Sean R. Nicholson

About a year ago, I had a conversation with a then SocialMediaphobe who tried to convince me that social media was a fad that had no future in the workplace. His argument was that Facebook was too personal and Twitter too truncated to ever offer any value to business culture. I tried to convince him that, like all emerging technologies, social media was still finding its place in the workplace, but it was slowly, almost imperceptibly changing the way we communicate. His response was to try to dissuade me by saying “it’s just a bunch of people talking about what they ate for breakfast.”

As I look back the amazing strides social media has taken in the last year, even I’m amazed. The importance of short, meaningful messages tugged at my heartstrings as major news outlets like CNN and MSNBC relied on Tweets from survivors of the tragic earthquake in Haiti to keep us informed. YouTube has become the second largest search engine in the world (arguably the largest content engine), and Facebook continues to grow at astonishing rates, becoming one of the largest photo repositories on the Web.

Yet, somehow….corporate executives continue to ignore social media like it’s going to go away. These social media ostriches often argue that Social Media is a “B to C” (business to consumer) activity, meaning that businesses can only use it to market directly to consumers. They argue that companies selling “B to B” (business to business) can’t effectively leverage social media, because it’s the wrong market and businesses don’t pay attention to social media.

Little do they understand that businesses are not faceless organisms that make decisions without human input. On the contrary, business decisions are influenced by people and made by people, making “B to B” marketing almost irrelevant in a world where social media dominates the conversation. Executives need to understand that consumers of all type rely on product advice gained from other consumers, and the value of marketing Web sites that expound on the value of their product is diminishing. Need more convincing? Take a look at the Answers section of LinkedIn and you’ll find thousands of professionals (working for businesses) asking for recommendations on ECM, CRM, Intranet, and back office software. Yes…they even ask for advice on what blogging and social media platforms to use.

A shining example of a “B to B” corporate executive leveraging social media is Carolyn Douglas, the CEO of Intranet Connections. Her passion about Intranets, collaboration, best practices, and social media are evident in her blogs and tweets. Her thought leadership in the Intranet industry influences her peers, colleagues and customers on a daily basis. She demonstrates that although her business is technically “B to B”, her social media communication is aimed at interacting with people.

Great examples of executive leadership can be found in the “B to C” markets, as well. Just look at leaders like Marc Cenedella of TheLadders.com or Bill Marriot of Marriot Hotels. Each has established a meaningful blog and/or twitter presence that educates the public on topics ranging from interviewing tips to downtown revitalization efforts. Both activities are ancillary to their business, but provide meaning to their readers. The effect of the trust they earn from their readers is often carried over to the brand the represent.

And product marketing is just the tip of the iceberg when looking for social media opportunity. The value of collaborative activities inside your organization can justify an investment relatively quickly. You see, your employees are people, and people like to share. They share their stories, experiences, and knowledge. They talk around the water cooler, at the coffee pot, and at their cubes. At work, they feel valued and important when another employee is able to use a past experience to solve a problem. They get frustrated when they discover that the knowledge in their head could have been useful to another employee in a previous experience.  It’s the age-old knowledge management problem. How do you get the knowledge out of your employees heads and into a media that can be shared and leveraged by other employees?

The answer is social media. Give your employees and platform and they will share. Sure, they’ll share personal information, too…but mixed in with stories about their weekends, cats, and World of Warcraft are valuable nuggets of corporate knowledge that can help you solve problems, produce new products, and deliver a higher level of customer and employee satisfaction. It’s up to you to find ways to filter or segment that information to uncover that which is valuable to your business, but once you do…you’ve unlocked the potential of your employees.

In summary, social media is not about people eating oatmeal. Well…actually it is. But it’s also about people solving problems and people serving customers and people buying products. Social media is about your employees and your customers. It’s about your friends and colleagues. It’s about what they want, and what they want to offer. It’s a valuable tool that will provide insight to markets, products, and ways of doing business that you probably never thought about.  It’s up to you to get involved and show leadership. Good luck!

P.S. I’d love to hear from Execs who have taken the plunge and how your efforts are proceeding. Feel free to comment or email using our contact form.

