Sean R. Nicholson

For the last few years, I have been using this blog and my @seanrnicholson Twitter account to provide information about Intranets and their impacts on organizations. Looking back of the relationships I have built, lessons I have learned, and responses to the blog articles and tweets, I’d say it’s been a resounding success.  But, things change…and in the digital world, sometimes things change quickly.

Last year, I was offered a unique opportunity to leverage my extensive experience building internal networks outside of the corporate walls, building relationships with online communities and helping companies build their social media strategies. It was a big decision to move beyond my Intranet/ECM focus to broader social communities, but I decided to take the plunge and haven’t regretted it for a moment. My experience building internal communities, identifying ways for employees to share knowledge, and developing measurement plans for Intranet and ECM solutions has translated directly to the world of social media.

As part of my new role, I have been tweeting at @socmedsean and blogging at SocMedSean.com about trends and new opportunities for organizations to leverage the power of social media. What I have found, however, is that the world of social media community building is very similar to the world of Intranet community building. In fact, I continue to recommend to clients that they engage their Intranet professionals when developing their social media strategies.

After all, many of these folks have been building communities for over decade and understand the opportunities, challenges, and risks involved with online engagement. Both are tasked with identifying their target communities, listening to their needs, and then finding ways to meet those needs through engaging and sharing, so it only makes sense for them to collaborate. Unfortunately, I have noticed that Intranet Managers and Social Media Managers often don’t connect and share their strategies and experiences. What this leads to is a lot of re-inventing the wheel. Yech!

In an effort to bridge these communications and find ways to connect professional community managers (both internal and external), I have decided to create a new community at WithInFluence.com focused on sharing community-building thoughts, best practices, and experiences.  This community is a closed-community, available by invitation-only to professionals who manage communities as their primary responsibility.

The community is a work in progress and I am currently looking for a few brave souls (aka “beta testers) who are interested in participating, sharing, and providing suggestions on how to tweak the functionality and grow the community.  Interested? Send me a DM via Twitter at @socmedsean and I’ll send you an invite .  I’d also be interested in hearing your thoughts/comments about this kind of community in the comments.

Cheers!

–Sean

Sean R. Nicholson

2010 has been a great year for Intranets. Web 2.0 finally came out of its shell and the explosive growth of Facebook,  Twitter, and YouTube brought social tools to the mainstream. This, in turn, helped many organizational leaders understand that capturing and sharing information inside the enterprise had a lot of potential, when social tools are leveraged.

In some cases, the same leaders who, in 2009, claimed that social media was “just about people sharing what they ate for breakfast” or “just for kids” finally began to understand that their employees wanted to engage in social media in the workplace and use it to share their work knowledge. As a result, Enterprise 2.0 took some great strides as organizations either added social components to their existing intranets or “ripped and replaced” them with new, social offerings.

The intranet-focused conversations in 2010 were beyond great. When I look back at my 2009 post, it’s great to see that most of the same folks that were blogging and tweeting in 2009 continued to share their valuable knowledge and experience in 2010.  To capture how great 2010 was, I looked back at the blogs of some of my favorite Intranet tweeps and thought I would share the posts I really enjoyed one more time.

In July, 2010 Carolyn Douglas (@carolyndouglas) gave a great breakdown of critical elements any organization should consider when determining whether they should buy or build an Intranet in her blog: When Looking at Intranets: Should you Build or Should you Buy? If you’re considering implementing a new Intranet in 2011, this is a great place to start.

One of my very favorite posts of 2010 came from Elizabeth Lupfer (@socialworkplace), who authors a blog called The Social Workplace. Check out her  article Will The Real You Please Stand Up?. This great article focuses on the need to be authentic in who you are, online and offline. This article is as important inside the workplace as it is outside.

My favorite Intranet series this year came courtesy of Rachel Lai (@rachellai83) in the form of  her series detailing the activities that occur each day on an Intranet. The series, entitled  A Day in the Life of an Intranet is a must read for any internal communicator or Intranet professional.

