Rattling the IT department's cage is old hat by now. Nicholas Carr did it first with DOES IT MATTER, and more recently with THE BIG SWITCH. It's also not new to compare incumbent technologies to new, flashier, lightweight applications. And yet, the conversation persists as to whether social media tools are useful to your organization, internally or otherwise. For this brief, let's talk internally.
Which Tools Are We Talking About?
For the sake of discussing internal tools, let's limit this to blogs, wikis, and white label social networks. Most of these are used by people in the consumer space, but that's not where we're going. Whether or not your particular business should be on Facebook is another topic for another time. Let's talk business uses.
What People are Using Today
Businesses tend to run on email, voicemail, spreadsheets and word documents, and maybe your fax. Of these, email is probably one of the two most abused applications, second only to spreadsheets. We use email to store data. We use it to pass status information that might need to be shared by others or kept persistent in our memory. And spreadsheets? We use these for all types of things, including status information, knowledge management, and sometimes even for calendaring. How well are those tools working for your business?
Social Media Tools
Let's break down the three major use cases I covered above:
- Status
- Knowledge Management / data storage
- Calendaring (for project tasks, this is)
For each of these, there are a few tools that might work better, and will definitely reduce inbox clutter, improve persistence of information, and still not take up much time or effort.
- Status- blogs and/or white label social networks.
- Knowledge Management - wikis and white label social networks.
- Calendaring - white label social networks.
In all cases, these kinds of tools can be used for information that is traditionally still passed and stored in email systems, but that will immediately have more value in one of these alternative platforms. Why?
One reason is metadata. By adding tags, categories, and other information to blog posts (or any of these), you immediately gain better search, a centralized focal point, and the ability to receive updates on the data in a more automated form (via RSS subscription).
Why Not The Enterprise Tools?
Tools like SharePoint and SAP and several other larger systems are growing to support these features mentioned above, so they are still worth considering for your organization, especially if you're already an enterprise customer in the mid-sized to larger space. They're not always as flexible as some of the other products out there, and sometimes require a little more infrastructure, but beyond that, they function well for the points mentioned above.
The Newcomers
Over the coming months, at events like ITEC, and via our webinars, we'll talk about social media tools in the enterprise. During these conversations, we'll touch on enterprise tools, but you'll also learn more about companies like Jive Software and Mzinga, who produce white label social network and collaboration tools, as well as blogging and content platforms like WordPress and Drupal. In all cases, consider these tools from the point of view of improving business communication and knowledge sharing. That's where these tools might add the value. That's where we see the value to you internally.
What about you? Have you experimented with social media tools for internal projects? Have you used them for other applications like external marketing, communication, and lead generation? What have you found?
The conversation around these tools won't end soon. I invite you to contribute your thoughts, as well.