Social media for business sustainability is going mainstream. That's what the latest Social Media Sustainability Index found. But how did that happen? And most importantly why? What is the potential of social media for sustainability communications and how does it add real business value? Read along to find out, I am about to enlighten you, or more precisely, a dear friend of mine is about to do so.

One year ago I had the pleasure of having a Google+ Hangout with the most enthusiastic person I know – Julie Urlaub.

Julie kindly agreed to participate in an interview with me as part of my research for my second BA dissertation that was also published as a book.

Julie is a true pioneer when it comes to social media for sustainability. She lives and breathes it and she is extremely passionate about her work.

She is Founder and Managing Director of Taiga Company – a sustainability and social media consulting firm specialising in sustainable storytelling. Julie is also the author of The Business Sustainability Handbook.

She not only understands the potential of social media for sustainability, but also successfully advises clients how to make best use of it and encourages people around the world to adopt a greener lifestyle.

Did you know that Generation Y will soon be the greatest combined purchasing power in history? By 2025 millennials will comprise 75% of the global workforce. That’s quite the fact to grasp especially for older generations, who according to a recent survey by Deloitte might have a problem understanding and embracing the requirements, needs and wishes of millennials.

Before I move on to the rather interesting research findings, I just want to make clear who the millennials (or Generation Y) are – basically, anyone born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s falls into that category, including me too. Baby boomers or Generation X, on the other hand, are the ones born between the early 1960s to the early 1980s and Generation Z or digital natives are those born from the mid 1990s to the present day. The other generations are listed on Wikipedia here.

So what did Deloitte find?

The overall conclusion of the survey results is that Generation Y has big demands and high expectation from businesses, governments and the future workplace. This means that, as Deloitte puts it, business leaders are facing significant challenges “if they are to meet the expectations of the Millennial generation.”

What does sustainability mean to business? Is it about reducing environmental impact? Or maybe about improving reputation through CSR activities? Is it worth it? How can we translate this sustainable business vision into actual business operations? How can we align commercial performance to sustainability for the long run? Those are questions that many leaders and company executives ask themselves when being faced with the challenge of adopting sustainability in their organisations.

The truth is, if truly embedded into every part of the business, sustainability can offer tremendous competitive advantages.

This is not something I just made up. Many studies and even my own research have shown that embracing sustainability and effectively managing the triple bottom line can be a key driver for innovation, growth and progress.

A recent survey by BSI and Verdantix confirms that yet again.

150 sustainability executives from 20 industry sectors, including retail and consumer products, consumer services, manufacturing, business and financial services, oil and gas, utilities and mining were part of the research, depicting a fairly sound representation of organisational leadership.

The overall finding was that the majority of business executives (70%) identify sustainability as key growth driver, however, connecting sustainability to overall financial and business performance still remains a challenge with only 51% believing that sustainability issues will impact their firm’s financial performance over the next two years.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in a brilliant chat on Twitter. It was my first ever Twitter chat and I loved it. Amazing how much insights got shared in a number of minutes, how many brilliant people tweeted their input and thoughts, how much I got to learn and what great connections I made. What was the chat about? The issue of CSR and sustainability reporting.

David Connor – CSR, sustainability and comms expert – invited me to join the chat that was organised by 3BLMedia. Last year, David was so kind to participate in an interview with me for my second dissertation about social media and sustainability, so this time I just couldn't say no.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter chats, these are basically normal chats conducted on Twitter at a specific time on a specific date with a designated, unique hashtag. The chat usually has a moderator who asks questions via tweets and integrates the hashtag in each tweet. Participants follow the conversation via the hashtag and share their answers or insights by tweeting and including the hashtag too.

Exciting news! The fourth annual Social Media Sustainability Index 2013 is now out! Having written my second BA dissertation and my first book on the topic of social media for sustainability communications, you can assume how eager I was to go through the report and see if anything has changed after I had done my own research in the area less than a year ago. So, this is what I am going to talk about today - the research findings.

The team at Sustainly, led by Matthew Yeomans, analysed how 475 major companies from various industries use social media to communicate sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and actions all over the world. They looked at more than 4000 corporate social media channels to identify companies with real commitment to social media sustainability communications. They then selected the top 100 for the Social Media Sustainability Index and further investigated best practice communication and storytelling.

The main finding was "an explosion in the number of companies committed to talking about sustainability", however very few of those "seem to have a good idea who they are talking to and what stories they should be telling." But, storytelling plays an essential role for sustainability because "good social media communications is based on having a compelling story to tell and being able to back it up."