Over the past few weeks two interesting things have surfaced time and time and time again in the client workshops, consulting engagements and pitches I've been involved in here at Headshift, namely that:

• the work we do behind firewall on the Enterprise side, and the public facing work of the Social Media team I'm a part of, can often complement each other
• the introductions we can broker between our clients can sometimes lead to collaborative opportunities

Enterprise social software helps people within organisations to more effectively find and share knowledge. It's about making connections between people, projects and processes within the enterprise easier to navigate. That, of course, is very much the same thing that we do with many of our consumer facing Social Media projects - help people connect around ideas, editorial content or brands. I've long been an advocate of turning existing processes into content and opportunities for deeper engagement. It's a far more sustainable approach to map social tools and techniques onto existing processes than it is to add additional, disconnected activities to the workload of staff. With this in mind, I'm becoming really interested to see how we might marry the two usefully by creating systems that are used within the Enterprise but which surface some of the process and content created by it for public consumption.

We also, I feel, seem to have reached a point where Headshift and the people we have working here often know of a client, partner, or contact who shares an outlook or stategic mission with one of our other clients. So, for example, the other day I was working on a proposal for a recruitment proposition which involved an educational element. I wanted some examples so that I could better understand the user workflow so asked, without revealing any sensitive details, for advice from another client in the education sector. In a few months, when the project is ready to go live, we'll be in touch with yet another client we think is likely to want to be aligned with, and involved in promoting, this project. This isn't something new - we've often been able to help clients by introducing them, but as Headshift's experience and scale grows, the value of the connections we're able to make between clients is becoming more and more useful.

Having spent a number of years as an academic studying online communities and social networks, it comes as no surprise to me that making new connections, both between aspects of what you're doing and with others, is fruitful. Being at the centre of those connections, and in some instances discovering or instigating them, is proving to be, for me at least, one of the most exciting things about being part of the work that Headshift does.