A meteoric rise in popularity for social media in recent years has companies scrambling to understand its impact on how they operate. For training and learning within large organisations, social media makes existing practices appear outdated. Clearly, equipping colleagues with the skills and insights to compete in a fast-changing global marketplace requires a step change in approach.

According to a recent Nielsen study, nine out of ten consumers trust their online peers more than marketers. Businesses are always looking carefully at their customer engagement strategies to distinguish their customer service from the competition, and never more than now with social media starting to have a major influence on consumer behavior.

UPS, the global shipping firm, is launching a new “logistics” ad campaign in the coming days to boost its credentials with small businesses by leveraging social media networking power. Catchy ad music aside, this could be one of the best examples to date of social media utilization for B2B.

In the economic downturn, companies are doing everything possible to simultaneously cut costs and build a loyal customer base around their brands. The automotive sector has led the way in this, as it was forced to overcome the the two-pronged assault of a struggling economy and ongoing pressure from the eco-lobby. As we reported last month, electronic car companies like Tesla Motors are taking brand building to social networks to help build grassroots excitement around the new technology, and Ford ditched the traditional closed-door auto show for the release of the 2011 Explorer, which proved to be good for customer reach and cutting costs.

LG, the South Korean electronics manufacturer, is making use of Twitter functionality for in-house communication on a new company mobile application called BizTweet that has proved so popular it just start pitching the service to others. It’s a fantastic idea for improving informal communication and creative idea-sharing between employees. There’s just one problem. The idea isn’t exactly new, and there is already a Twitter plug-in called BizTweet.

Philips head of global internal comms, Cameron Batten, spoke to Simply-communicate recently about a new internal communications channel the consumer electronics powerhouse has implemented to bring its disparate and nearby employees together to collaborate, inspire and promote knowledge sharing.

As far as social media integration on the enterprise level goes, these are early days. Scratch that. These are “scary”, early days for corporate executives, says digital pioneer Jeff Dachis, the founder in the 1990s of Razorfish, and now, the Dachis Group. Companies are still in the trial-and-error mode in terms of using the latest social media innovations and technologies to engage with customers and employees. Why the hesitancy?

In this week’s insightful guest analysis, Headshift director Lee Bryant argues that social business design may yet succeed in making IT departments relevant and useful within companies.

We were lucky to be able to call upon the expertise and insight of a number of top social media thinkers at this year’s Social Media Influence conference. Adam Brown was one such expert.

Social business consultant Stephen Perry was one of the speakers on the Social Business Design track of Social Media Influence, outlining the work he has done implementing a social intranet.