Sean R. Nicholson

2009 has been a great year full of exciting opportunities, great projects, engaging conversations, and healthy dialog about the topics of Intranets, Enterprise Content Management, and Enterprise 2.0. As I reflect on the events that have occurred over the last year, I’m amazed at how much has transpired and how many new people I have had the honor of connecting with.

Here are some of the highlights, that I thought I would share. In 2009, I am please to have:

• Started the IntranetExperience blog as an effort to capture some of my Intranet design and implementation experiences and share them with others.
• Created a Twitter account, which drove me to read hundreds (maybe thousands) of articles posted by fellow Tweeps.
• Compiled a following list of more than 600 invaluable resources who tweet on Intranets, Enterprise Content Management, Social Media, and Enterprise 2.0.
• Earned the privilege of being followed by more than 700 folks on Twitter who think I might have something valuable to say everyone once in a while.
• Connected online with some amazing Intranet resources including:
  • Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media;
  • Carolyn Douglas and Rachel Lai of Intranet Connections;
  • James Robertson and Alex Manchester of Step Two Designs
  • Peter Richards, who writes the Wheat and Chaff blog
  • Jane McConnell of NetJMC
  • Christy Season, who blogs at ChristyWeb.com
  • Wedge, who blogs at kilobox.net
• Engaged in thought-provoking dialogs on enterprise content management with ECM gurus like:
  • Cheryl McKinnon of Nuxeo
  • Martin Sumner-Smith of OpenText
  • Carl Frappaolo and John Mancini of AIIM
  • Sascha Ohler and Mike Wessel of Perceptive Software
• Had incredible face-to-face conversations with other Intranet and ECM professionals including folks like:
  • Karl Geisler
  • Jeff Allen
  • Michele Sperle
  • Dan Dillon
  • Ken Berlack
  • Dan Kneeshaw
  • Angela Cullen
• Developed 20 different subject matter-oriented lists on Twitter of outstanding experts in their respective areas.
• Helped educate others that social media isn’t just people blogging about their families and tweeting about what they ate for breakfast. I successfully convince others that tweeting is a good thing, and some of them have even stuck with it.
• Worked with great folks like Patty Dugan, Matt Feeny, Jill Ducey, Paul Arhnold, and Jeremy McNieve to develop an initial Social Media strategy around Twitter.

All of this, on top of enjoying a great day job, spending quality time with my family, and carving out a bit of time for myself.

Not too shabby, if I don’t say so myself.

What’s even better is I have even higher hopes to build on the foundation of 2009 and expand these activities, conversations, and opportunities in 2010!

A special thanks to everyone I have listed here for their thoughts, comments, and engagement. And to anyone that I might have left off, this post is likely a work in progress and a gentle reminder of any accomplishment that should be added to the list is much appreciated.

Happy New Year to everyone and my 2010 be your best year yet!

–Sean

Sean R. Nicholson

Warning: This is a long blog post detailing my adventures through blocked blogs and suspended Twitter accounts. If you’re looking for a short read or have a really short attention span, you’d be better off checking out my Tweets or skipping to the end of this post where there are some key lessons learned from this experience.

If you have a few minutes and are looking for the “juicy details” (you’ll learn what that means later), grab a cup of coffee, get comfy, and read on

Blogs, Tweets, Hackers, Oh My!

Okay, it’s official. I am not a social media addict. Well, not a certifiable one, anyway. As of yesterday, I successfully survived 12 days of withdrawal from my main sources of social media and came out on the other side alive. Okay…so I cheated a little bit using Facebook and LinkedIn, but shhhh….don’t tell anyone.

I’d love to report that my 12 day hiatus was the result of some exotic retreat to an off-the-grid island paradise, but unfortunately, I was forced into seclusion from my blog and Twitter by the nefarious forces at work on the Internet…probably some 14 year-old kid with entirely too much time on their hands.

Banned From Twitter – Uh Oh!!

So it was Friday morning and I had just finished up a conversation with a fellow employee about an internal microblog (similar to Twitter) that we are running at work. He had some questions about TweetDeck, so I offered to show him how I had TweetDeck configured. As we started to go through my configuration, I noticed a tweet from @carolyndouglas indicating that my account had been suspended (thanks Carolyn!).

