Thank you to Mike Kujawski for the diagram.

First of all, what is social media? Social media describes a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It fosters the human connection by transforming a monologue (one-to --many) into a dialogue   (many-to-many).
 

Social media tools make it easier to create and distribute content and discuss the things we care about. Some better known social media examples are Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

So what does social media have to do with employee engagement? According to a recent study by Watson Wyatt, social media has the potential to be a key tool in promoting employee engagement.

"When properly rolled out, social media and Enterprise 2.0 tools can help companies meet their No. 1 internal communication goal – engaging employees," said Michael Rudnick, global intranet and portal leader at Watson Wyatt."Instead of simply mass e-mailing information or posting to an intranet in hopes employees will see it - social media tools help employees actively participate in creating and sharing information. This shift to employee-generated content has resulted in employees becoming more engaged online," he added.

We can’t agree more with Michael Rudnick. We believe that far too many companies are focused on the risks and how to control social media usage versus how to leverage it to their advantage.
 

So where can a company start? We think that companies can take small steps and start to benefit from the use of social media. For example, they can start with “intranet 2.0” which is made up of internal wikis, blogs, social network tools all designed to help employees participate in a company-wide dialogue. This would allow companies to foster collaboration; to enhance the communication between employees; and to enable employees to access the  right resources, expertise and experience and to leverage the vast amounts of internal knowledge that are often not easily accessible.