10 More Things You Never Knew You Could Do On LinkedIn

There's a lot of buzz surrounding LinkedIn's IPO this week.

And with good reason. LinkedIn isn't just incredibly valuable on paper. There are also a ton of great features that users can take advantage of.

We put together 10 more of our favorite tips and tricks for LinkedIn. Give them a shot.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/more-ways-to-make-the-most-out-of-linkedin-2011-5##ixzz1MmrNUDsY

Social By Design

Social By Design
By David A. Kelly


Businesses make social computing work with Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g.

For world-class companies, social networking and enterprise social computing aren’t a diversion. They are now part of the fabric of enterprise computing enabling the new social enterprise.

Take the case of London, England-based infrastructure group Balfour Beatty, with 50,000 employees in more than 1,200 different locations across 80 countries. For Balfour Beatty, social computing and Enterprise 2.0 technologies aren’t about the latest tabloid gossip; they’re about connecting employees, partners, customers, and projects more effectively, efficiently, and productively.

“Social computing services with Oracle WebCenter are all about being able to service the client more effectively by better coordinating our divisions and our people,” says Lee Wheelhouse, knowledge sharing and collaboration solution manager at Balfour Beatty. “Oracle WebCenter isn’t just a technology project for us. It’s a key strategic initiative for our company.”

Not surprisingly, Balfour Beatty isn’t the only company taking a second look at how to integrate social media into the enterprise.

“Enterprise 2.0 is really focused on the idea of taking all the tools that were developed for consumers, such as blogs, wikis, and so on, and using them in an enterprise environment,” says Brad Shimmin, principal analyst for collaboration platforms at Current Analysis, an analyst firm based in Sterling, Virginia.

“It’s not just about repeating the social networking functionality that exists in the consumer space with sites like Twitter and Facebook,” says Shimmin. “It’s about creating similar opportunities for collaboration and engagement within the context of an enterprise application. The new social computing capabilities of Oracle WebCenter Suite allow the platform to behave less like a one-way street where you’re an ERP [enterprise resource planning] user merely gathering data, and more like a conversation with your peers or other people in the context of a business process.”

In effect, the social enterprise is about engaging customers, users, and partners in two-way communications.

“There’s really a shift from the traditional portal market, where users were accessing multiple applications through multiple interfaces, to one that’s more of a rich Web experience—providing a modern, common user interface with Web 2.0 and social capabilities and richer integrations to back-office applications—that’s all seamless and transparent inside the application,” says Andy MacMillan, vice president of product management for Enterprise 2.0 at Oracle. “That’s exactly what the latest release of Oracle WebCenter Suite provides.”

Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Updates

The latest release of Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g provides a range of new capabilities focused on enabling organizations to leverage and seamlessly integrate social computing and Enterprise 2.0 capabilities into a converged platform for internal and external applications and services. A few of the key enhancements to Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g are

Enterprise mashups. Enhanced user interface options allow developers to use development tools such as Oracle JDeveloper to create applications and data controls and allow business users to employ Oracle Composer to assemble and leverage them.

Content management. The new release provides new levels of security for content as well as workflow capabilities and direct access to Oracle Universal Content Management.

Personalization. Users can now leverage the WebCenter Personalization Server feature in Oracle WebCenter Suite to control dynamic delivery of content, information, and experience through personalized views.

Search and discovery. Oracle WebCenter Suite now provides direct Oracle Secure Enterprise Search crawlers for all Oracle WebCenter Suite content.

Analytics and management. New Web analytics services and dashboards allow users fine-grained visibility into processes and data. Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g also now supports direct integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g.
Over the past few years, Shimmin has watched how these traditionally consumer-oriented technologies have affected portal and collaborative solutions such as Oracle WebCenter Suite.

An Integrated Approach to Enabling the Social Enterprise: Oracle WebCenter Suite
Oracle WebCenter Suite is the modern user experience platform for the enterprise and the Web, enabling organizations to evolve portals, composite applications, extranet sites, and more by delivering a dynamic, seamless user experience.

“Oracle WebCenter Suite provides a user experience that’s really the blending of traditional Web applications with social computing capabilities,” says MacMillan. “We have customers that want to engage their customers and partners by combining traditional application data with things like wikis, blogs, and activity streams. So now we provide those social components as part of Oracle WebCenter Suite.”

Oracle WebCenter Suite’s user interface is based on the common user experience architecture that’s shared across Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware products, and more. “If developers are using Oracle Application Development Framework, then they’re automatically using the common user experience architecture, which means that any components they’re developing can be brought natively into Oracle WebCenter Suite,” says MacMillan.

Shimmin considers Oracle WebCenter Suite as something like a Swiss Army knife—it has all different types of tools and technologies built in to handle all different types of social enterprise scenarios.

Snapshots

Balfour Beatty
Location: London, England
Revenue: £10 billion in 2010
Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle Database 11g, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle JDeveloper, Oracle Application Development Framework, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle Identity Management
“Oracle WebCenter is the type of solution that, whatever needs you have, whether it’s internal or external facing, whether it’s fairly basic like content management or something that requires custom development, [Oracle] WebCenter has the required technology built into it,” says Shimmin. “Oracle WebCenter has always been good at enabling organizations to make portals and expose information in a secure and governable way. But over the past few versions, Oracle’s been able to take the best technologies from its Sun and BEA acquisitions and draw them together to make Oracle WebCenter more flexible and better suited for external- as well as internal-facing scenarios such as customer relationship management and call center applications.”

Balfour Beatty’s Enterprise 2.0 Solution
Balfour Beatty is putting Oracle WebCenter Suite’s combination of traditional IT capabilities and new Web-focused features to good use.

“One of the reasons why Oracle WebCenter and our Enterprise 2.0 strategy are so important to us is because of the size and scale of Balfour Beatty and the depth and breadth of our expertise,” says Wheelhouse. “Our customers have an expectation that we can share our in-depth knowledge seamlessly across our business and around the world. Oracle WebCenter is beginning to help us do that more effectively.”

From an IT perspective, Balfour Beatty is composed of federated and very autonomous business units around the world, each with its own IT capability for things such as infrastructure and desktop support. Balfour Beatty’s Enterprise 2.0, social media-enabled Oracle WebCenter Suite portal has been designed to securely connect its employees across geographic and operating company boundaries and will allow them to collaborate, search, and share best practices in a business-oriented environment. It’s a good example of how and why organizations are adding social media to their mix of enterprise solutions.

“The challenge for us was to provide a platform that can span all our business units,” says Wheelhouse. “We needed a scalable, user-friendly solution that could interface with local systems to share information, while enabling greater collaboration and information sharing across geographic and operational boundaries. That’s where Oracle WebCenter comes in. Oracle WebCenter will be our global, scalable Enterprise 2.0 solution.”

Enterprise Requirements
Integration with back-office solutions was critical for Balfour Beatty’s global portal. Back-office systems are great at handling and supporting clearly defined business processes like procurements and HR processes, but social applications are something more creative and somewhat less predictable.

