Social Networking in the Business – Part 2

Social Networking in the business – part 2
Internal communication

Many people now use Social networking to communicate with friends but why don’t we use this software internally? It is designed for communication in an easy and friendly manner and has a great set of tools that could be used for building business related communities and collaboration between teams.
After all, it’s not just about marketing your brand in the outside world but also about supporting that marketing effort internally. There are also efficiencies to be had, not only from the benefit of communications but also cost savings in areas like travel.

So how do we go about it? One potential winner is using Wiki software. Wiki (Hawaiian for quick) is a web site that can be easily (quickly) edited. The web page can be sub divided into sections and different elements can be embedded in the sections such as a calendar, Blog, some RSS news feeds etc. The great thing about Wiki’s is that the content can be easily edited so someone can start a topic and it can be added to or you can comment on something that has been added. If you have come across it, it is a bit like Wikipedia, the web based self editing encyclopaedia. The difference with a wiki to a normal web site is the interaction and this is what makes it come alive. You can control content so it doesn’t have to be total anarchy but you must allow some self expression and comment for people to want to use it. Some I have seen are very Facebook like which may help them relate to people, particularly that generation of users.
It is very useful for cross department sector/ project teams or teams geographically dispersed. They are also great for creating knowledge bases and documentation stores.
Several companies are now deploying this technology and getting some very positive results.

Blogs as part of a wiki or on their own are a good way of creating internal communication and debate. Get the boss to do a weekly blog and everybody is sure to tune in. Micro Blogs such as Twitter are not felt to be useful internally as they require volume.

Slightly left of field are ‘Mashups’ (data from more than one source is combined into a single integrated tool and delivered via the web). I love the term and have seen some interesting examples where people have taken say a map and then a train timetable and joined them together graphically so you can see trains moving on the map in real time. There is a lot you could do with this technology to improve internal communication and client service but it may require a bit of imagination.

A video library? Get the message across interactively and sometimes amusingly. Products like ‘You tube’ continue to have great success and you don’t need a professional recording studio which maybe why they do so well. Some companies are using these to promote their services so why not do the same internally for training/ new product awareness etc?

Unified Communications is the next big thing (if you haven’t already done it).This is basically moving the old voice systems to the computer systems and integrating the various communications methods such as voice, email, and fax. It adds new methods such as ‘instant messaging’ and ‘presence’ which is the scary bit as you now have no hiding place! It also brings video and conferencing so that you can conference desk to desk, see each other, bring others into the meeting, share documents etc. Very powerful and sure to be the ‘norm’ in the next few years.

New products such as Google wave and Microsoft Groove are starting to look at ways to share information direct with other parties. These seem to work on the principle of sharing the contents of a folder. As you add or update items ‘subscribers’ can see the changes and are able to react accordingly. Great for internal teams, but also one to watch for client communication in the future.

One other that is interesting is where technology is deployed to determine communication paths within the company. This works behind email and could look at who talks to whom, thereby determining key people in an organisation (and these may not be the people who you think). May also show people who have contacts within target companies that you didn’t know about, which could then help in the sales cycle. Very powerful technology but there could be some privacy concerns.

I am sure there are other ways of using social networking technologies but hopefully these have given some food for thought.