The SOCIAL Shift

700 ideas in 7 hours.

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:02:00 -0500

I woke up to a hyperactive phone this morning. It was vibrating incessantly because an internal crowdsourcing initiative launched overnight for me (during the day in Asia). They generated about 700 ideas in the first 7 hours! Exciting to see the high level of interest. It will be interesting to review the positive outcomes and lessons to learn from this latest deployment.

rickwebb: percolatehq: Maker’s Mark embraces social amid...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:36:33 -0500

rickwebb:

percolatehq:

Maker’s Mark embraces social amid backlash
(via Maker’s Mark’s Nifty Footwork | Digiday)

A friend of Emma’s works @ Beam and came to visit us a few weeks before all this brouhaha. She told me about the Maker’s Mark fan club, and I signed up before this all happened. The way they handled the backlash about the 3% dilution was really top notch.

I thought this was a good example of leaders being willing to listen to the community built around a brand and reacting accordingly. The article correctly points out how pre-work, perhaps via an ambassador network, could have avoided the outcry.

Business consequences of perpetual personal connectivity

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:02:30 -0500

Business consequences of perpetual personal connectivity:

ibmsocialbiz:

Businesses that want to be successful in the world created by the perpetually connected will have to:
Overhaul their technology — all of it: consumer-facing digital products, services, and support; technology to equip employees; in-store technology; sales process and delivery chain

Hire people across the company who understand how digital interactivity affects their business role.

Evolve internal processes to incorporate new talent and technology in the most effective and efficient ways possible.

Restructure departments to implement these new processes in the smartest ways.

Rethink how and what they forecast, measure, and budget for.

Retrain their employees not just on these new processes and how to use the technology at their disposal but also on the speed and kind of service the new customer demands, whether that service is being delivered digitally, on the phone, or in person.

via Melissa Parrish, Forrester Research

The 10 Best Intranets in the World!

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:53:47 -0500

The 10 Best Intranets in the World!:

and other intranet trends from @NNgroup.

Today's Marketing Cookie - The Attributes of Change

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 08:47:19 -0500

Today's Marketing Cookie - The Attributes of Change:

commcreative.com

Today’s fortune came from Marsh Cochran Sutherland of Lincoln, MA. Marsh is an experienced Boston area startup founder and a proven social media marketing evangelist. He is known for his many award-winning startups including: FriendFlirt,…

Change. Often discussed. In many cases when it’s impending. This post talks about some of the overlooked elements of change.

Blind Date Lunches Help You Network at Work

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 05:56:24 -0500

Blind Date Lunches Help You Network at Work:

You can’t rely solely on technology to build your personal network. Especially at work. You’re surrounded by smart, interesting people. Take the time to meet them. Like this program that Boehringer Ingelheim set up to help match employees for blind date lunches.

Principles of a Social Business Strategist Author: Greg Lowe,...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:14:16 -0400

Principles of a Social Business Strategist
Author: Greg Lowe, socialenterprisetoday.com

Over the past 4 years, I’ve seen some incredible successes implementing social business solutions both personally and from my peers. As I look for my next opportunity to drive social business inside of organizations, I wanted to…

Many of the principles in this article guide me as I consult co-workers with a variety of goals on how to use social collaboration internally. Key themes: work to make them successful, don’t over-sell social.

Does social business have a future?

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 09:04:51 -0400

Does social business have a future?:

Author: Alan Hamilton, socialenterprisetoday.com

I consider a Social Business to be one which harnesses the power of social networking technology to aid collaboration and decision making in organizations. I see this as the modern extension of Knowledge Management which wa…

A loaded question? Perhaps. I too think social business has a future. To fully realize the benefits of smarter systems, I see an important next step in helping people understand why changing the way they work is valuable, not just for the company or for colleagues, but for them. It’s critical because the potential benefits rely on a critical mass of information in these systems. That will only be achieved if it becomes the default way of doing business. Community managers, intranet leaders, collaboration and knowledge management professionals, we have work to do.