“We see Oracle WebCenter eventually giving us the best of both worlds in that we can support core business processes and functionality from back-office systems, and at the same time we can implement collaboration and social media interaction,” says Wheelhouse. “As a company that’s founded on expertise, we need to enable our people to reach out to knowledge experts, and that’s a creative process that requires the right type of social networks. The power of Enterprise 2.0 is connecting people that wouldn’t normally find each other.”

A key reason Balfour Beatty chose Oracle WebCenter Suite as its Enterprise 2.0 solution was the product’s ability to integrate traditional applications and business processes with social media, social computing, and Web-oriented requirements.

“The vision for us is to be able to break out of traditional business processes and into a collaborative, social environment to solve problems, and then go back into the business process with the results,” says Wheelhouse. “But it needs to be done in a seamless way.”

Another important aspect to integrating social media capabilities is ensuring that they meet enterprise standards for security and compliance. “For our purposes, the social media content created in Oracle WebCenter could be just as important as the corporate records, so it is subject to the same security policies, retention policies, and management policies,” says Wheelhouse.

User experience and the user interface were also critical to Balfour Beatty. “We wanted to create something that didn’t involve lots of training, wasn’t complex, and was effective,” says Wheelhouse. “What’s good about Oracle WebCenter is its flexibility and its ability to let us create a compelling, intuitive user interface for our solution.”

Next Steps

LEARN more about Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g

Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Webcast

Oracle Portal, User Experience, and Enterprise 2.0 Resource Library

But Balfour Beatty’s Enterprise 2.0 solution isn’t just about social connections and business processes. It’s also an effective way to reduce costs and increase productivity.

“Social media portals are a great way of communicating group and divisional initiatives and news, and Enterprise 2.0 capabilities are a great way of filtering all that information,” says Wheelhouse. “There are a lot of ways in which social media can make communications a lot more targeted and enable us to share technical expertise and innovation.”

The Dawn of the Social Enterprise
When it comes to portals and connecting with customers, the future doesn’t look like the past.

“It’s a very different landscape than it was just a couple years ago,” says Current Analysis’ Shimmin.

And although many things will change in the technology landscape over the next few years, one thing is certain: most companies will integrate social networking and social computing capabilities into their enterprise IT strategy.

“In the last two years, we’ve seen the reshaping of portals to be much more capable, much more social, and much more collaborative environments for serving enterprise IT,” says Shimmin. “They’re no longer simply a space where you have pull-down menus to access HR documents. They still do that, but now they also have integrated, collaborative, social networking functions that allow companies to develop stronger customer relationships, optimize employee interactions, and gain greater insight into market trends.”

Systems of Engagement

Organizations have had transactional systems of record for decades. From accounting to sales to human resources, enterprise applications that can keep detailed records of transactions have been refined and perfected.

But business—especially today’s business—isn’t just about individual purchases or transactions. It’s not just about what’s being sold to customers. Today’s business is about the people doing business, how they communicate, and what they need next to do their jobs.

That’s where enterprise social computing and Enterprise 2.0 capabilities come in, along with solutions like Oracle WebCenter Suite.

“It’s really about connecting the people aspect and the engagement aspect of what organizations are already doing in their transactional systems,” says Andy MacMillan, vice president of product management for Enterprise 2.0 at Oracle. “I think with enterprise social media, that there’s an opportunity to drive both business productivity and business innovation.”

In effect, organizations are moving beyond their traditional systems of record to systems of engagement. These systems not only keep track of what’s purchased and when but also where the customer came from and why, and what else—or who else—in the organization should be connected with him to derive the maximal value.

“There’s a convergence of transactional systems and systems of engagement that can help organizations have a complete view of the customer and their points of interaction with an organization,” says MacMillan.

“There’s a strong benefit to line-of-business and process owners engaging people beyond the process and beyond the individual application transactions,” says MacMillan. “And that’s what Oracle WebCenter Suite is really designed to do.”




David A. Kelly (davidakelly.com) is a business, technology, and travel writer who lives in West Newton, Massachusetts.

Social media: The personal at work can be a disruptive mix

Social media: The personal at work can be a disruptive mix
By David Gelles

Published: April 20 2011 10:07 | Last updated: April 20 2011 10:07

There are some companies that encourage employees to have a healthy work-life balance. A happy worker, so goes the thinking, is a productive worker.

Yet, with the rise of social media, there is more personal information about individuals available on the web than ever before.

As a result, the lines between work, and the rest of life have never been more blurred.

This muddling of professional and personal identities can be disruptive in the workplace.

“Social media have had an enormous impact on businesses, from a product perspective and also, in some cases, from a performance management perspective,” says Sue Murphy, association manager, of the US National Human Resources Association.

At the most basic level, the HR department needs to make sure employees are not spending all day on social networking sites and frittering their work hours away tweeting and playing games.

“The amount of time people are spending on the internet at work has increased, so from a performance management perspective we need to be more diligent,” says Ms Murphy.

Even if social media facilities are not being abused in their overuse at work, there is a question over when and whether even sparing use could be deemed inappropriate.

Stories of employees and managers misusing social media on the job have become common.

But for the first time, authorities are getting involved in deciding whether workers or bosses are in the right. Last month, the US National Labor Relations Board weighed in after an employee was fired for a Facebook posting deemed tasteless by management.

Michael Patrick O’Brien, an employment attorney with law firm Jones Waldo, says this incident was a wake-up call for employers.

“Get legal advice before you fire someone because he or she has posted comments online or communicated with co-workers about working conditions,” he says, adding it was important for companies to “update social media policies”.

Social media can also prove an asset, and a liability for recruitment. Increasingly, says Ms Murphy, companies are posting job listings on social sites such as LinkedIn, instead of on job sites such as Monster.com.

“It’s helping to cut their recruiting costs, and to find more suitable candidates,” says Ms Murphy, adding that Craigslist, the online classified advertising site, is not an ideal recruiting venue. “There are some negative sides with some of the Craigslist postings.”

But encouraging employees to use social media to share a job listing among friends and social networks can be useful. “It helps you get your message out,” she says.

“There are millions of people on Facebook and Twitter every day. When I started in HR, you would place an ad on Wednesday, it would be in the paper on Thursday, and it would be a week before you had CVs,” says Ms Murphy. “Now it only takes seconds.”

But again, with so much data publicly available, there is a risk employers will focus on personal information when they make hiring decisions, whether it is relevant to work or not.

“The downside of using social media from a networking perspective is that we don’t have guidelines for regulating what employers are getting from these social sites,” says Ms Murphy.

“If there are photos of them partying, or if they see people that seem to be obese, they are making decisions based on what they see on these sites, which leaves the door open to discriminatory practices.”

Even after employees leave the organisation, social media can be integral to an ongoing relationship with the company.

“Employers use it to track their alumni in the press,” says Martin Murtland, managing director at for PR and Corporate Communications at Dow Jones, speaking about proprietary software that monitors mentions of individuals and companies across media channels.

“If there’s someone you’re particularly interested in, this is a way to see what they’re saying about the company.”

Yet, without guidelines, social media in the workplace can go awry. “You have to be careful about maintaining ... neutrality,” says Ms Murphy.

She recounts an incident where a supervisor went on to Facebook, downloaded a picture of a male employee who was out with a friend, then sent it out to colleagues saying “look at these two gay boys”.

