As companies like @BestBuy and @MGMGrand have become smarter about social media, they stopped thinking about social media in the context of campaigns and have instead moved to ongoing engagement.

I think a lot of businesses will face a similar issue as they start considering how to grow their social media efforts: what’s the best roadmap to follow when moving from a single social media champion to a team, geographically disparate locations, or (gulp) an entire enterprise?

This wasn’t the first time I had looked at the challenges of ongoing engagement. While in college, I landed an internship with a Computer Technology Associates, a local defense contractor. CTA had contracts for Air Force AI projects and exposed me to something called command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I). Recent presentations by the Altimeter Group, Edelman and TRENDSSPOTTING echoed more C4I themes. As I explored more, I’m starting to think that C4I can help businesses, like the military, improve their ability to synchronize and integrate high-tempo operations anywhere in the world.

C4I provides a framework for helping organizations engage with third parties:

  • Equipping team members with the tools, policies and the means to engage with stakeholders around the clock.
  • Enabling managers to achieve the highest effectiveness, agility, and efficiency in their operations through the effective use of information.
  • Ensuring a global or enterprise-wide capacity to share and exchange information, and to provide required information in sufficient depth, security, clarity, and timeliness for decision makers – whether consumers, partners, or employees – to arrive at informed decisions
  • Ensuring that quality, timely intelligence and insights support the operational needs of senior management.
  • Continuously re-evaluating security practices and costs and apply appropriate risk management wherever possible.
  • Forging a partnership with industry, partners, and stakeholders to define, nurture, promote, and exploit C4I concepts and technologies to meet current and future requirements.

It sure sounds like social media to me. The strength of C4I is that you don’t need someone like me to tell you about it: there are literally tens of thousands of people that understand C4I, along with documented processes, tools and programs.

In the future, I’ll share what Answer Logistics is doing in the areas of command, control, communications, and intelligence…and hopefully provide some ideas on how to scale social media efforts.