The future of social media is un-sexy.

And not in the librarian-who-might-be-kind-of-hot-without-glasses kind of way.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Social Media 2011 Conference hosted by Radian6 earlier this year. Among the many fantastic speakers (Mitch Joel blew me away) was a young lady named Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra), who happens to be a higher-up at Radian6.

Amber talked about a bunch of really cool stuff. In fact, she’s been doing it for years. And if you want to invest 8 minutes wisely, you’ll watch this video:

Down to brass tacks:

Now, what Amber is talking about here is the necessity for people within an institution to communicate with each other. What she’s talking about is collaboration, open access, and a holistic (God I hate that word) communications strategy built (or rebuilt) from the ground up.

She’s talking about the kinds of things that will never win you any awards. They won’t get you any Twitter followers. They won’t dazzle fans of your Facebook page.

But it WILL make your business operate more efficiently. It WILL save you time and money. Your right hand WILL know what the left hand is doing, because open lines of communication will be woven throughout your organization. Hell, those lines will be the things SUPPORTING your organization.

The fork in the road:

In 12 months, everyone will be an expert in how to use social media to communicate with people external to an organization. That’s easy stuff; and it’s what is happening in social media RIGHT NOW. But the FUTURE of social media is a completely different animal. And there are two ways to think about it.

The first is thinking about the technology behind social media. Right now, the only limits to social media are A) our willingness to take risks, B) our imagination, and C) the technology that turns that imagination into reality. Best practices are well established at this point. The future is in the ways we enact them.

The second way of thinking about the future of social is remarkably un-sexy. It’s about aligning internal communications structures. It’s about mining data to create new operational efficiencies. It’s about reducing the costs associated with outdated forms of communication by leveraging new platforms and applications that let us — shock and amaze! — talk to each other.

I know sexy. That ain’t sexy.

But it’s absolutely necessary. Absolutely. (I don’t use that word lightly, and I’m about to use it a third time.) ABSOLUTELY necessary.

Why? Because the one thing you can say about the evolution of technology since, well… its inception is that it has always gotten faster. And with technology, so go our expectations. Technology moves fast, so buying groceries should move fast. (Self-checkout lines emerge.) Technology moves fast, so banking should move fast. (Love those ATMs that count your cash for you.) Technology moves fast, so travel should move fast. (Automated self-service kiosks at check-in.)

Now what about customer service? Technology moves fast, so when I have a question about your product or service, your response should be — you got it — fast.

Every response. Every time. Are you set up to do that?