Nothing was done to the supervisor, much to the chagrin of the employee. “His supervisor created a hostile work environment,” she says.

The use of common sense is important in HR policies on social media.

“Be smart with what you’re saying, be aware of who you’re reaching, and if you’re going to go looking, be prepared for what you’re going to find,” says Ms Murphy.

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Social media: The worst thing is to ignore your customers

Social media: The worst thing is to ignore your customers
By Jane Bird

Published: March 15 2011 16:22 | Last updated: March 15 2011 16:22

Comment on a product or service using Twitter or Facebook and within minutes your words could have been read by thousands.

This benefits business when the comment is favourable, but customer complaints can rapidly acquire huge momentum.

Many companies are using social networks, blogs and other online forums both to keep in touch with customers and as a vehicle for sales and marketing.

The challenge is to handle the vast volume of messages that can result.

When you start to participate in social networks, you open the floodgates to what your customers want to say, says Graham Murphy, senior community developer at Grooveshark, an online music service. “It can be a blessing or a curse.”

Grooveshark has benefited from networks, which have helped build registered users to almost 8m with negligible advertising.

It is certainly a disadvantage that people can so loudly voice a negative opinion, says Mr Murphy.

“But there’s the opportunity to flip it in our favour. If we solve a billing issue in 20 minutes, they’ll post something great about us. Suddenly we look better than we did before.”

When Grooveshark has server problems, it is alerted in minutes by its followers – 200,000 on Facebook and 50,000 on Twitter.

“Their voice gives valuable insight into our website.”

The company uses software from California-based Assistly to aggregate all messages it receives into one inbox, where they can be prioritised and acted on swiftly, generating a “virtuous circle” of positive comments.

Alex Bard, Assistly’s chief executive, says the aim is to help companies turn customer service into sales and marketing. “If customers are going to gang up on you, they’ll do it anyway,” he says.

“Customers are a core asset that you can learn from, creating a better relationship. The worst thing you can do is ignore them, and the best is to respond.”

Mr Bard encourages companies using Assistly software to let a broad range of employees participate in customer dialogues, rather than just the service team. “This gives engineers or product developers insights that help them make better decisions.”

The real prize is to get customers to recommend you to their friends, says Gail Goodman, chief executive of Massachusetts-based Constant Contact.

It provides polling, monitoring and tracking tools that help companies set up surveys on social networks and understand which postings generate most discussions and traffic.

Dingo, a pet food distributor, used the software to extend its fan base from 350 to a target 5,000 in three days last August, by asking fans to get their friends to sign up. It offered a $20 coupon for everyone if the target could be reached. A further promotion brought fan numbers to 25,000 by the end of February.

“Forty per cent of US households have dogs, so we knew we had a big opportunity, and dog-owners often know other dog-owners,” says Mike Halloran, online marketing manager. “We wanted existing fans to tell their friends about us.”

Brands are working out rules about how far they can go, because people do not want to be advertised to, says Ms Goodman. “Your page will be dormant and deserted very fast if you do this. You need to be engaging, fun and provocative – create a destination for conversation, not a push-marketing venue.”

This is no small challenge, because consumers are busy and there is huge competition for their time online, she says.

Grooveshark’s Mr Murphy sees social media as a way to “personify” the company.

Its Facebook and Twitter postings tend to focus on third-party products, service updates, or blog posts, for example, about the company’s presence at a festival. “We did a post on our campaign to help victims of the BP oil spill in the Gulf, and one to promote an artist we are interested in,” he says.

His company won’t take payment for a posting. “We want to be objective and informative rather than self-promoting, so that people have a positive feeling about us and tell their friends,” he says.

One problem with using social networks for sales and marketing messages is that they accumulate quickly and are often ignored. More than three items posted a day could be seen as a “spam blast”, says Mr Murphy, and will drive followers away.

Mr Halloran favours e-mail for sales and marketing promotions, but says Twitter is ideal when you want things to be instant.

“The nice thing about Twitter is that messages tend to be looked at a bit more quickly and regularly and in-boxes are less cluttered.”

Dingo plans to use Twitter for customer service, so people can send questions and receive rapid replies.

“A dog might have just stained a carpet and the customer wants to know how to remove the mark,” says Mr Halloran.

“If we post a solution to this on Twitter it will be seen by many people and picked up in search engines such as Google and Bing long afterwards.

“We are looking at anything where posting answers creates ‘breadcrumb trails’ that link back to us.”

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LinkedIn launches social news platform

LinkedIn, the professional networking site with 90 million users, announced a new product today that aims to transform the site from an occasional directory into a daily social destination.


LinkedIn Today is a new platform that aggregates news stories by industry based on what people are sharing on the network. Users can see what their contacts are reading and what other people in their industry are reading and saying about different articles. They can choose from 22 industries, including banking, entertainment and nonprofits, and sort by geography and job title.

“What are CEOs reading? What are health care professionals in India reading?” said Liz Walker, LinkedIn’s product manager. “We think that can deliver relevant content to people.”

Facebook and Twitter garner huge traffic from people sharing news. And other aggregators that filter news according to specific industries, like TechMeme or MediaGazer, have proven themselves to be quite successful. LinkedIn Today puts the business spin on news sharing, and the social spin on business news aggregation. As former LinkedIn employee Mrinal Desai put it, the network wants to become the Wall Street Journal of social news.

Though LinkedIn has 90 million registered users as of January 2011, the site has struggled to get them to visit regularly, instead getting most of its traffic from recruiters looking for prospects. While other recent products like InMaps, a visualization of each user’s professional network, and Skills, a search function that illustrates popular skills in particular industries and companies, seem most helpful to recruiters, LinkedIn is indicating that its social news filter is just one of many efforts to come geared toward building relationships among everyday users.

Sociale software en Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Nadat in de lente van dit jaar Microsoft SharePoint 2010 beschikbaar is gekomen, zijn er ondertussen al redelijk wat implementaties uitgevoerd. Tijdens het inrichten van de eerste SharePoint 2010 intranet omgevingen is duidelijk geworden dat steeds meer klanten vragen naar de mogelijkheden rond ‘knowledge (en social) networking’ in SharePoint 2010. In dit artikel zal de opkomst van ‘sociale software’ binnen organisaties worden besproken en de rol die SharePoint 2010 hierin kan spelen.


Het kan best lastig zijn om het begrip ‘sociale software' goed onder woorden te brengen. De voornaamste oorzaak hiervan is dat sociale software vele verschijningsvormen kent en omgeven is door buzzwords met vage definities. Daarnaast heeft de gemiddelde burger reeds zijn persoonlijke ervaringen met sociale software op het internet of kent het van vrienden of familie. Hierdoor is vaak een eenzijdig beeld ontstaan rond een dynamisch en veelzijdig fenomeen.

