IBM Study Unveils Top Inhibitors to Adopting Social

Sandy Carter (@sandy_carter), VP Social Business Evangelism at IBM, recently did a video interview in which she talked about the reasons why companies are hesitant to really get engaged with social media and use either internally within a hosted community or allow their employees to engage online - to post work-related communications via social networks.

IBM conducted a study of over 2,000 companies and asked them about the top inhibitors to adopting social media. Here are the top response areas. I wasn't surprised at any of these, but I'm glad that IBM's study groups the reasons into buckets so that we, as social media marketers, can help tackle the fears that companies face as we approach social media strategies unique to each company's needs.

1. Security - Someone might break into my private community and something bad will happen
2. Adoption - How will people use it? Will they come? Will they like it?
3. Culture - Is our company culture ready to listen to employees or clients? Are we ready to respond and react in this way?
4. Compliance - Regulated industries such as finance are hesitant to let anyone tweet/post about investments.

Sandy's high-level understanding of social media for business is impressive, and she's extremely articulate about it. I had the opportunity to have dinner with her at an IBM conference earlier this year and enjoyed meeting her and connecting with her.