The Rise of the Social CEO within Enterprise 2.0 Author: Bill...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:06:51 -0400

The Rise of the Social CEO within Enterprise 2.0
Author: Bill Ives, socialenterprisetoday.com

Category:
Social
• Collaboration
• Consumerization
4 views
So here we are at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston. I will be reporting on it on this blog over the next few days. I recently found an interesting related study. As reported …

The interesting part of this article for me is not so much the CEO’s role in a social organization (as important as that is). Rather the important role that data plays. The amount of data you can extract from people and turn that into insights is invaluable. It’s useful in promoting a healthy community and in demonstrating to skeptics where there is value.

"Three “facts” about social business are accepted without question by most people. That any business..."

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:44:34 -0400

“Three “facts” about social business are accepted without question by most people. That any business with a Facebook page or Twitter account is considered “social”; that hiring a social media person constitutes a social “presence”; that implementing an intranet transforms the organization into a “collaborative” enterprise. Now that I‘ve used up my allocation of quotation marks, I’m going to explain why these facts are pure myths.”

- The Myth of Social Media Tactics Versus the Reality of Social Business Strategies - Forbes (via ibmsocialbiz)

Welcome to the social revolution

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:51:43 -0400

Welcome to the social revolution:

This article summarizes the dramatic shift that social has introduced to how the world operates, the way we create and how work gets done.

ibmsocialbiz: Google’s Sebastien Marotte: Social tools could...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:56:53 -0400

ibmsocialbiz:

Google’s Sebastien Marotte: Social tools could hold the key to increased collaboration and a more productive way of doing business. There is no clear distinction between collaboration and social - social tools in the workplace are an evolution of the collaborative technology that has been transforming working practices over the past few years.We found a huge proportion of high-growth businesses (81%) are using social tools to facilitate expansion and improve the ways in which teams collaborate and share knowledge. And it is worth noting that this is across all industries and sectors. Via BBC News.

(via BBC News - How getting social can break down business barriers )

Case Study: Employees Do Work On Social Networks #cgint

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:15:11 -0400

Case Study: Employees Do Work On Social Networks #cgint:

David Roe, cmswire.com

Among today’s sessions at the Advanced Intranet +Portals conference in Amsterdam today was a talk by Lars Mielke of Allianz about the development of its intranet and the process of moving its social networking application from Yammer…

I enjoy reading stories about the journey companies go on to launch enterprise social networks like this one about Allianz. There are lots of common themes here: viral adoption, lots of rich business content, platform migration… All the fun stuff!

Wired Publishing its First Issue for Free on iPad By Chris...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:01:33 -0400

Wired Publishing its First Issue for Free on iPad
By Chris O’Shea on May 31, 2012 3:30 PM, mediabistro.com

Wired began all the way back in January of 1993. For fans of the magazine, tomorrow is a chance to go back in time. According to WWD, Wired will publish its premiere issue for free on the iPad as part of a 20th…

I’ll be interested to read that first Wired issue. Particularly since I was just wrapping up a stellar year in 5th grade 20 years ago.

A Digital Strategy for Social, Collaborative, Mobile Content #cgint

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:57:06 -0400

A Digital Strategy for Social, Collaborative, Mobile Content #cgint:

David Roe, cmswire.com

Will digital kill the intranet? Will social kill the intranet? Will the two together kill off the intranet? To all three questions, the answer is probably not, according to intranet guru Jane McConnell who was leading a question and answe…

This article frames many of the key considerations as enterprises shift to a more social way of working. Two things jumped out at me: first, how companies are responding to the shift. McConnell’s research indicates only 17 percent of her sample have a team devoted to thinking about this dearth of content employees are generating. That’s scary! If companies don’t embrace, encourage and direct this groundswell toward business objectives, it represents a missed opportunity and a competitive disadvantage. The second point that caught my eye was the discussion about the shifting role of communicators. There is still, I think, a role for “traditional” communications. The change is that employees can vote with the views and attention. Communicators simply need to be increasingly attentive to what their audience want to consume and how they want to consume it. That seems like communications 101, I think some communicators have been insulated from this pressure.

Microsoft’s View of the Future Workplace is Brilliant,...