Geschiedenis
De basis van sociale software is gelegd rond de eeuwwisseling, met internet standaarden zoals XML, RSS en webservices. Hiermee is het fundament gelegd voor de ‘tweede generatie van het internet', (de afgelopen jaren aangeduid met de mode term ‘Web 2.0'). Zo'n 8 jaar geleden (tot 2002) was het internet toch voornamelijk een plek waar mensen (toen ruim een half miljard) informatie aan het consumeren waren, slechts een heel klein deel van de gebruikers publiceerde ook content op het internet. Rond het jaar 2003, 2 jaar na de ‘internet bubbel' kwam er een aantal zaken tezamen. De gemiddelde snelheid van een internetverbinding thuis nam snel toe en het aantal mensen op het internet verdubbelde binnen 3 jaar naar 1 miljard gebruikers. Daarnaast werden platformen zoals Blogger (weblogs) en MySpace (Social Networks) in rap tempo volwassen.
In de jaren die volgden is het gebruik van internet sites waarmee eenvoudig content (tekst, afbeeldingen, video, etc.) gedeeld kan worden extreem toegenomen. Denk hierbij aan het succes van online platformen zoals Facebook, Twitter en YouTube. De laatste jaren werden deze platformen zakelijk steeds meer gebruikt en zijn steeds meer bedrijven gaan onderzoeken hoe deze technieken binnen de organisatie kunnen worden toegepast.

De kracht van sociale software
Wat maakt sociale software waardevol en wat zijn de voordelen voor organisaties? De term ‘Social' (en services zoals Twitter en Facebook) hebben bij enkele mensen nog een negatieve associatie. Hier kunnen verschillende oorzaken aan ten grondslag liggen, zoals ervaringen uit het verleden of vooroordelen over ‘zinloze communicatie (chatten)'. Een ander feit is dat veel zelfgekroonde goeroes zichzelf omgedoopt hebben tot ‘social media experts' en een grote hoeveelheid ruis in de media is verkondigd.
De kracht van sociale software is redelijk eenvoudig te benoemen en is voornamelijk te vinden rond het onderwerp 'laagdrempeligheid kunnen delen'. Sociale software maakt het mogelijk om binnen een minuut een bericht te plaatsen dat leesbaar is voor een groot publiek of een video toe te voegen in een (Wiki) pagina. Een ander kan vervolgens eenvoudig een reactie plaatsen of een foto toevoegen waardoor gezamenlijk (zonder technische kennis) content gecreëerd kan worden. Hier ligt de kracht, en deze kracht is met SharePoint 2010 ook beschikbaar voor intern gebruik.

Veel organisaties hebben de afgelopen jaren tevergeefs geprobeerd een actieve strategie te voeren op het gebied van kennismanagement. In slecht enkele gevallen hebben deze inspanningen ook voldaan aan de initiële verwachtingen. Als er één gebied te benoemen is waar sociale software een grote bijdrage kan leveren, dan is dat wel op het gebied van kennismanagement.

"Sociale media heeft de afgelopen jaren gezorgd voor een explosie aan waardevolle informatie op het internet, en met de juiste aanpak is dit ook binnen organisaties mogelijk".

Sociale software biedt een platform gericht op het individu: 'de medewerker', waarbij het bij 'Intranet 1.0 software' aanvankelijk ging om het geven van een platform aan de afdeling Marketing en Communicatie. In de afgelopen jaren kregen ook andere afdelingen de mogelijkheid om content toe te voegen aan het intranet met behulp van Content Management Systemen. En ook al kwam er met behulp van deze systemen (zoals SharePoint) de mogelijkheid van het publiceren van documenten bij, het laagdrempelig kunnen delen van informatie door medewerkers was maar voor enkele bedrijven weggelegd. Met de komst van SharePoint 2010 komt hier een breed scala aan mogelijkheden bij, waarmee het vullen en verrijken van informatie binnen een intranet (of extranet) eindelijk echt eenvoudig en laagdrempelig begint te worden. Een goed doordachte informatiearchitectuur en implementatie is hierbij natuurlijk wel een belangrijke randvoorwaarde.

En ja, we moeten ook nog even stilstaan bij de sceptici. Laagdrempeligheid betekent natuurlijk ook dat mensen kunnen gaan melden wat ze tijdens de lunch hebben gegeten, eventueel aangevuld met een foto van het dagmenu en het voltallige kantinepersoneel. En ja, voor de meeste mensen binnen de organisatie zal deze informatie geen directe waarde hebben. Gelukkig bestaan er dan ook vele manieren om data te filteren, zoals op onderwerp of afdeling, waardoor iedereen zijn eigen informatiebehoefte kan samenstellen. Hiernaast bestaan er krachtige hulpmiddelen zoals 'tagging, rating en recommendations', die kunnen bijdragen aan het verkrijgen van waardevolle content. Als laatste is het zo dat binnen een sociaal intranet vanzelf ‘sociale omgangsvormen' optreden, zodra iedereen de ‘etiquette van interne sociale netwerken' leert en deze afspraken een onderdeel gaan vormen van de bedrijfscultuur.

Onderzoeksbureau Gartner heeft begin 2010 een rapport gepubliceerd met de titel "Social Software is an Enterprise Reality". In dit rapport doet Gartner de voorspelling dat omstreeks 2014 e-mail voor 20 procent zal zijn vervangen door sociale software als het voornaamste communicatiemiddel van professionals. De algemene verwachting is dat de komende jaren de meeste bedrijven sociale netwerken in gebruik zullen nemen. De meeste experts verwachten dat interne sociale netwerken effectiever zullen zijn dan e-mail voor sommige zakelijke toepassingen, zoals het communiceren van status updates binnen projecten en het lokaliseren van expertise.

SharePoint 2010
Met het aanschaffen van SharePoint 2010 wordt een gereedschapskist in huis gehaald welke een hoop waardevolle sociale software componenten bevat. SharePoint 2010 biedt verbeterde mogelijkheden rond Wiki's, Blogs en social bookmarks. Verder zijn de mogelijkheden rond gebruikersprofielen sterk verbeterd, waardoor functionaliteiten die we kennen van Facebook en Linkedin (zoals noteboards en newsfeeds) binnen de organisatie kunnen worden ingezet. Eén van de meeste krachtige toevoegingen aan SharePoint 2010 is de ‘Term Store', waarmee organisaties een ‘SharePoint brede' taxonomie en/of folksonomie kunnen opzetten.
De Taxonomie (hiërarchische classificatie methode) zal bekend zijn bij veel mensen, maar de folksonomie is een relatief nieuw begrip. Folksonomie is ontstaan tijdens de Web 2.0 revolutie en is een samentrekking van de woorden Folk (mensen) en Taxonomie. Het betreft hier een vorm van ordening op basis van consensus door het volk (de medewerkers). Het mooie van een folksonomie is dat het een ‘bottom-up' aanpak is voor het realiseren van een bedrijfsbrede taxonomie. In de praktijk zal een dergelijke aanpak vele malen sneller te realiseren zijn dan een Top-Down aanpak (en kan het veel uren vergaderen besparen). Een folksonomie kan (nadat hij goed gevuld is) binnen SharePoint wel centraal beheerd en opgeschoond worden. Binnen SharePoint kan ‘alles dat een URL heeft' (Sites, pagina's, documenten en andere objecten) getagged worden, waarbij de tags ook te herleiden zijn naar een persoon.