One of my followers alerted me to the problem. Thanks Carolyn!

Huh?? How could that be? I headed on over to the native Twitter Web site and lo and behold, there was the Twitter Foul Owl right on my home page indicating that everyone should mosey along from my profile. Ouch! What had I done? Who had I offended? I consider myself to be a model tweeter, offering constructive dialog, links to valuable content, and I try to keep my snarky comments to myself (albeit sometimes unsuccessfully).

The Dreaded Foul Owl - Who Goes There?

So what was this “strange activity” that the wise Foul Owl was referencing? My follow:follower ratio wasn’t unbalanced, I wasn’t spamming anyone, and I wasn’t pitching Viagara or Xanax to my followers, so what’s the deal? Why are my Document Management or Intranet-focused tweets being considered strange? I was downright befuddled.

My Response – A Kneejerk Reaction To Being Called “Strange”

Being told that your tweets are “strange” isn’t a good feeling and my initial reaction was one of frustration and irritation. Unfortunately, I was headed to back-to-back afternoon meetings, so I had to brew a bit over my Twitter suspension before I could seek resolution. I found that the longer my day drew on,  the more fixated I became on having my content called “strange”. Who’s to judge what is strange? Was I strange because I like to talk about technology, Intranets, and Enterprise Content Management? My wife seems to think so, but she never banned be from prattling on about the latest portal upgrade or cool new document workflow solutions. Instead, she just politely nods a lot and her eyes get a bit of a glazy look, but she always smiles and pretends to be interested…but I digress.

At the end of the day, I finally had some time to look into the issue. My first step was to click the Foul Owl link below the image that offered the “juicy details” to find out why I had been suspended. Unfortunately, Foul Owl didn’t provide any useful information and there were definitely NOT any juicy details as the wise bird promised. Instead, I was taken to a Google “Oops! page indicating that the juicy details I was seeking were not available.

The Twitter Foul Owl promised me juicy details, but dumped me to a Google Oops! page.

In the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson, “DOH!”.

How dare the Foul Owl promise me the details on why I was being blocked and then send me off to the land of unfound content. Talk about strange! Well, being that I was already worked up, I decided to go the next step and check out http://help.twitter.com to see if they could provide me with some relief and maybe a description of why I was “strange” and “suspended”.

Twitter Help Wasn’t Much Help In Understanding Why I Had Been Suspended

Unfortunately, the Twitter help site was less than helpful. I was already frustrated and the Google Oops! page didn’t help, but at least the Twitter help site looked like a wealth of information. However, instead of getting any useful information about suspended accounts, I got a lot of “how to” content on Finding People on Twitter and information on the Twitter text commands. After searching and searching for a way to open a support ticket with Twitter, I finally found a tiny link buried in the middle of a TON of content.

Twitter buries the link to create a support ticket.

Now I don’t mean to complain, but when someone is looking for help, burying the link that offers that help in the middle of the page amongst a ton of content doesn’t seem to be the best user experience. Maybe this is Twitter’s strategy since it forces  folks to read through the how to find people and text commands, but my guess is that Twitter support isn’t being flooded with requests for help on finding Uncle Joe or Aunt Sally or even “how do I use the official Twitter text commands??” so I’m not sure about their strategy in burying the support link. Maybe they figure that if they bury the link amongst useless information, it is less likely to be found.

Tip #1: If your account has been suspended by Twitter and you feel the suspension is unfair, go to http://help.twitter.com and scroll down the page half way to find the link in the image above to open a ticket.

The Support Ticket Is Opened, But Still No Reason Why!

Having found the link, I went ahead and opened a support ticket. With my frustration level being pretty high, I think I did a pretty good job asking politely why I had been suspended and what I needed to do to reverse the decision. After all, I am a firm believer that ticking off your support engineer, garbage man, or waitress rarely has a good outcome.

Although the ticket was opened, I still didn’t know why I had been blocked, so I took a look at my most recent posts to see if I had offended someone.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to dig too deep to find the problem. My last tweet had been a response thanking a fellow Tweeter for a comment she made on the title of one of my blog posts

A seemingly benign tweet until I clicked the link to my blog site and was presented with the Google warning that visiting the site might harm my computer due to issues with the site. Double-DOH!!