In an article he wrote for CMS Wire in October, 2010, Toby Ward (@tobyward) explains that enterprise social media has become a necessity.  The article does a great job clarifying the need for a social Intranet, as well as some of the barriers that may be encountered during the implementation.

One of the biggest fears that executives face when it comes to a social intranet is that of open communication. What if an employee says something they shouldn’t? What if private organizational information is exposed erroneously? In his September post, Open Communication – Skepticism and Fears, Bas Zurburg (@BasZurburg) exposes this fear, amongst others. A great read for anyone trying to convince their leadership of the value of a social Intranet.

In his October article, Beware of simplistic rules and strategies, James Robertson (@s2d_jamesr) did a great job explaining the dangers of setting arbitrary limitations on your enterprise because it’s easier to define a simple strategy and stick to it, rather than understanding what would really work best for your organization. The article caught my eye because I see these limitations time and time again within organizations, and rarely is there a sound business reason for some of the strategies and tactics.

I’m a sucker for a good game, so when Alex Manchester (@alex_manchester) wrote an article called Enhancing the intranet with game theory and gaming mechanics, I was hooked. In the article, Alex explains how multi-player online gaming and virtual environments are potential tools for developing employee collaboration and engagement within the enterprise.

I hope you enjoy and here’s to a great Intranet 2011!

–Sean

Sean R. Nicholson

Ahhh…reinventing the wheel. It’s an age-old tradition for a lot of organizations, especially when it comes to changes in technology.  Some new class of productivity software comes along and the entire IT organization has to come to a grinding halt while a new strategy is defined. Remember stopping to define an ECM strategy? Or maybe it was an ERP strategy. Or could it have been an CRM strategy. Don’t even think about that amount of time and energy devoted to developing a .com or eCommerce strategy!

Sound familiar? Ever been locked in the “paralysis by analysis” situation where you can’t get anyone to decide because there are just too many so-called “experts”, “gurus” and “SMEs” guiding the conversation? Ever felt like you’d rather just DO something rather than sitting in yet another, non-productive meeting discussing what might happen?

Unfortunately, many organizations are living this situation right now when it comes to defining their social media strategy.  So many new tools, so many new rules, so many unknown risks…where to begin??  But the reality is, the questions being asked aren’t that different from those that have been explored in the past.

For instance, these are some of the questions/concerns facing the enterprise with respect to social media:

1) How do we engage our customers?

2) What tools should we use to listen to our customers, capture information, and interact?

3) What do we do if a customer says something bad?

4) What do we do if a customer says something good?

5) How can we best learn from our customers to create new products and services?

6) How can we make sure that we’re communicating effectively with our customers?

7) Are there experts out there that can help us engage our customers?

8 ) Do we need to put policies and guidelines in place setting expectations for how we interact with our customers?

9) How do we keep our customers coming back and engaging with us?

10) How do we measure the Return on Investment (ROI) on customer engagement?

Sounds about right…Right? Now, flash back 10 years and see if these (slightly modified) questions sound familiar:

1) How do we engage our employees?

2) What tools should we use to listen to our employees, capture information, and interact?

3) What do we do if an employee says something bad?

4) What do we do if an employee says something good?

5) How can we best learn from our employees to create new products and services?

6) How can we make sure that we’re communicating effectively with our employees?

7) Are there experts out there that can help us engage our employees?

8 ) Do we need to put policies and guidelines in place setting expectations for how we interact with our employees?

9) How do we keep our employees coming back and engaging with us?

10) How do we measure the Return on Investment (ROI) on employee engagement?

Sound familiar? These are the questions that organizations found themselves facing when they were analyzing the value of a corporate Intranet portal and the additional of Web 2.0 components like discussion forums, knowledge bases, and (more recently) wikis and blogs. Seems like very similar questions have been in front of organizations for a long time and, in most, serious time and energy has been devoted to answering the employee engagement questions.

My point isn’t to say that employees and customers are the same and the same rules should apply. Having worked extensively in the Intranet space and currently being very involved in defining organizational social media strategies, I will tell you that employees and customers are very different. My point, however, is that if you are in the process of developing your social media strategy and you haven’t invited your Intranet Manager to the table for the discussions, you are missing out on some potentially useful experience and input.

