What's the burning question that senior leaders ask social business consultants? A study by the Conference Board and Stanford's Rock Center for Corporate Governance suggests that more than anything else today's C-level leaders want to know about LinkedIn.

With no disrespect to LinkedIn - it's a wonderful and useful service - there's a great deal more that social business can deliver for an organization. For instance, here's what IBM says a business should be thinking about when considering a social business initiative:

• Deeply connecting individuals in productive, efficient ways
• Providing line of sight across traditional boundaries and better aligning actions to needs
• Speeding up business with insight to anticipate and address evolving opportunities

If you are thinking about bringing in a consultant or agency to help you ramp up your social business, make sure you find someone who can help you identify ways that social business aligns with your core goals and outcomes. It may very well be that you need a LinkedIn strategy to enhance your presence among job seekers, but there's a lot more to gain once you've decided to make your business social.

Learn how to successfully launch a social business.