Now what had I done? My Twitter account had been suspended, my blog was giving me a warning….ping. The lightbulb went on and I connected the two.  Since my blog was being blocked by Google and my tweets often contain links to my blog, Twitter must rely on Google warnings to identify people who are posting up links to spam or malware. Genius!! Well….Except for the part where they suspended me.

So My Blog Was Hacked And My Twitter Account Suspended

It appeared as though my weekend was about to be shot to bits. Now I had to figure out what was wrong with my blog and then figure out how to convince Twitter to un-suspend my account. Fortunately, having been in the Web business for some time, I know a few tools that helped me troubleshoot the issue quickly. First, I checked the most recent version of my blogging software. Unfortunately, I was one dot release behind, which could have exposed a weakness allowing someone to inject malware code into my site.

Next, I used a really nice tool at www.dasient.com which does a complete scan of your site to search for malware. It then tells you which pages are potentially infected. Since I had a couple of pages that were infected, I decided not to take and chances and restored my entire site from a backup to ensure clean pages and then upgraded to the latest dot release.

Tip #2: If Google, IE, or Firefox is indicating that your site is unsafe to visit, it’s a good idea to take the site offline so as not to infect any additional visitors and then run a check against your offline files (using a test server or subdirectory) at Dasient.com. Having an offline backup of all your files makes a site restore much easier.

After restoring the site and rerunning a Dasient check to ensure that no additional infection existed, I used Google WebMaster tools to request a review of my site to have the warning removed. After fixing the issue, it took less than 12 hours for Google to unblock the site.

So The Blog Is Fixed, Now To Just Get My Twitter Account Un-Suspended

Sounds easy enough, right? Blog fixed in under 24 hours, Twitter account should be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, no. To Twitters’ credit, they take malware seriously. Links are critical to the vitality of Twitter and if they didn’t take malware seriously, Twitter would quickly become a dumping ground for attackers looking to spread malicious links across the Web. So, I do have to give kudos to Twitter for taking this issue so seriously. According to the Twitter information on suspended accounts, it could be as long as 30 days before my account was cleared and I was able to tweet again. Triple DOH!!

Fortunately, it only took 12 days.

According to Twitter support, they address tickets in the order they are received, so I guess I just had to wait in line until a support tech got to my ticket. I checked in daily on my ticket, anxiously awaiting a response. Fortunately, once my ticket came up in the queue, the support rep was able to review my site, ensure that I was tweeting within their guidelines and was a good Twitter citizen, and restore my account quickly.

Five Lessons Learned From This Crazy Adventure

1. If you are using open source blogging software, it is imperative that you keep your blog software on the absolute latest release to ensure that any security holes are closed. Because the software is open source, hackers have access to the code and will exploit any security issue they can find. This means checking your site daily for new releases.
2. Twitter does not notify users when their accounts are suspended. If you’re lucky, you’ll find out from your followers. If you’re not lucky, you’ll find out when you go to post.
3. Fix any blog or site issues before you ask for your Twitter account to be reinstated. If your ticket comes up for review and your blog or site is still not clean, Twitter will not un-suspend your account. A great tool for assessing your blog or site is www.dasient.com
4. Open a Twitter ticket as soon as you have a clean bill of health for your site. It will probably take a while for Twitter to reinstate your account.
5. Vigilance is key. Pay attention to those Google and Firefox malware warnings. Don’t visit the site. Give the sitemaster time to fix the problem and check back later.

Okay, so those are the “juicy details” that Foul Owl promised, but never delivered. I hope that by sharing this adventure, I can help my fellow bloggers and tweeters navigate these waters in case your are faced with a similar situation. I’d be more than interested to hear similar experiences and will try to answer any questions you might have about the process in comment responses.

Happy (and safe) blogging and tweeting!

Sean R. Nicholson

Building a new Intranet or being asked to update an outdated portal can be a daunting task. Considerations such as platform selection, design, content creation, maintenance, usability, adoption, and a host of other concerns often make Intranet projects difficult. If you’re looking to build an Intranet or improve on the one you already maintain, take advantage of the great resources out there that can help in your efforts.

