Social media is much more than chat-rooms. But many businesses don't understand how to use it properly, according to a recent study by Gartner. "Social media is not an end in and of itself — it is an enabler," said Anthony Bradley, group vice president at Gartner. "Social media technologies are tools and, like any technology, it is how people use those tools that delivers enterprise results." It allows business to

* Enable Collective Intelligence for Operational Effectiveness
Collective intelligence is the meaningful assembly of relatively small & incremental community contributions into a larger & coherent accumulation of knowledge. Enterprises looking to improve internal operational effectiveness through enhanced collaboration, especially around product delivery, customer service & creation of a corporate memory, should examine employing blogs & wikis.

* Employ Expertise Location for Sales Effectiveness
Expertise location involves specific expertise from the masses of people & among the often staggering amount of available content. Enterprises seeking to improve sales effectiveness should examine the potential of social networking to enable expertise location behaviors associated with product delivery, product utilization & customer service.

* Unearth Emergent Structures for Operational Effectiveness
Emergent structures are structures that are unknown or unplanned prior to social interactions but emerge as activity progresses. The goal of emergent structures is to gain insight into the true "nature of things" to more effectively organize, manage or interact with a community. Enterprises advancing their use of social media should explore emergent structures as a means to better understand how organizations actually behave & accomplish work. Emergent structures is a more advanced collective behavior & is relatively less mature. Once enterprises understand the value of social media & experience some initial success, then emergent structures become more appealing, & the chances for success are higher.

* Increase Sales Through Interest Cultivation
Interest cultivation is the collecting of people & content around a common interest, with the goal of growing the community of interested people & increasing their level of engagement. Enterprises pursuing social media for brand awareness & sales effectiveness should employ social media to foster mass interest cultivation. Gartner has found that enterprises that have successfully facilitated interest cultivation have experienced stronger customer loyalty & increased customer engagement, leading to better brand awareness, increased customer feedback & increased sales.

* Engage in Mass Coordination for Rapid Response
Mass coordination involves rapidly organizing the activities of a large number of people through fast & short mass messaging that is often spread virally. Early adopters of social media should examine mass coordination for rapidly coordinating a mass response to a significant event. Emergency response, search & rescue, sense and respond, marketing campaigns & management of large programs are some appropriate scenarios for mass coordination. Gartner believes that by effectively employing mass coordination, enterprises can more rapidly marshal a powerful response to an important occurrence. However, mass coordination is an emerging collective behavior and comes with the risks associated with immaturity.

* Build Relationship Leverage for Brand Awareness
Relationship leverage is the seemingly contradictory practice of effectively managing and deriving value from a huge number of personal relationships. Enterprises pursuing social media for brand awareness and sales effectiveness should examine the potential of the relationship leverage collective behavior. Enterprises that have successfully facilitated relationship leverage experience benefits in brand awareness and customer engagement and relationship leverage is often a cost-effective & lower-risk social media effort.