When beginning a social business program, pairing employees and facilitating peer-to-peer collaboration in social media learning will assist to accelerate successful employee activation. This is especially true when trying to foster a communicative learning environment that encourages sharing of successes and challenges along the social maturity path.

Some benefits of peer-to-peer social collaboration are:

Friendly competition
Benchmarking at a localized level
Amplification of the team's efforts
Ground up adoption - the 'groundswell effect'
Open communication and transparency
Sharing of stories and learning from a combination of the strengths of the team

Take Aways

Set clear goals for social activation that are grounded in metrics and shared across teams.
Sales personnel are communicative and will evangelize the merits across the organization. Make sales the social activation beta group.
Combine formal, instructor-led training with a self-study library, peer mentoring and tools to expand your social business program.