Below are some key resources that should be in the toolkit for every Intranet project. Some require registration to  access and participate, while others are do require a purchase. Hopefully, they can assist you in the decision making process of any selection or updates to your Intranet.

1) Nielsen Norman Group Top 10 Intranets Report – It costs $224 for the report, but it’s worth its weight in gold if you are looking to research the latest and greatest on designs, functionality, and usability. NN/g conducts an extensive review of all submissions and selects those Intranets that really stand out.

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/design/

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2) Intranet Professionals Group On LinkedIn – This group focuses on sharing the experiences of Intranet professionals registered on LinkedIn. There are some good ongoing discussions about design, social media, budget and strategies. Be sure to set your email settings so that you receive a daily or weekly digest of the topics so you can keep on top of new discussions or updates.

http://sites.google.com/site/intranetprofessionals/

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3) IntranetBlog.com – Blogger Toby Ward, of Prescient Digital Media, provides insight on everything from best practices to global trends. Podcasts are offered, as well as case studies of effective Intranet designs and strategies. If you’re looking to hire an Intranet developer or consultant, be sure to check out the 10 Things To Ask Your Intranet Consultant.

http://www.intranetblog.com

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4) Gartner.com – Tasked with finding a vendor for your Intranet portal, CMS or DMS? Be sure to consult Gartner’s Magic Quadrants. Their industry research provides an in-depth understanding of the key players in the industry and their strengths and weaknesses. Also, be sure to check out the Gartner Portals, Content, and Collaboration Summit conference.

http://www.gartner.com

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5) CMS Watch – If you’re interested in keeping up with the news in the portal, CMS, and ECM world, definitely check CMS Watch frequently. If you’re in the portal selection process, take a look at the 2009 Enterprise Portals Report. It runs around $2000, but can help you understand both the commercial offerings and the Open Source solutions that are available.

http://www.cmswatch.com

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6) Twitter and Tweetdeck – Great information is exchanged each day between Intranet professionals on Twitter. But the power of monitoring specific searches terms like “Intranet” or “Sharepoint” is easier when using TweetDeck. TweetDeck may look a little overpowering at first, but once you set it up for our Twitter searches, you’ll wonder how you ever tweeted without it.

http://www.twitter.com and http://www.tweetdeck.com

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7) Step Two Designs - Step Two Designs is a Knowledge Management Consultancy that publishes top-quality white papers and analysis of Intranet trends. Their annual Innovation Awards showcases some of the best Intranet experiences available.  Also check out their free Intranet Review Toolkit.

http://www.steptwo.com.au

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8 ) The Intranet Insider World Tour – One of the biggest gatherings of Intranet Professionals around. If you can’t make the conference, definitely check out the Webinars. The 2009 conference has already passed, but be sure you add a line item in your 2010 budget for the event.

http://www.communitelligence.com/content/ahpg.cfm?spgid=358&full=1

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9) Christy Season’s Intranet Professionals On Twitter List – Interested in following Intranet Professionals on Twitter? Check out the list that Christy has begun.  Be sure to add your name to the list and check back frequently to update your Twitter follow list.

http://www.christyweb.com/2009/02/intranet-professionals-on-twitter.html

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10) The Intranet RoadMap – A very high level, but effective starter kit for anyone who has been asked to develop an Intranet for their organization. In about an hour, you can browse through the roadmap to understand many of the common tasks that you should expect in encounter during your project.

http://www.intranetroadmap.com

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11) Intranet Strategies by JMC – A great compilation of Intranet information and best practices created by Jane McConnell. Be sure to check out the annual Global Intranet Trends report. The 2009 report is available for $875

http://netjmc.typepad.com

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There you have it. A good start at some of the great resources out there for Intranet Professionals. As we build our site, our goal is to be able to include it in our own list in 2010! Maybe your site or resource will be included as well.

If you have suggestions on additional Intranet-focused resources or events, leave a comment and tell us about it.

Sean R. Nicholson

Okay Intranet fans, here it is…the 2009 completely unofficial list of must have functionality for every Intranet.

**Please note that we reserve the right to update this list and expand it beyond 10 based on the great feedback and comments we will undoubtedly receive.

