Seeking Social Business Leaders For 2013

The BrainYard's 7 Social Business Leaders Of 2012

Who wants to brag about their company's success with social collaboration, social customer service and strategy for tying together the multiple ways social technologies can make a business more efficient and effective?

We're once again looking for introductions to the best of the best, a new set of Social Business Leaders to be announced at June's E2 Conference in Boston.

In 2012, we honored Bonobos, Cemex, Ford Motor Co., McKesson, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, TD Bank and Unisys. Chris Laping, the Red Robin CIO we named our 2012 Social Business Leader of the Year, joined me for an onstage interview at E2, and it wound up being one of the top-rated events at the conference.

Only a few months have passed since we announced our 2012 picks at a November E2 event in Santa Clara, Calif., but this time we're trying to get an earlier start. Last year, we heard from quite a few people and organizations wanting to be considered after the deadline had passed. This time, my plan is to accept nominations through Friday, April 26, which ought to be plenty of time if people are paying attention. Last year, we also got a lot of inappropriate nominations -- vendors nominating themselves for consideration when we were looking to honor the most effective enterprise users of social technology, not the creators of technology products. This time, I'm redoubling my attempts to make that distinction clear.

The nomination form displayed below is intended to help us collect the same basic information about all nominees, after which we will conduct follow-up interviews with the nominees who impress us most. We reserve the right to also consider organizations and individuals we encounter through our reporting or through our own social networks, although we'll try to make sure we collect from them the same information that's on the form.

I'm particularly interested in speaking with the users of enterprise social networks who are using them effectively, partly for selfish reasons. I'm working on a book, Social Collaboration for Dummies, for which those interviews would be useful. However, social business is a broader, more comprehensive concept.

The ideal social business leader would be taking advantage of a variety of employee, partner, supplier and customer applications of social networks, social media and related technologies. More importantly, whatever the technologies chosen, a social business user employs them to make a real difference for the business.

Is that you?

Deadline is past.

David F. Carr is an InformationWeek editor and and author of the forthcoming book Social Collaboration for Dummies (coming Fall 2013). Follow David on Twitter @davidfcarr or Google+.

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