the enterprise more financially valuable. Social enterprises differ in that, inversely, they do not aim to offer any benefit to their investors, except where they believe that doing so will ultimately further their capacity to realize their social and environmental goals.

….social enterprises are differentiated through transparent evidence that their social aims are primary, and that profits are secondary.”

YouTube’s Role

YouTube is another very important social enterprise tool, one that strikes me as a little more involved and seems much closer to the forms of marketing that we are accustomed to, like television commercials.

You can search for just about anything on YouTube and find it there. It didn’t take long for companies to recognize its popularity and realize that they could effectively introduce and/or reintroduce their brands using ads at the beginning, during and end of any given video. By using the videos tags as well as information provided in online profiles, these companies can very effectively target their consumer audience based on who statistically watches what videos. By conforming their ads to pique the interest or relate to a specific type of person with specific interests they are running very effective campaigns. Repetition is key to this form of marketing, and you will often find yourself singing along to an ad that you may have initially found really annoying.

Not just for for-profit corporations, nonprofit organizations, religious groups and government agencies are all jumping on the social enterprise bandwagon to gain a following and keep the public up to date on their most recent endeavors to improve our human and environmental social interactions.

Who Is Involved Social Enterprise?

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With social enterprise being the topic at hand, we understand a social entrepreneur to be the person behind the business taking part in the practice of social enterprise.
Forbes offers their definition of a social entrepreneur in November 2011 article: Forbes’ List of the Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs “We’re defining “social entrepreneur” as a person who uses business to solve social issues.”

In a recent article, Fortune Global 100 Cos. Get More Social; Twitter Most Popular, MarketingCharts.com referenced a July 2012 report from Burson-Marsteller including data from Visible Technologies stating “87 companies in the Fortune Global 100 are now using at least one social media platform, up from 84 last year and 79 in 2010”

According to the aforementioned Forbes article, the top 30 social entrepreneurs as of late 2011 range from ages 29-57. I went ahead and randomly listed 5 from that list to give us an idea of the types of companies involved in social enterprise followed by the entrepreneurs behind those businesses.  They are as follows:

New Leaf Paper-Jeff Mendelsohn
Teach For America-Wendy Kopp
Room To Read-John Wood
New Leaders-Jean Desravines
Embrace-Jane Chen

People are talking

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In a recent article, How to Make your Enterprise Truly Social, our own Harmony Tapper pointed to a variety of ways an enterprise could improve their marketing and market research by becoming social. Harmony closed with a meaningful statement to any company trying to remain seen in this age of rampant social media, saying,

“Social enterprise is still developing, but it is the future, and any business that wishes to remain competitive is going to have to address their social enterprise strategies going into the future.”

Kudos Harmony, I could not have said it better myself.