{drumroll please….}

# 10) Application Interoperability – There’s nothing like a good Intranet mashup. Being able to search for a user and see not only who they are (from the HR application), what they are working on (from the Project Management application), and where they are located (From HR + Google Maps) is pretty cool, not to mention that it brings relevant information to the user on a single page. Look for creative ways to mash up your applications and streamline information gathering. Remember that good mashup also leverage a “simpler sign-on” schema so that users don’t have to login over and over to see data in different applications.

#9) A Clean Design – Lot of functionality is good, but be sure to spend time up front determining what should be on the front page and what can be moved to secondary pages. Your users should be able to find content quickly and easily. Spend some time watching how your users physically navigate the Intranet and strive toward reducing the number of clicks they have to make to locate the information they are looking for. Need help creating a design? Bring in a consultant from the outside to provide an objective point of view.

#8) A Good Name – I always love hearing people refer to the Intranet by it’s given name, rather than “the Intranet”. Creative names allow folks to create an identity for the Intranet that gives it a life of its own. If you don’t have a name for your Intranet, try holding a company-wide contest to come up with names and then have your company vote on it. Your even more likely to get strong buy in if the name is chosen by your organization as opposed to being assigned by a developer with a Star Wars fetish.

#7) A Strong Navigation Taxonomy – Yes….it’s a Google kinda world, so folks like to find content through search, but when they find that content, they also like to see where they are in the navigation, using a folder taxonomy or breadcrumbs, so they can find other content that is similar in nature AND know how to get back to the content in the future.

#6) Personalization – Users need to be able to customize pieces of the Intranet. Whether it’s their weather, stock quote, news headlines, horoscope or other content, allow them to make the Intranet more useful to them as an information source. Also, by allowing users to relocate portlets or widgets, they can create a design that meets the way they work. Need a good source for personalized information? Look to subscription information providers such as YellowBrix.

#5) A Good Rich Text Editor – Nothing helps an Intranet grow more than content, so making the creation of content easy is important. A good WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) editor is important. Don’t forget to make sure your editor has a spell check. I speak from experience on this one (ahem…Plumtree/BEA/Oracle WebCenter)

#4) Governance – No need to go into full-blown lockdown mode, but governance is a good thing for any organization. It keeps your Intranet from becoming the wild, wild west and ensures that the content created has meaning and is relevant. Some areas of the Intranet (WIKIs, forums, etc… ) can be looser than others, but your governance strategy should be flexible enough to accommodate for these different needs.

#3) A Strong Collaboration Toolset – User created content will drive your Intranet page views through the roof. A good, spirited conversation about the latest product or marketing campaign can help spread the word about what your organization is doing and can drive new innovations. Try adding an “Idea Center” to your Intranet and challenge your employees to come up with new ways to do business. Products like user-driven blogs, forums, and WIKIS can turn your readers into contributors growing your content exponentially. Daily polls can also be used for gathering user sentiment on a corporate topic, or just for a little fun.

#2) A Federated Search Engine – Again, it’s a Google kinda world, so make sure your search works and it can talk to other applications. No one likes to have to search 10 different places for information, so leverage tools like Google appliances or federated search engines like FAST or Autonomy to bring all of your content together into one search. If you haven’t ever seen a demo of one of these “meaning” based search engines, give them a call and ask for one. You’ll be amazed at what modern search engines can do.

#1) Meaningful Content – The best design, the coolest name, even a great governance strategy…they’re nothing without meaningful content. If your users don’t find value in your Intranet, they won’t adopt its use. In addition (and I can’t stress this enough), the content MUST be timely and accurate.

The only thing worse than no information is bad information…Your employees will act using bad information because they don’t know it’s inaccurate. There’s nothing worse than a sales rep sharing an outdated rate sheet or a customer service rep providing an inaccurate solution to a problem. To avoid this, be sure your Intranet content is up-to-date and reviewed frequently.

There you have it, Intranet fans! 10 must haves for any good Intranet.

Additions:

Accessibility – Everyone needs to be able to use your Intranet. Ensuring that your pages comply with the accessibility guidelines will ensure that folks with disabilities can read or hear the content. Thanks to Russell @theparallaxview for the suggestion

Have input? We’d love to hear any additions, suggestions, or constructive criticism in your comments!