Maybe, by involving your Intranet Manager, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel….just modify one that already exists.

Sean R. Nicholson

First, let me start off with a bit of a disclaimer. I’m not an anti-Facebook zealot and my goal isn’t to discourage the use of Facebook by companies and organizations. To the contrary, one of the biggest roles of my job is to explain how social media channels can be used effectively by organizations and within organizations. So, with that said, my goal with this series of posts is to educate anyone considering the use of Facebook as their corporate Intranet to seriously reconsider. Using Facebook for a corporate Intranet is like using a hammer to loosen a nut. It can be done, but there’s a lot of risk involved.

So, to help you understand why Facebook shouldn’t be considered when selecting the platform for your Intranet, here are 10 more reasons why it just doesn’t stack up to the competition out there.

10) No integration with organizational LDAP – Your employees are going to want to login using a “single sign-on” with your company domain. Facebook does not provide this type of integration, meaning that your users will need to manage separate accounts. Not a huge problem (because they probably already do), but most platforms built for Intranets will include this functionality, reducing the number of logins your employees require.

9) No document sharing – Don’t be confused by the recent announcement that Groups will allow the sharing of documents. That’s a bit of a misnomer. Facebook does not currently allow for the storage/sharing of documents and the new  “document’ functionality will simply allow members of the group to create a “document” (think Notepad) and share it within the group. You won’t be able to share PowerPoint decks, MS Word docs, or Excel spreadsheets. This means that your employees will be using local drives or shared network drives to save information, which can turn into an IT nightmare. Retrieving lost documents or dealing with document versions without a system designed to handle the complexities will consume a lot of IT bandwidth.

8 ) Search isn’t designed for Intranet purposes – If you have an Intranet right now, ask your employees which functionality they wish worked better. My bet is they’ll say “search”.  Facebook’s search is designed to find people and pages, not information. Even if Facebook did add document storage and sharing, the chances of your employees actually finding anything would be slim to none.

7) Facebook is architected as an entertainment platform, not an organizational Intranet – Ever build an organizational information taxonomy for your Intranet? It can be incredibly painful, even with the right tools. Facebook doesn’t offer you the flexibility to build your Intranet navigation structure in a way that will work for your team. Instead, you’re stuck with what they give you. Also, you’d better hope they don’t change it in the future. Also, would you really want your intranet competing for resources with the likes of Farmville and Mafia Wars?

6) Changes that might not be in the interest of your organization – Facebook is in the business of making money…for Facebook. They aren’t really interested in making your organization successful and if they need to add or change functionality that is adverse to your organizations needs, there’s likely nothing you can do about it. Facebook will do what’s good for them and their future, not yours. If Facebook feels it’s more important to their pocketbook to place your competitor’s ads on your private group, they’ll do so.

5) Groups are limited to 250 members – The recent enhancement of Groups functionality has spurred additional interest in Facebook as an Intranet platform. Keep in mind, however, that in the announcement of the new Groups Mark Zuckerberg continually mentioned the 250 member limitation and that these groups are really intended to be used on a smaller scale.

4) Discussions and walls offer no pre-moderation options – Although many organizations don’t want post moderation in their intranet discussion forums, there are some that do. With Facebook, there is no pre-moderation of wall posts or discussion posts.  That means when an employee posts it, it goes live. This makes some Intranet managers uncomfortable.

3) Employees may not like the “forced” blending of work/social – Many of your employees may view Facebook as their personal social network and may not like the forced blending of their personal and professional lives. Before setting your mind on Facebook as your Intranet platform, you might want to get the input of your HR executives. They may feel that what’s out there on Facebook isn’t really the business of the organization and blending business/personal poses a potential risk.

2) No integration with your other enterprise applications – While Facebook does offer an application platform, it is definitely not geared toward integration with a corporate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool or an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system. Your corporate Intranet should be the place where your employees work and where they can access their timecard apps, PTO management system, online form builder, ECM system, and ERP applications. Facebook just doesn’t offer the service-oriented architecture that is required to serve as a centralized portal.

