The three keys to adopting of community sites? Simplicity – Ease of use – Engagement.
How to meet privacy requirements across different geographies and jurisdictions? Obviously much easier for inwards facing communities but even then there are different privacy requirements in different countries. Have a base level of information and make further information optional – Genentech allows users to change their own profile pictures and this has created additional buy in. Keep official directory of records and social networks separate – allow employees on social networks to represent to each other how they see their role, this is different from a formal employee record where job titles and descriptions are more formalised – the comparison gives users some useful context.
Gentry Underwood, the head of Knowledge sharing at design house IDEO claims that designing solutions that work requires finding the triggers that drive individual motivation. Designing simplicity and intuitiveness into the UI and building the solution to integrate into existing workflows.
The very structures we use to handle scale as organizations grow inhibit collaboration and knowledge sharing while the hierarchies inherent within organisations encourage silos. Many organizations that try to use technology to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration don’t see much ROI and a thought that is close to my heart, think about the people - it’s not just about the technology. In the past IDEO experimented with always-on video conferencing, called “wormholes”.
This is an industry salute to the work a case study company has done to embrace collaborative and transformative enterprise 2.0 tools. The winning company will also be given a 10-15 minute presentation on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference keynote stage on June 23, 2009.
For those brand managers seeking advice on how to build a fan base around your company’s Facebook page/ public profile, the folks over at Facebook just posted a perky video from Wildfire Interactive advising how to drive your number of fans up and create a movement within the network.
There’s also an intriguing case study from Adobe that’s worth reading. Bottom line - providing your fanbase with the opportunity to interact via promotions, giveaways or contests will lead to more community enthusiasm and perpetuate the viral nature of Facebook.
Next month I’m doing an interview with Chris Keohane as part of his session at Web 2.0 San Francisco. Chris is the Social Media Program Product Manager at Lockheed Martin and he’s doing a talk on their experiences with Enterprise 2.0 adoption. For those of you who attended the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston last year, Chris and his colleague Shawn Dahlen delivered one of the best sessions of the conference. Unfortunately I missed their session so I’m eager to hear their story and get an update on how they’ve progressed since then. If you’re attending Web 2.0 Expo please come by the session. If you haven’t signed up yet, feel free to use this discount code to save yourself a few bucks: websf09spr35.
IBM just announced that Global Hyatt Corporation will standardize on Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime for unified communications and collaboration. The company, which operates in more than 45 countries, intends to offer the software to thousands of employees as well as all 365 managed, operated and franchised hotels.
With the explosion of social media, traditional non-web organizations have had to rethink their positioning and market message, especially as under 30s start making informed purchasing decisions, and just as importantly, look to join the workforce.
I chatted with Venkatesh Rao about Xerox’s experience in overcoming these obstacles.
Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang is collecting a list of social computing strategists and community managers from large enterprise companies - as in Fortune 5000. Jeremiah blogged and tweeted the call for submissions for this vetted list of the who’s who of Enterprise 2.0 from large corporations. His list already includes representatives from Wells Fargo, Intel, IBM, Ford, Yahoo, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, Monster, Dell, Cadence, Sony, Electronic Arts, NetApp, PC World/Macworld, Schwab, LinkedIn, AOL and of course Forrester. It’s going to be interesting to see which large companies are getting serious about their social computing and community strategy by putting dedicated resources behind it. There’s no question these new roles will be increasingly important in business. To be considered you should comment on his blog post with your credentials or drop him an email at jeremiah_owyang at yahoo.com.
Yesterday, Don Burke and Sean Dennehy from the CIA told the story of implementing the Intellipedia, the intelligence industry’s social network (watch the video). Today, Simon Revell, Manager of Enterprise 2.0 Technology Development, Information and Knowledge Management at Pfizer told his tale of implementing Web 2.0 tools at his company.
Revell’s said Pfizer’s first attempt at enterprise 2.0 was to set up a blog called DIGWWW to do the following:
Facilitate discussion about Web 2.0 tools
See how it can be replicated in the enterprise environment
Influence technology direction within the company
Look to inspire new approaches to collaboration within the company
Be completely open for anyone within the company
In order to maintain the blog, a handful of issues came out of this:
There was a lot of nervousness. They feared dissent with the classic response of “Who gave you permission to do this?”
But to prove success, they forced themselves to post and comment
To create engagement, they needed to nudge their coworkers. They sent repeated reminders and urged others to post.
Every chance they had, they’d to tie the blog into day-to-day operations. Constantly reminding their colleagues of the online community.
The Enterprise 2.0 Blog is affiliated with the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, an event focusing on social tools and technologies that help make companies more creative, agile and productive.
Jun 24th, 2009 |
