I attended a C-Suite conference last week in Boston. I heard a new term called SoLoMo. So I googled it and learned that it means Social-Local-Mobile.
Definition – What does SoLoMo mean?
The following is an explanation from the helpful website, Techopedia.
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/28492/solomo
“SoLoMo, short for social-local-mobile, refers to a more mobile-centric version of the addition of local entries to search engine results. SoLoMo emerged as a result of the growing popularity of smartphones, and provides greater local precision to search engine results than what’s available via a PC.
To understand SoLoMo, it is really necessary to understand several developments that brought it about. The first is that SoLoMo arose as a result of the popularity of smartphones and tablets that integrate geo-location technology. The GPS technology integrated into these devices provides more accurate geo results than the “IP mapping” approach necessary for home or office PCs. Also, big search engines are recognizing that there is a large – and virtually untapped – market in local search. That’s because there are a lot more “mom and pop” operations out there than firms with a national or international scope. When search engines started incorporating more and more local results in search engine results, they proved the size of the local market on the Internet.”
SoLoMo and Employee Engagement
After learning and understanding the concept of SoLoMo, I started to wonder if it was a relevant concept for employee brand engagement. How does the social, local and mobile concept apply to providing employees greater leverage to perform better, access information easier, and to use their mobile devices to make it all happen?
Let’s start with the social aspect. Employees are indeed using social media through enterprise social platforms like Sharepoint 2013, Yammer, Ideascale and Vetter to engage each other in dialogue and interactive communications. Often, the end goal is to collaborate and generate new fresh ideas. These platforms also provide companies with a strategy for dealing with the seemingly endless stream of email messages. For instance, Slack, another enterprise communication portal, touts that their offering reduces internal emails by 48%. Employees are empowered when they are less inundated with emails and can quickly reach their co-workers in a social feed, or instant messenger format.
In terms of the local aspect of SoLoMo, employees can harness their experts and authorities through their local professional networks. With the popularity of LinkedIn, employees can quickly and easily reach their personal connections and past contacts. This can prove very useful when you need advice or expertise outside of your current company knowledge base. And if all else fails, there’s always your local public library branch.
Mobility represents how employees access these “social” and “local” networks in real time. When the need to find information arises, employees can access their smart phone to get the information they want/need from the Internet, or a variety of mobile based enterprise applications. They don’t need to wait to get to the office and sit in front of their computer. This makes the employee more efficient and flexible from any location, which is a growing emphasis for the millennial workforce.
When companies provide access for employees through smart phone technology, they can leverage their social networks internally to understand new markets and local issues that they might otherwise not know or be familiar with. The benefits include speed, collaboration, instant access to information, more collectiv
e knowledge, and greater leverage for the company as a whole.
SoLoMo is an important development in advertising and geo-location, but as we have shown above, it is also a relevant concept to internal organization. Just as it empowers consumers with speed, knowledge and access and control, it also enables employees to do the same things as it relates to their job.
To learn about SoLoMo and hear from Allan Steinmetz, CEO of Inward Strategic Consulting, register for the Strategic Internal Brand & Employee Engagement conference August 9 – 11 in Chicago.
Read the original post and find additional resources on the Inward Strategic Consulting blog