Great question. To CIOs personally, social networking provides a new way of operating within and across their organization to exert leadership through the network, instead of in traditional ways such as in-person meetings or through e-mail. Externally, it helps them tap into their colleagues and industry to broaden their horizon and forge strategic new relationships to help them deliver better on their objectives.

From a service delivery perspective, social networking provides CIOs a way of using IT to more fully unleash worker potential, open up knowledge stocks, and harvest innovation, as well as locate and tap into the full expertise of the organization. And these are just a few of the benefits.

For fuller details of what's possible, here's my breakdown on social business as a whole for CIOs:

http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/06/the-cio-shortlist/

Michael Krigsman Replied on Sept. 16, 2011

Dion, I read your post and, as usual, it is rich and interesting.

Do you think the CIO is the best person to drive social media strategy -- after all, it's not really an IT task, per se, but of course does involve technical resources. It's an interesting question to consider who should be responsible for these types of initiatives.

Larry Hawes Replied on Sept. 16, 2011

Good answer, Dion. I'll add that monitoring of internal and external networks by CIOs – both via their direct participation and through the use of analytics captured and summarized by automated monitoring tools – is highly valuable for their awareness of (and, hopefully, ability to act on) employee, business partner, and customer technology issues that have a direct affect on strategic business objectives and imperatives.

Rawn Shah

Posted on Sept. 16, 2011

Recommended by:
Brielle Nikaido

Having just spent a few days with CIOs this week, I'd like to reiterate that CIOs seem to be more concerned about the value of it to the organization than they themselves personally using social networks. You could look at it from several points of view:
(a) the value of encouraging peer to peer support;
(b) the value of from helping employees locate expertise and information;
(c) the creation or codification of tacit knowledge that otherwise vanishes with time and turnover;
(d) the improved means of feedback on IT projects;
(e) and generally the improvement of logistics.

One view the came up was that of a CIO as an equipment manager or quartermaster, something that oversimplifies their role. I raised the classic military saying: "Battles are won by soldiers, Wars by logistics." This is something CEOs need to take to heart.

Dennis McDonald

Posted on Sept. 16, 2011

I assume you are talking about CIOs and their own use of social networks. My guess is that for within company collaboration and communication the value for most CIO's will be pretty low for engaging with other executives simply because the other executives don't use social networks and will be overly dependent on email and meetings. Within the IT department this may be different for communicating with and collaborating with staff.

Michael Krigsman Replied on Sept. 16, 2011

Dennis, you make some good points, but take a look at SAP's CIO, Oliver Bussman, and how he engages on Twitter (for example). He is there as @sapcio

Dennis McDonald Replied on Sept. 16, 2011

I'm talking about companies that don't necessarily have a stake in promoting IT businesses, i.e., the majority of businesses. see "Five Realities of Enterprise Collaboration & Technology" http://www.ddmcd.com/technology.html