De sociale features van SharePoint 2010 kunnen voor organisaties belangrijke voordelen brengen, in eerste instantie op het gebied van transparantie en kennisdeling. Andere voordelen zijn er te behalen op het gebied van snellere en efficiëntere toegang tot expertise binnen de organisatie, het verlagen van communicatiekosten en het verbeteren van de (afdeling overstijgende) samenwerking. Al met al zaken waar de meeste organisaties op zitten te wachten...


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What is your IT organisation doing to fuel workers’ passion?

By John Hagel and John Seely Brown

Published: December 7 2010 23:23 | Last updated: December 7 2010 23:23

Passion drives performance. What is your IT organisation doing to fuel passion at every level?

In our opening column, we talked about the decades-long decline in financial performance. Return on assets across all companies have fallen 75 per cent for all public companies in the US since 1965. A profoundly destabilising technology infrastructure is a big part of this transformation.

Another key metric in decline is passion. According to the just-released 2010 Shift Index, four of five workers surveyed are not passionate about their jobs.

Sure, they are working longer hours during the downturn, but that doesn’t mean they are engaged or that they will stick with you when the economy improves. Without truly passionate workers, companies will find it difficult to turn round the steady deterioration in financial performance.

Passionate workers are more likely to take challenges and transform them into opportunities.

But passionate workers are easily frustrated by institutional, technical, and cultural barriers that make it difficult to learn and connect with others.

With the right technology infrastructure, however, organisations can fuel rather than frustrate passion. Here’s how.

Disposition for passion

Passionate workers possess two valuable dispositions.

Questing: when asked how they react to challenges, passionate employees we surveyed most often responded that they see an opportunity to learn something or solve problems rather than viewing the unusual as a nuisance or a distraction.

Passionate workers seek out challenges to test their abilities, rather than waiting for them to surface. The passionate are twice as likely as disengaged workers to display this questing disposition.

As a leader, you want people with questing dispositions to move to the next level of performance improvement.

Connecting: Passionate workers have a strong desire to reach out and connect with others who can help them get better faster. We found passionate workers are twice as likely as disengaged workers to have a connecting disposition. They exchange knowledge outside the firm through conferences and social media much more often than workers who lack passion.

Our research suggests that effective knowledge exchange will be crucial to performance improvement.

These dispositions of questing and connecting reinforce each other – both positively and negatively. If you have a questing disposition, but you lack the ability to connect, you can’t learn new things as easily from others. If you have a connecting disposition, but can’t focus your attention on interesting challenges, you’re not as likely to use connections you establish to improve performance.

Implications for technology

Since these dispositions are increasingly central to sustained performance improvement, the question for IT organisations becomes how to create the conditions that support passionate workers.

Most IT organisations have a hard time facilitating people with connecting and questing dispositions. Many people inside big corporations, in particular, view enabling tools such as social media or cloud computing as toys, distractions, or security breaches. In fact, from our experience in discussions with a range of IT executives, most IT departments are ambivalent about, if not actively resisting, the next generation of technologies.

But to help workers pursue their passion, leaders must:

Change the mindset

Most executives are deeply suspicious of workers’ passions, unless they define passion simply as working longer hours to get the usual rote tasks done. Instead, passion is the quest for unexpected challenges. Questing and connecting are huge opportunities to drive performance improvement, if you can encourage and support these traits.

Identify relevant edges

The edges of your firm and your industry – whether geographic, demographic, or between companies – offer the environments where questing and connecting dispositions flourish.

Edges are fertile ground for innovation, attracting risk takers who can drive knowledge creation and economic growth. They are where the questing and the connecting dispositions have the most freedom. Find the edges with the most opportunity and the least resistance, and mobilise passionate people to these edges so they can attack performance challenges emerging there.

Deploy the right platforms and tools

New technology can significantly enhance the impact of passionate employees. Cloud computing, and the sophisticated analytic tools that can be accessed in the cloud, provide individuals with the resources they need to experiment and improvise in addressing performance challenges.

Rather than waiting in a long line to receive resources from a central IT organisation, employees can use the emerging cloud infrastructure and access everything from raw server capacity to sophisticated research tools. They can rapidly scale up and back IT resources and take promising approaches to market.

But it’s not just cloud computing. Passionate workers can now use social networks to stay in touch with a much larger group of individuals. Shared workspaces provide an increasingly rich environment for these individuals to connect with each other and others outside the firm jointly to develop promising approaches to difficult performance challenges.

In fact, these two categories of IT, cloud computing and social software, weave together in powerful ways to integrate both the questing and connecting dispositions of passionate workers. Employees begin to see the compounding effects of connecting with relevant and diverse expertise wherever it resides and combining that expertise with a rich array of IT resources to pursue challenging performance quests.

As passionate workers on the edge of the enterprise demonstrate the kind of impact they can achieve, less engaged workers start to see how much they can accomplish through their initiatives, and passion begins to build in them, as well. As the less engaged connect with more passionate workers, they manifest more of the questing and connecting dispositions. Passion starts to spread.

Emerging technologies play a central role in breaking down many of the institutional barriers that frustrate passionate workers. Rather than feeling blocked, these workers begin to feel more empowered. As passionate employees thrive, companies in turn will find themselves in a better position to deal with performance pressures. Instead of becoming a source of increasing stress, challenges become an opportunity for passionate workers to attain levels of performance never before possible.

John Hagel III, and John Seely Brown are co-chairman and independent co-chairman, respectively, of the Deloitte Center for the Edgew

Their books include The Power of Pull, The Only Sustainable Edge, Out of the Box, The Social Life of Information, Net Worth, and Net Gain.

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Sociale software en Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Nadat in de lente van dit jaar Microsoft SharePoint 2010 beschikbaar is gekomen, zijn er ondertussen al redelijk wat implementaties uitgevoerd. Tijdens het inrichten van de eerste SharePoint 2010 intranet omgevingen is duidelijk geworden dat steeds meer klanten vragen naar de mogelijkheden rond ‘knowledge (en social) networking’ in SharePoint 2010. In dit artikel zal de opkomst van ‘sociale software’ binnen organisaties worden besproken en de rol die SharePoint 2010 hierin kan spelen.

Het kan best lastig zijn om het begrip ‘sociale software' goed onder woorden te brengen. De voornaamste oorzaak hiervan is dat sociale software vele verschijningsvormen kent en omgeven is door buzzwords met vage definities. Daarnaast heeft de gemiddelde burger reeds zijn persoonlijke ervaringen met sociale software op het internet of kent het van vrienden of familie. Hierdoor is vaak een eenzijdig beeld ontstaan rond een dynamisch en veelzijdig fenomeen.

