Social Media For Internal Communications

Unfortunately i was asked to remove my awesome preso on 'Social Media for Internal Communications' due to intellectual property issues but considering i wrote the whole thing and no corporate data was used i really don't see what the problem is apart from the fact that i used my work computer to write it.....but that's another story (apparently my brain no longer belongs to me).

Anyway, what i really wanted to write about is how social media tools, applications & general initiatives can and should be leveraged within the workplace.

We spend day after day planning social media strategies for our clients but outside of personal usage do many of you actually use social media to communicate internally with your co-workers?

This is a question i have asked myself and the answer came up lacking....

Many of my friends over in Australia work in digital media (i know i need to get a life but that's just how i meet people!) and having asked a few of them what social media they use to communicate with eachother internally, other than IM, there was nothing!

Why is there nothing? That's crap. We are all preaching about social media to our clients but none of us have actually taken it and made it part of our working lives.

So here are my top suggestions for social media applications we can take and use successfully for internal purposes:

WIKI's

Wiki's are awesome. fact. So why not use them as a central knowledge database for internal purposes? You can privatise them and have your own Wiki domain so it's all completely secure.

How many grads pass through our industry doors in the average year and how often do we train, retrain & train again. What if they had access to a Wiki which explained what a CPM is or how to negotiate or what adserving means?

TWITTER

I love Twitter, i'm an addict. It's like IM but to the masses. So why not setup a GroupTweet account for private tweets between you and your colleagues?

'@zoescaman - can we all meet at 3pm for a catch up on this proposal?'

Perfect! It beats email anyday and gives you all access to eachother all the time. You can also send links to news, information or files.

RSS FEEDS

Data aggregation! woohoo! We all subscribe to blogs, news, reports, whitepapers blah blah blah so why not use RSS Feeds for the company or department and house the top stories or key information in one place where everyone can access everything of interest?

BLOGS

How many companies or departments have a centralised blog? Ok i know some thought leaders do but you'd be surprised at how many big, global networked agencies don't have one...

Many people write blogs individually but we should all be practicing the art of sharing information not only with those outside of our workplace but also with those INSIDE our workplace.

BOOKMARKING & TAGGING

This kind of falls under the same arm as RSS Feeds but also includes data filtering so we can cut down on the sheer mass of information and ensure that at least we are all reading the core elements that are of direct interest.

SOCIAL NETWORK GROUPS

Seriously this is painfully simple, just set up a Facebook page or group for you company/department. It promotes a sense of 'togetherness' (couldn't think of a less cheesy word sorry) and brings people closer.

Ultimately it's inexcusable for us to NOT use social media internally. We preach it, we sell it so let's bloody use it!

To further hammer home my point i have listed below the outcomes you could achieve by implementing the above:

•informal knowledge sharing for teams and groups
•networked innovation using social tools
•distributed learning communities
•re-inventing the intranet
•generating human-scale communication, rather management jargon
•integrating and developing corporate culture
•cross-silo networking building
•replacing newsletters with two-way conversational blogs
•better peripheral awareness

And now for some examples of the big corporations that have already implemented it and implemented it well:

Sun Microsystems Wiki

Sun Microsystems Facebook Fridays (Educational Sessions)

Sun Microsystems Podcast Radio

IBM Internal Blog

Best Buy: Blueshirt Nation (Internal Social Network)

Twitter users under the magnifying glass.....

Everybody whose anybody is on Twitter right? I am so it must be true :-)

According to a recent US study (Pew Internet & American Life Project) Twitter usage is indeed on the rise.

In December 2008, 11% of online American adults shared updates on Twitter or similar services, up from 9% in November, and 6% in May.

The Twitter audience stay connected through Wi-Fi networks and mobile phones.

The study finds 76% of Twitter users access the Internet using a laptop, PDA, cell phone, or other mobile device. In contrast, 57% of those people online, but not on Twitter, have wireless Internet access.

Mobile connections allow for status updates at times previously not possible.

Micro-bloggers are just as likely to consume other media as the average Internet user, but more likely to read or view it through a mobile format.

For instance, 60% of non-Twitter users and 76% of Twitter users are likely to read a newspaper online. Meanwhile, 6% of non-Twitter users and 14% of Twitter users read news articles on a cell phone.

Twitter user demographic portrait:

• The median age of a Twitter user is 31. That compares to a median age of 27 for MySpace users, 26 for Facebook users, and 40 for LinkedIn users.


