How Your Company Can Use Social Computing Some Helpful Pointers for Your Business

There's an article in this week's PROCESSOR called "The Sanity of Crowds: How Your Company Can Use Social Software" that is a worthwhile read.  The article explains how social computing is being used by companies inside the firewall in efforts to increase employee productivity.  It reveals the fact that many social networking tools, "which have traditionally been seen as such a vast drain on productivity that IT managers have to block them to prevent employees from using them for personal reasons" are actually becoming a popular method to make employees more productive. 

The article explains, in context, why social networking for the enterprise can be so powerful. They give the following illustrative example: "a database full of PowerPoint is more useful when tags tell a user which ones are used the most, comments explain why the presentation is set up the way it is, and bookmarks help categorize the presentations in a more granular way."  No doubt, this speaks to the added-value features (tagging, clipping, bookmarking, commenting, etc.) that are part of a robust social computing platform which allow for far more valuable interaction around a 'piece' of data -- in this specific example, PowerPoint presentations -- than simply emailing a file or storing it on a hard drive. 

For those organizations who have not yet embraced social computing, the article offers an worthy caution: "it makes sense to get out in front of social software and make decisions about how its use can benefit the enterprise, rather than waiting to see what comes through the firewall" -- the latter scenario being potentially disruptive. 

On the other hand, they rightly also caution that racing into a social computing platform without thinking through the needs of your company is also not the right route to go: "it's important to think...about what business goal you're trying to accomplish and how you think these tools will help."  Indeed, the article  quotes from NewsGator's CEO, J.B. Holston, explaining that "if you encourage interactivity and the business objective isn't clear, you can frustrate the population you're trying to reach."  For example, he says, "if you get everybody commenting on an idea, but management never does anything about that idea, you're going to tick people off, so you have to manage people's expectations about what this information will be used for." 

The message: social computing for the enterprise is critical to the productivity, efficiency and health of your company, especially in these tough economic times, but it is a decision that should be made with careful thought about your organization's goals.

NewsGator Communities - Yes, We Use Them Every Day

 Communities and all that they entail have been fiercely top of mind for me lately.    While I have personally been involved in online communities since the early 1990s, it is my work related to NewsGator Communities, a core component of our social computing suite Social Sites, that has been consuming a majority of my waking work moments recently.

This increased fervor is partially related to my involvement with a couple of NewsGator sponsored extranets.  One of those extranets is the NewsGator Enterprise Social Computing Alliance, a private community of industry thought leaders and consultants.  I launched this initiative in the past two weeks and now find myself pondering all of those questions that delight and perplex community leaders.    By the way, if you are interested in becoming a member of the alliance, please reach out via your favorite social media mechanism.  Comment on this blog, DM me on Twitter (@karyngerman) or reach out via LinkedIn or Facebook (I'm pretty easy to find).

I have found a plethora of great resources related to building and promoting communities and that is certainly not surprising.  Online or virtual communities have been around for a very long time - remember Bulletin Boards and USENet?  Probably not, if you are a millennial.   But, the concepts have a good 20-year history and Web 2.0 has just shone a brighter light on the social nature of collaborative groups. 

The adoption and growth of communities behind the firewall at NewsGator has been a great learning experience. The diversity of our communities is impressive and we have been able to use our experiences to offer coaching to our customers.  Obviously, we don't share all use cases and participation characteristics, but the commonalities amongst all organizations are more pervasive that we would have thought.  Here are some of the types of communities we have built:

• Broad industry topics.  Example: Social Computing.    These communities tend to have a high number of members and are used for research and to keep interested parties abreast of industry news.  The usage is very steady and tends to build up an impressive library of content via RSS aggregation and social bookmarking.

• Department.  Examples: Marketing, Product Management.  These communities are surprisingly cross-departmental, despite the category.  Discussions are used heavily as is the sharing of relevant documents.