Geschiedenis

De basis van sociale software is gelegd rond de eeuwwisseling, met internet standaarden zoals XML, RSS en webservices. Hiermee is het fundament gelegd voor de ‘tweede generatie van het internet', (de afgelopen jaren aangeduid met de mode term ‘Web 2.0'). Zo'n 8 jaar geleden (tot 2002) was het internet toch voornamelijk een plek waar mensen (toen ruim een half miljard) informatie aan het consumeren waren, slechts een heel klein deel van de gebruikers publiceerde ook content op het internet. Rond het jaar 2003, 2 jaar na de ‘internet bubbel' kwam er een aantal zaken tezamen. De gemiddelde snelheid van een internetverbinding thuis nam snel toe en het aantal mensen op het internet verdubbelde binnen 3 jaar naar 1 miljard gebruikers. Daarnaast werden platformen zoals Blogger (weblogs) en MySpace (Social Networks) in rap tempo volwassen.
In de jaren die volgden is het gebruik van internet sites waarmee eenvoudig content (tekst, afbeeldingen, video, etc.) gedeeld kan worden extreem toegenomen. Denk hierbij aan het succes van online platformen zoals Facebook, Twitter en YouTube. De laatste jaren werden deze platformen zakelijk steeds meer gebruikt en zijn steeds meer bedrijven gaan onderzoeken hoe deze technieken binnen de organisatie kunnen worden toegepast.

De kracht van sociale software

Wat maakt sociale software waardevol en wat zijn de voordelen voor organisaties? De term ‘Social' (en services zoals Twitter en Facebook) hebben bij enkele mensen nog een negatieve associatie. Hier kunnen verschillende oorzaken aan ten grondslag liggen, zoals ervaringen uit het verleden of vooroordelen over ‘zinloze communicatie (chatten)'. Een ander feit is dat veel zelfgekroonde goeroes zichzelf omgedoopt hebben tot ‘social media experts' en een grote hoeveelheid ruis in de media is verkondigd.
De kracht van sociale software is redelijk eenvoudig te benoemen en is voornamelijk te vinden rond het onderwerp 'laagdrempeligheid kunnen delen'. Sociale software maakt het mogelijk om binnen een minuut een bericht te plaatsen dat leesbaar is voor een groot publiek of een video toe te voegen in een (Wiki) pagina. Een ander kan vervolgens eenvoudig een reactie plaatsen of een foto toevoegen waardoor gezamenlijk (zonder technische kennis) content gecreëerd kan worden. Hier ligt de kracht, en deze kracht is met SharePoint 2010 ook beschikbaar voor intern gebruik.
Veel organisaties hebben de afgelopen jaren tevergeefs geprobeerd een actieve strategie te voeren op het gebied van kennismanagement. In slecht enkele gevallen hebben deze inspanningen ook voldaan aan de initiële verwachtingen. Als er één gebied te benoemen is waar sociale software een grote bijdrage kan leveren, dan is dat wel op het gebied van kennismanagement.
"Sociale media heeft de afgelopen jaren gezorgd voor een explosie aan waardevolle informatie op het internet, en met de juiste aanpak is dit ook binnen organisaties mogelijk".
Sociale software biedt een platform gericht op het individu: 'de medewerker', waarbij het bij 'Intranet 1.0 software' aanvankelijk ging om het geven van een platform aan de afdeling Marketing en Communicatie. In de afgelopen jaren kregen ook andere afdelingen de mogelijkheid om content toe te voegen aan het intranet met behulp van Content Management Systemen. En ook al kwam er met behulp van deze systemen (zoals SharePoint) de mogelijkheid van het publiceren van documenten bij, het laagdrempelig kunnen delen van informatie door medewerkers was maar voor enkele bedrijven weggelegd. Met de komst van SharePoint 2010 komt hier een breed scala aan mogelijkheden bij, waarmee het vullen en verrijken van informatie binnen een intranet (of extranet) eindelijk echt eenvoudig en laagdrempelig begint te worden. Een goed doordachte informatiearchitectuur en implementatie is hierbij natuurlijk wel een belangrijke randvoorwaarde.
En ja, we moeten ook nog even stilstaan bij de sceptici. Laagdrempeligheid betekent natuurlijk ook dat mensen kunnen gaan melden wat ze tijdens de lunch hebben gegeten, eventueel aangevuld met een foto van het dagmenu en het voltallige kantinepersoneel. En ja, voor de meeste mensen binnen de organisatie zal deze informatie geen directe waarde hebben. Gelukkig bestaan er dan ook vele manieren om data te filteren, zoals op onderwerp of afdeling, waardoor iedereen zijn eigen informatiebehoefte kan samenstellen. Hiernaast bestaan er krachtige hulpmiddelen zoals 'tagging, rating en recommendations', die kunnen bijdragen aan het verkrijgen van waardevolle content. Als laatste is het zo dat binnen een sociaal intranet vanzelf ‘sociale omgangsvormen' optreden, zodra iedereen de ‘etiquette van interne sociale netwerken' leert en deze afspraken een onderdeel gaan vormen van de bedrijfscultuur.
Onderzoeksbureau Gartner heeft begin 2010 een rapport gepubliceerd met de titel "Social Software is an Enterprise Reality". In dit rapport doet Gartner de voorspelling dat omstreeks 2014 e-mail voor 20 procent zal zijn vervangen door sociale software als het voornaamste communicatiemiddel van professionals. De algemene verwachting is dat de komende jaren de meeste bedrijven sociale netwerken in gebruik zullen nemen. De meeste experts verwachten dat interne sociale netwerken effectiever zullen zijn dan e-mail voor sommige zakelijke toepassingen, zoals het communiceren van status updates binnen projecten en het lokaliseren van expertise.

SharePoint 2010

Met het aanschaffen van SharePoint 2010 wordt een gereedschapskist in huis gehaald welke een hoop waardevolle sociale software componenten bevat. SharePoint 2010 biedt verbeterde mogelijkheden rond Wiki's, Blogs en social bookmarks. Verder zijn de mogelijkheden rond gebruikersprofielen sterk verbeterd, waardoor functionaliteiten die we kennen van Facebook en Linkedin (zoals noteboards en newsfeeds) binnen de organisatie kunnen worden ingezet. Eén van de meeste krachtige toevoegingen aan SharePoint 2010 is de ‘Term Store', waarmee organisaties een ‘SharePoint brede' taxonomie en/of folksonomie kunnen opzetten.
De Taxonomie (hiërarchische classificatie methode) zal bekend zijn bij veel mensen, maar de folksonomie is een relatief nieuw begrip. Folksonomie is ontstaan tijdens de Web 2.0 revolutie en is een samentrekking van de woorden Folk (mensen) en Taxonomie. Het betreft hier een vorm van ordening op basis van consensus door het volk (de medewerkers). Het mooie van een folksonomie is dat het een ‘bottom-up' aanpak is voor het realiseren van een bedrijfsbrede taxonomie. In de praktijk zal een dergelijke aanpak vele malen sneller te realiseren zijn dan een Top-Down aanpak (en kan het veel uren vergaderen besparen). Een folksonomie kan (nadat hij goed gevuld is) binnen SharePoint wel centraal beheerd en opgeschoond worden. Binnen SharePoint kan ‘alles dat een URL heeft' (Sites, pagina's, documenten en andere objecten) getagged worden, waarbij de tags ook te herleiden zijn naar een persoon.
De sociale features van SharePoint 2010 kunnen voor organisaties belangrijke voordelen brengen, in eerste instantie op het gebied van transparantie en kennisdeling. Andere voordelen zijn er te behalen op het gebied van snellere en efficiëntere toegang tot expertise binnen de organisatie, het verlagen van communicatiekosten en het verbeteren van de (afdeling overstijgende) samenwerking. Al met al zaken waar de meeste organisaties op zitten te wachten...