• Twitter users are slightly more racially and ethnically diverse than the U.S. population. "Most likely because they are younger -- and younger Americans are a more ethnically and racially diverse group than is the full population," the study found.


• 35% of Twitter users live in urban areas compared to 29% of all Internet users.

*Pew's study is based on a survey of 2,253 adults, 18 and older, including 502 phone interviews

Free E-Condoms!

Facebook members can now send each other e-condoms and information about safe sex courtesy of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which launched a page and application on the social network just in time for Valentine's Day.

To date 6,553 e-condoms have been sent via the Facebook app.

The department have utilised the social networking space previously using Myspace in 2008 to promote the same topic but this years results far outweight last years in regards to response & PR coverage.

The page now has 711 fans at last view.

The department debuted the NYC Condom on Valentine's Day in 2007, making it the first condom to carry the official brand of an American city.

Since then more than 70 million condoms have been distributed free, and the wrapper won an International Design Excellence Award from BusinessWeek and the Industrial Designers Society of America.

The Facebook page offers education about AIDS statistics in New York, information on the proper use of condoms and how to stop the spread of venereal diseases as well as the much coveted virtual condoms.

The department does not seem overly concerned with the ROI of this particular initiative, however, the official spokeswoman simply stated "We are hoping that millions of people will spread the word about condoms."

Watch the official video here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=44790864844

Google closes radio advertising arm

Google is to shut its radio ads business as attempts to take its online dominance into the offline market continue to falter.

Google said 40 jobs are at risk as it looks to sell its Radio Automation business and close the AdSense for Audio and Audio Ads services at the end of May, after conceding they had underperformed.

Google VP of product management Susan Wojcicki said despite investing heavily in the two-year-old service, it hadn't generated adequate returns.

"While we've devoted substantial resources to developing these products and learned a lot along the way, we haven't had the impact we hoped for," she said. "So, we've decided to exit the broadcast radio business and focus our efforts in streaming audio."

Wojcicki's comments echo those made by Google director Spencer Spinnell last month when he announced the closure of its print ads business, another attempt to increase its offline footprint.

Google launched its radio ads programme in 2007 following a $102m cash acquisition of DMarc Broadcasting a year earlier. The deal could have risen to more than $1bn dependant on its ongoing success.

Twitter gets more funding

Twitter received £24.5m ($5.21m) in VC funding this weekend, bringing its total funding figure to over £35m ($77.47m).

The funding, which is the third round of investment in the site, came from venture capital firms Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post the site's strong growth - it has seen active user numbers jump 900% in a year - attracted the money.

It will be invested to grow the site further and to investigate revenue generation products.

My.Barack.Obama: The Ins & Outs of the site...

The 3rd Place

I attended the Media 09' conference last Friday and was pleasantly surprised at the high caliber of speakers & the content of their presentations.

One such speaker was Will Price from WidgetBox who introduced to me the concept of 'The 3rd Place' which i found fascinating & simple = fascinatingly simple.

Meet Ray (Oldenburg). Ray is an urban sociologist from Florida.

He wrote a book called 'The Great Good Place' in which he talks about 'The 3rd Place'.

Ray believes that humans are essentially social creatures & that to meet our basic social needs we need to exist in 3 different environments.

1). Home

2). Work

3). The 3rd Place

'The 3rd Place', whilst sounding like a Sci-Fi channel show, actually refers to a an informal but public gathering place.

He argues that bars, coffee shops, general stores, and other "third places" (in contrast to the first and second places of home and work), are central to local democracy and community vitality.

However, modern life and our increasingly busy day-to-day schedules force us to exist predominately within our 1st (home) and 2nd (work) environments whilst decreasing the time spent, or in some cases omitting, the 3rd place from our routines.

Now in case you think i've switched fields from advertising to psychology over night, fear not, there is a link!

The rise of social networks and the velocity of their growth can be entirely linked to the decrease of our exposure to 3rd places in the real world due to our busy lifestyles.

Therefore social networks can also be described as a 'virtual 3rd place'.

Social networks & digital communities are filling a visceral need within our society they are virtual villages, pubs, cafes & general gathering places where we can satisfy one of our instinctive social needs to meet with others in an informal, familar & highly accessible way.

Cue 'Cheers' intro....

Sounds cheesy but it's actually very accurate.

People are now reaggregating in these virtual 3rd places such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Niche online communities etc etc....

So it shows you that the stories may change with new technologies but the human stories and context/content remain the same.