• Customer.  Examples:  Customer X - I have to show decorum on this one.  We create communities for every customer (there are a LOT of them) and these are some of the most heavily used communities within the company.  Discussions are used for all customer interactions and document sharing is important.  We also integrate RSS feeds from other CRM systems, as well as project management components from other team sites.

• Event: Examples:  Enterprise 2.0, NewsGator Product Advisory Council.  As expected, these communities peak as event preparation heats up, but are usually kept around for archival purposes. 

• Very short term project: Example: Social Computing ROI.  This community was a really cool example of using social collaboration for a "quick hit".  Our CEO was doing research for a speaking engagement and he encouraged us to share articles via bookmarking.  This is exactly the notion of collective intelligence and there is the nice side benefit in that contributors see a direct correlation to their efforts.

• Social:  Examples: Fitness, Philanthropy 2.0.  As in the consumer world, these types of communities tend to center around discussions as a way to build relationships amongst members.

• Functional:  Examples: Sales "Tidbits".   OK, the community is actually called Kibbles and Bits, because we have a sense of humor.  This is a community for collecting articles and resources that sales can share with customers to help them build business cases related to enterprise 2.0.

Would love to hear about your enterprise community experience!

University of Michigan Collaborates with NewsGator Effort Produces "Making Social Computing Work in Your Enterprise" Course

Today The University of Michigan School of Information Executive Education program announces that they are collaborating with NewsGator to offer a course entitled "Making Social Computing Work in Your Enterprise."  This course, which takes place June 1-3, 2009, will offer a conceptual framework for understanding Enterprise 2.0 in terms of business objectives as opposed to specific technology features.  In addition, the course also will explore economic, social, and psychological principles that are critical to making Enterprise 2.0 rollouts succeed. 

Paul Resnick, coordinator of the university's social computing specialization explains that this course is being offered in response to the fact that "online communities, social networking, and user-contributed content dominate the consumer world" and that, as a result, "businesses yearn to capture the power of these new models to improve performance."   

In specific, the June course will address three central questions:

• Which technology features are most useful for meeting business goals?
• Which organizational and social interventions should accompany a technology rollout to ensure productivity gains?
• Which metrics should be used to predict the value of a proposed Enterprise 2.0 project, and to manage the project on an ongoing basis?

The School of Information decided to collaborate with NewsGator because of our experience helping hundreds of enterprises implement social computing solutions and measure the benefits.  NewsGator will provide case studies, best practices, ROI tools, and other research materials.

As J.B. Holston, NewsGator's CEO, says, this collaborative course "will immerse managers, executives, and sales and service consultants in the University of Michigan's rich pool of social computing knowledge. Professors and graduate students live, think, breathe, and shape the science of social computing, and course attendees will go back to work enlightened and empowered by the university's knowledge."

You can register for the course here.

Delivering Web 2.0 Business Value With SharePoint – March 24 Webinar

Would you like to harness the benefits of Web 2.0 internally but lack a large budget? Does your organization already leverage SharePoint for internal business processes? Would you like to learn how SharePoint can be used to achieve your social computing goals?

According to a February 2009 McKinsey report, enterprises’ investment in social computing is expected to grow by more than 15 percent annually over the next five years, despite the current recession. To obtain the most value from such Web 2.0 implementations, it is important that social computing features are integrated with an enterprise’s existing business processes and technology environment.

With inherent social features, an extensive set of APIs and simple integration points, SharePoint offers a powerful foundation on which to deploy your internal Web 2.0 features. This foundation coupled with web parts and social applications from Microsoft’s partner ecosystem enable you to affordably implement a full featured social computing platform that delivers true business value.

Join Microsoft, Edelman, and NewsGator to gain a better understanding of how to leverage SharePoint as your enterprise’s core social computing platform. Topics that we will cover during the webinar include:

• An overview of SharePoint’s social computing platform capabilities
• A review of NewsGator Social Sites’ web parts and social applications
• Case study examples of how to socialize existing business processes for improved results

The webinar takes place on March 24, 2009 at 2 pm ET, you can register here.