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Why Social Sharing Is Bigger than Facebook and Twitter - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Why Social Sharing Is Bigger than Facebook and Twitter - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review: "Why Social Sharing Is Bigger than Facebook and Twitter"

The digital landscape is being reshaped by the news that Facebook is opening up its social graph. Twitter, too, has made waves by acquiring companies that made third-party services for Twitter.

But if you take a closer look, this is part of a more macro trend that transcends two social platforms--despite their emerging dominance. That macro trend is ubiquitous sharing: What are you doing? Where are you doing it? Who are you doing it with? What do you like? These used to be things we kept to ourselves or shared with our friends and family. Now we're willing to broadcast them to whomever is willing to listen.

Social media has led to "social sharing," the broadcasting of our thoughts and activities. It's not a fad. It's a sociological phenomenon, accelerating at light speed. The latest incarnation of social sharing: A platform called Blippy allows you to connect to your social system and share what you bought and how much you spent at retailers like Target, Netflix, Amazon, and Zappos, to name a few. Not only can you log-in to these services quickly from an existing social network, but you can share across multiple networks. Knowing what people are buying when, and how much they're willing to spend is creating a feeding frenzy among marketers looking for the ripple effect.

Not even the drumbeat of privacy concerns seems able to slow down the trend. It was recently reported that Blippy members' credit card information was showing up in Google's search results. Blippy is still going strong though. We are becoming ever more willing to share ever more information with the world. Here just a few implications to consider when it comes to the changing face of sharing in a social age.

Data Gathering. The more we know about an individual, the easier it is to sell something. Someone will amass socially shared data (this is where Facebook is placing bets) and businesses will tap it for profit. Google's integration of archived tweets reveals that even real time data can be sorted and mined. A business may not own the data from all of the sharing, but it's likely they will want it.

Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration. Conflating internal and external social sharing could profoundly affect how we work. Newer internal platforms such as Chatter from Salesforce not only borrow from the Facebook school of platform design, but they also integrate with external networks such as Twitter. The future of social sharing for the large organization could be making the two worlds come together in a secure fashion for the enterprise.

Content Distribution. Social sharing becomes the ultimate form of distribution. Any business or individual who produces digital content in any form will be tweaking how easily the content can be shared, whether by adding a "like" button or designing the content itself to be sharable.

Social Currency. Sharing on the social web acts as a form of currency. Sharing useful information that might help someone within your network scores you points and builds equity. Finding a deal and sharing that with others can put you in someone's favor, and maybe then they will find you a deal. It's important to recognize that all this sharing isn't some useless impulse. There are reasons why people are willing to share so much. Creative expression is part of it but also, there's often a benefit, value, to the individual who shares.

Social sharing is a major behavioral shift, the most important so far of the 21st century. And the information we choose to share with friends, co-workers and even strangers, is re-defining the idea of what's private and public before our very eyes.


David Armano is a Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, the interactive arm of global communications firm Edelman. He is an active practitioner and thinker in the worlds of digital marketing, experience design, and the social web. You can follow him on Twitter.

More on: Customers, Internet, Social media

Facebook to expand with ‘social plugins’

Facebook to expand with ‘social plugins’By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco

Published: April 22 2010 00:38 | Last updated: April 22 2010 00:38

Facebook has launched a major initiative to extend its influence with “social plugins” that embed its social networking service more deeply inside third-party websites.

The plugins are part of an “Open Graph” strategy announced on Wednesday by Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco. Open Graph is an evolution of Social Graph and Facebook Connect, and extends to the web at large.

Mr Zuckerberg said the web existed today as a series of largely unstructured links between pages, but Facebook’s initiative would put people at the centre of the web and provide personally meaningful connections between people and things.

Open Graph was the most transformative thing Facebook had done for the web, he said.

“We’re building towards a web where the default is social – every application and product will be designed from the ground up to use [people’s] real identity and friends.”

Facebook’s power play is likely to be welcomed by website owners and developers but regarded warily by rivals such as Twitter and Google, which launched its Buzz social networking service this year.

With more than 400m members, Facebook’s plugins can drive substantial traffic to sites that install them and boost their advertising revenues. Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook itself would not place ads inside the new features.

The largest social network said it was launching Open Graph with 30 partners spanning categories from books and movies to celebrities and athletes with sites such as CNN’s news site and the ESPN sport site embedding its social plugins.

Facebook users visiting the sites could click a “Like” button on stories they want to share with friends and would see pop-up windows showing friends who had also liked something. They could also see their friends’ activity on the site and share comments through other plugins.

Liking a movie on the IMDB film website would include that movie in the user’s interests in their Facebook profile, with a link back to the original site.

“We think over the next few years that the connections between people and the things they care about will play as big a part as hyperlinks do today in defining people’s internet experiences,” said Bret Taylor, head of Facebook Platform products.

Open Graph will replace Facebook Connect, which allowed users to log in to other websites using their Facebook credentials.

Mr Zuckerberg told a news conference he was eliminating the Facebook Connect brand.

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Selling via social media brings inconsistency dangers

Selling via social media brings inconsistency dangers
By Mark Thorpe, UK managing director for Stibo Systems

Published: March 15 2010 11:44 | Last updated: March 15 2010 11:44

Social media has caused an explosion in new ways to market and sell products, bringing with it complexities in managing product information – and new ways for everything to go wrong.

Many businesses have been quick to use Facebook, YouTube and bloggers for their huge potential as marketing channels, helping to increase online sales by targeting a large user group.

But organisations should be aware of the dangers. Keeping data consistent between existing channels such as catalogues, stores and websites can already cause problems, so how do they begin to deal with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well?

Making the most of social media

Dell, for example, seems to be getting it right, having made more than $3m in sales via Twitter alone. Dell regularly tweets its latest promotions to consumers that follow the brand online.

This is a great way of conducting “passive” sales, after consumers have already expressed an interest in the brand, decided to engage with it, and are therefore happy to be targeted with special offers.

Another good example is GEMaffair.com, a US retailer which recently held a contest on Twitter asking followers to enter by re-tweeting [forwarding, or re-broadcasting] a promotional message, which contained a coupon. A viral bonanza of re-tweets ensued.

One lucky tweeter won a $100 jewellery set. The online jeweller received 18 orders that day associated with the contest that more than covered its costs.

The dangers of social media marketing

However, as well as promoting benefits to consumers, social networks also exacerbate company mistakes by spreading news fast. Connected users can update anywhere, anytime, and a negative story can spread at the touch of a button.

Best Buy, for example, mistakenly advertised a Samsung flat screen TV for less than $10 back in August. Word spread through the online retail community via social media at an alarming rate, leaving Best Buy trying to limit the damage.

Multi-channel mix

Shopping habits are adapting to the new channels available: many consumers see a product in a store and then buy it later – and sometimes cheaper – online. The opposite is also true when shoppers see something online, which encourages them to make their way to the store to see it in “real life” before parting with their cash.

With increasing numbers of people fluctuating between online, catalogue and in-store shopping, comes an increase in the complex task of keeping product data consistent across the board.

