UberNoggin

Sometimes you can’t escape an idea. It comes at you from different directions, different sources, and beats you about the head until you give it some time. Lately, my bothersome idea has been how to make social media really work for internal business. It’s easy to talk about how handy blogs, wikis, instant messaging, forums etc are to business but encouraging their use is a much tougher nut to crack.

Here’s the scenario: A bright person at company X thinks “Hmm, if only we had an internal social network. Our employees would be able to collaborate from a distance, keep track of ideas, communicate easily, and feel like more of a community. I’ll build one! People will love it. They’ll thank me. I’ll be the hero of the day…maybe I’ll even get a raise or a party…” You know the story. So bright employee goes off, spends personal time setting up this amazing portal of internal info and then announces it in a grand way in a company-wide email inviting everyone to come participate and make their lives better.

At first a few people log on and express enthusiasm. Some documents are uploaded, some conversations get started and Mr. Bright Employee is hyped! Then over the next week or so things slow down and finally come to a grinding halt. No one is really making use of the tools. Why?

Suw Charman, in a recent talk at Google (video notes), listed off a few reasons this might happen:

1. Fear of making a public mistake
2. Dislike of writing
3. Mismatch between how the tools are presented and how they can be used
4. Lack of trust in the tool: “If we use a wiki anyone can edit my stuff?!”

Suw is totally right about these problems but how do we overcome them? After all, social software really isn’t social if no one uses it. Without engagement from a community, an online community is just an empty page. Suw offers some tips so be sure to go watch the video. I’m going to offer some others, though, that are a little different from what she lays out.

1. 1. Think about ALL users

Ask:

• Who are they?
• What do they do every day?
• Why would they want to use this tool? How will it benefit them?

Don’t create a tool that suites some better than others. If you have creative, sales, marketing, etc and they all have different styles of thinking, different needs, and different workflows. Don’t implement a social tool until you’ve found one that will suit everyone.

2. Give them a reason to use it

Exigency is the word of the day! The community tool you build must offer something useful that employees can’t get anywhere else. If the info is redundant and already offered somewhere else that employees are already familiar with they’ll choose to stick with what they know rather than adopt a new tool.

Whether it’s a shared calendar, an instant message client, a wiki that provides crucial project info all in one place, your new social software must make folks feel that they’ll be left out if they aren’t involved.

3. Populate it before inviting folks to participate

Logging in to an empty wiki is intimidating. Create some direction for its use by pre-populating it with basic structure and information. Provide helpful directions that help users get up to speed quickly without the pressure of “doing it right.”

• Wiki: provide some empty pages with helpful titles. Put notes of encouragement on the pages directed at specific people who are best equipped to populate the page
• Forums: post some starter topics. Some fun, some business. Draw people into a conversation that they’re eager to stay involved in.
• Blogs: post questions for people to answer. Give them prompts to choose from so aren’t confused about why they should be using the blog. This will also make them feel more comfortable that they’re writing something that will be valued.
• Social bookmarks: set up some tag conventions to give a bit of direction but encourage people to create their own. Populate the list with some resources that folks will find useful and that they may not have found on their own. Maybe it’s a resource a little outside their focus that will inform what they do in new ways? Maybe it’s a competitor’s info. Anything that will get people involved and engaged.

There are many other forms of social software to consider but those should give you a start.

4. 4. EVERYONE should be involved

A sure way to kill an internal community site is to ignore it or devalue it. Everyone from the top to the bottom of a company should be encouraged to use it. Excuses should not be tolerated even from CEOs. I’m not suggesting you try to force people to engage, but if CEO X says “This is great for our employees but I don’t have the time” he/she is making an excuse for the whole company not to participate. It goes back to the old “gotta eat your own dog food” saying. If the leaders won’t eat it I’m certainly not going to try it.

5. 5. Motivation is Key

Rewards! Everyone likes pats on the back, kudos…raises? We can’t think of internal communication efficiency as an optional component any more. It’s critical! And those in your company who ensure that it happens should be rewarded for helping the whole company succeed. Whether it’s a casual “shout out” at a company meeting, a reputation points system that marks helpful folks on the site, or a category in employee evaluations, you have to be sure that employees know that the company itself is paying attention to how the resource is used and that it values the participation in real ways.

Does your company use social software? How? Got any success stories? Failure stories? Tips? Leave them in the comments. Let’s get talking!

Post a Comment