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:10:34 -0400

Microsoft’s View of the Future Workplace is Brilliant, Here’s Why
Mark Fidelman, forbes.com

Quite simply, our workspaces will have to change to digital workspaces. And only a few companies like Microsoft and IBM are talking about this. What I’ve seen in my research with executives and MTC Directors is that the world is moving…

What I like about this article is the close connection it makes between updating the workplace and the ability for organizations to continue producing and competing at a high level.

ibmsocialbiz: Only 1% of companies are strategic in use of...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:37:32 -0400

ibmsocialbiz:

Only 1% of companies are strategic in use of social business. The myth of social media tactics vs the reality of social business strategies via Forbes

Last week, I had the honor of speaking at Diversity Inc.’s...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:42:42 -0500

Last week, I had the honor of speaking at Diversity Inc.’s Innovation Fest. You may ask why I was talking social intranet at a diversity event. I was part of a presentation with Terri Austin and Olga Kozak where we talked about ways in which McGraw-Hill is fostering digital innovation within our culture.

My piece of the presentation focuses on how our social intranet has been central in increased collaboration and innovation. Click to the 16:25 mark to see my section.

The Future of the Digital Workplace

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:22:13 -0500

The Future of the Digital Workplace:

I wanted to post this paper. I thought it was a great snapshot of what the future of a digital workplace looks like. In most cases, there is lots of integration that still needs to take place for some of the examples to become reality. But the concept, particularly the clear link to using this to get your job done. In this example, that link is self-evident and begs the question as to why you wouldn’t use such a resource were it available.

The Life of a Community Manager: Curating Content

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:04:05 -0500

Launching and maintaining an internal social network at The McGraw-Hill Companies has been an exciting learning experience. In my “The Life of a Community Manager” series, I will highlight key aspects that have been central in my experience as a community manager.

That satisfaction of giving joy to others is available to all community managers almost every day. How? In the form of content. Our team realized that people were producing lots of great business content. Functional tips, market insights, competitive intelligence, lessons learned and the list goes on. They were taking time to write it and I was reading it, but the people that may benefit the most from it weren’t always finding it.

So I took on the (ahem unofficial ahem) role of Chief Content Curator. In doing so, it was my duty to give air to the great content that users were generating and to give credit and exposure to the thought leaders that were producing it. So we reserved a space on our homepage that was for user-generated content. The only rules were that it needed to be original (at least part of it), informative and compelling. I would browse for content 2-3 times a week and would post 5-7 items (blog posts, discussions, documents) that best fit the criteria. This turned out to be a great move.

Content creators loved it! They were trying to boost their readership anyway. By putting their pieces right on the homepage, their readership would double, triple and quadruple. And in many cases, this sparked meaningful conversations about important business issues.

Employees loved it! Those who like to be in the know or are passionate about a given issue or company news were able to stay informed more easily. The intellectual exchange and the ability to find people and content that matters to them.

We loved it! Using employee-generated content and surfacing it prominently on our Intranet homepage made the site even more relevant and functional for employees that were adjusting to social functionality as the core of their intranet.

Each time I update this, I tag the “contributors” in my status to alert them that their content is on the homepage.

I think there are three things that community managers can do to give the gift of content to the members of their community:

Find great content- Regardless of the adoption level in your community, there are some people who are producing great, insightful and thought provoking content. So block off 30 minutes and browse or search for that content. It there’s lots of it or you have higher utilization, you may have to spend more time on this or ask people to submit content that they’d like to see get broader exposure. Regardless of how you do it, it’s to yours and e community’s benefit to find a way to identify the exemplary pieces of content.
Surface it for readers- Remember, your users are busy doing their jobs, so they may not have the time to see the great content. Or they mat have just missed it. Find a prominent place where you can place links to the content that you found. That will make it easier for your busy users to take 30 seconds to scan the list, click on a link or two and bookmark something for a deeper read when they have time. I’ve seen great content go from 0 comments, 0 likes and a handful of views to top-liked in the course of 24 hours or less from this act.
Connect users with content that matters to them- Very quickly, you will get to know the people in your community and the type of content that matters to them. You can (and should) help users find the content that matters to them. I will contact them with a direct message linking to the content and suggesting that they take look and leave a comment. Other times, I will comment and tag that user in the post. Your intervention can help build connections in your community that can drive innovations and partnerships.