There is no point tweeting a link to a product, or posting on a fan group on Facebook, if that same product is available at a lower price in a store or via a catalogue.

How to ensure consistent product information

Organisations are becoming more strategic in their data management processes. Many are setting up data governance teams to interact with all departments, which are led by business staff rather than those in IT.

This is a positive step as it is only when senior business people start to take ownership for master data issues that a genuine improvement in the field will occur.

Business leaders are recognising the importance of centralising data and following a standardised process. Putting product information in one place, where all departments can easily access it, is essential and saves time and money.

Final thoughts

It is important for organisations to get the basics right, before launching themselves into the world of social media.

Social media is always evolving, but its potential for driving sales will remain. Businesses need to be 100 per cent on the mark when it comes to what they are saying about their products – wherever they happen to be saying it.
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Rapport Aspen Institute: SAP loopt voorop op gebied van social media

Rapport Aspen Institute: SAP loopt voorop op gebied van social media: "'s Hertogenbosch - 11 maart 2010 - Een nieuw rapport van het Aspen Institute, getiteld 'Leveraging the Talent-Driven Organization' biedt inzicht in hoe een aantal bedrijven gebruikmaken van social networking tools om open manieren van leren, communiceren en internationale samenwerking te verbeteren. Daarnaast zetten ze deze middelen in voor de ontwikkeling van nieuwe producten en real-time oplossingen voor klanten. Met commentaar van leiders van internationale bedrijven, waaronder Mark Yolton, Senior Vice President van SAP, betiteld het rapport het SAP Community Network (SCN) als het hoogstwaarschijnlijk meest gebruikte sociale media platform tot nu toe door een onderneming."

Case Study: Microsoft Engages Employees and Creates a Self-Service Knowledge Repository

Case Study: Microsoft Engages Employees and Creates a Self-Service Knowledge Repository: "Case Study: Microsoft Engages Employees and Creates a Self-Service Knowledge Repository"

24 February 2010
Carol Rozwell

Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00174294


Many organizations struggle to reach a tipping point in the adoption of social media. This case study explains how Microsoft engaged its employees to share their expertise and, in the process, created a dynamic self-service knowledge repository.

Overview



Microsoft needed to provide employees with the knowledge they require to stay up to date with a steady stream of new product releases. Like many other firms in a dynamic business environment, it found that its training organization was strained and having difficulty keeping up with the demand for new courseware.

Key Findings
* Academy Mobile was created to evaluate whether social media concepts could be applied to let people share information directly with each other.
* Today, there are 2,000 frequent podcasters, 650 uploads/month and 125,000 page views. People use Academy Mobile as a self-service expertise network.
* As usage grew, intrinsic motivation became more important than the incentive program. The podcasters contributed their best material because they wanted to be perceived as experts.

Recommendations
* Establish a clear code of business conduct, then trust employees to do the right thing.
* Allow the community to share the knowledge it feels is most relevant and to determine which contributions are most useful.
* Seed the initial implementation but when the solution goes viral, manage with a light touch.

Social media are changing the rules for business

Social media are changing the rules for business
By Paul Henri Ferrand, vice president for SMB Marketing at Dell

Published: July 24 2009 12:40 | Last updated: July 24 2009 12:40

Does it seem like the world has gone Twitter-crazy? But crazy or inspired, one thing is for sure – social media have changed the way we do business forever.

For a start, the way reputations are built has changed. Not that long ago, the sum total of how an organisation portrayed itself in public set its reputation over time. Customer opinion was important but conversation was much more one-way. Reaching millions of customers with a message was expensive and time consuming.

Those days are gone. An organisation’s reputation is being altered and formed constantly. Around the globe people are searching for information, buying online, formulating opinions and sharing them. A company may win or lose potential customers based on an online conversation.

With the click of a button, a business can connect with customers in real time, hold conversions and build raving fans. In short – social media is one more thing breaking down the barriers between SMEs and large enterprises.

This means that companies:

• need to adapt or risk losing business;

• cannot overlay traditional marketing on to social media platforms and expect it to work;

• have a tremendous opportunity. SMEs in particular can use social media to leapfrog large competitors.

Get in the game

It can feel risky to open the gates and be so direct with the public. But a company is going to be discussed anyway, and it might as well be part of the conversation. The ease and speed with which customers now share information goes far beyond what we could have imagined even a few years ago.

At Dell, we’ve significantly turned around our approach to social media, from a cautious start years ago. Our Direct2Dell forums allow customers to express freely their experiences of using Dell products and we take the good and the bad into account at a senior level.

These forums, that we do not edit or censor, feed into our future product design and give our company invaluable feedback on what truly matters for consumers, small businesses and large enterprises.

We’ve also launched blogs, Facebook groups and pages, a crowd-sourcing platform called IdeaStorm, and we were one of the first big enterprises to be active in Twitter. Through all this we’re having over 5m conversations per day with potential customers, over 2bn interactions a year!

There are a few different ways businesses can “jump in”:

• Closer Conversations

Blogs are a great sounding board, engaging key audiences in fast and honest conversation. Leave any business-talk offline and make sure to get across personality and opinion. They can attract negative comments – but open and transparent answers can counter that.

Microblogging (ie Twitter) allows companies large or small to send out regular chunks of news or insight easily. Even when expanding a small business and hiring new recruits – Twitter and Facebook can be great ways of putting the word out. I know of SMEs who have got back in touch with old colleagues and head-hunted them.

• Building relationships

Know where customers are talking. Use Google Alerts, Netvibes, Yahoo Pipes and Technorati to adapt campaigns accordingly.

Online dialogue is direct and personal, and requires the highest levels of transparency. Fans know a company’s products and brand, and can be ambassadors for them.

So it is important to have an open exchange. Listening to customers and influencers has always been fundamental to good business, and this is integral to any social-media marketing campaign, and provides real-time insight.

Crowdsourcing lets customers be actively involved in creating new products and services, or solving a business challenge for your company. No one knows better than customers what they want and need. Two heads (or 200,000) are better than one.

Multi-way, Not One-Way

As companies jump in, it’s important to remember that traditional marketing unaltered will rarely work in the social media world, because it is built around one-way conversation.

The message needs to be adapted to prepare for dialogue – which can involve some fun, with the building of a company’s online “personality” in real time as it starts sharing with the world.

SME Leadership

Where is all this heading? Just three years ago we may have struggled to understand the importance of social networking sites. Today, there are hundreds of millions of potential customers engaged in these networks and virtually no barrier or cost to an SME joining and connecting with them.

I would argue that because SMEs are so agile and efficient, they might dominate the social media business landscape before the majority of large enterprises.

While Dell is proud to be a leader in social media, only 12 per cent of the Fortune 500 even have a company blog.

I also think we’ll see far more diversification of social networks aimed at specific interests – for example www.webjam.com allows anyone to set up a social network on their personal hobbies. This will allow SMEs even more chance to target or network with specific customers.

Like most things, the only way to “get” digital media is to jump right in. Start building a brand on social networks now – that’s the key to hiring staff and finding customers that will allow an SME to thrive, whatever the economic climate.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009