1) Privacy, privacy, privacy. Facebook was not developed with privacy in mind. In fact, the concept of Facebook is pretty much anti-privacy. Share everything…and restrict access to those things you don’t want shared. A corporate Intranet should be exactly the opposite. Share nothing, and decided what you want shared with the outside world. Can you imagine sensitive documents being shared on Facebook and someone accidentally forgetting to set the right restrictions? For a private company, it could be a nightmare. For a public company, under FTC regulation, it could be full-blown Armageddon.

So there you have it….10 more reasons that Facebook shouldn’t be considered for a corporate Intranet. Have suggestions for the list? Feel free to add them in the comments!

Sean R. Nicholson

The launch of the popular Social Network movie coupled with Facebook’s recent enhancements to their Groups functionality has fueled the requests for my opinion as to whether Facebook is becoming a viable platform for an organizational Intranet. I’ll be writing a blog post this weekend detailing the technical/functional reasons that Facebook still isn’t a good choice, but in the meantime I wanted to share this funny video pointing out that many employees just don’t take Facebook seriously.

One of the most difficult hurdles for any Intranet to overcome is adoption and if your employees don’t take the Intranet and the content that it hosts seriously, then adoption will never follow. So, in light of that….is this how your employees feel about Facebook?

I’m not saying that Facebook will never be a suitable platform, it’s just not ready right now.

Sean R. Nicholson

Ready to roll out your new Enterprise 2.0 Strategy? Looking to save the company millions by implementing an internal social strategy? Think that implementing a blog will help you increase sales, cut support calls, and help unclutter your email Inbox?

Before you jump into the deep end and propose implementing any E2.0 solutions, you might want to take a look around and assess whether your organization has an understanding of what E2.0 really is and whether it is ready to take on an internal social strategy.

To help you along, here are my top 10 signs that your organization hasn’t quite figured out what Enterprise 2.0 really is:

10. Executives don’t know the difference between SAS and SaaS.

9. The person that manages your document management system never talks with the person who manages your Intranet.

8. A single organization (HR, Corp Comm, etc…) has complete control over the future roadmap of your Intranet.

7. You believe that social media has no place in the work environment and/or your organization has blocked communication channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

6. Your CRM system hasn’t been upgraded in more than 5 years and has no social media integration.

5. Your executives groan when they hear terms like Wiki, blog, knowledge base, or community.

4. You’ve been working on a SharePoint implementation for more than 12 months and believe it will be a turnkey Enterprise 2.0 solution.

3. You don’t know the difference between an Enterprise Content Management system and Document Management system.

2. You have no clue as to what a Service-Oriented Architecture is.

1. You continue to buy and install software that relies on a desktop client, instead of being accessed through the browser.

There you have it…10 signs that your organization hasn’t figured out what to do with E2.0. Have another good example? Have a suggestion on how to overcome any of these? Feel free to share in the comments!

Sean R. Nicholson

Let’s face it, new employees who come to your organization right out of college are probably pretty familiar with social media. Most have been on Facebook since its inception and some have been Tweeting nearly as long. The question is whether they understand the business acumen and fundamental principles of social networking to do it correctly in the workplace.

Recently, Andrew McAffee wrote an outstanding article on two common mistakes that Millennials make at work.  The article emphasizes the fact that Generation Y has been trained to overshare their personal information, which can result in the first mistake of creating informational clutter in the workplace. The second mistake comes from a lack of an organizational hierarchy and the appropriate channels and communication practices to be used in the workplace.

For instance, posting a message on an executive’s social Intranet Wall saying “That preso was just 2 cool! I’d luv to wrk on the project if you need a hand!” may not impress the executive and may end up damaging the employees reputation. The reality is that Millennials need assistance in understanding the workplace and the difference between sharing information on Facebook and leveraging the social Intranet at their company. Any training focused on Gen-Y needs to help them understand the rules of the workplace, any policies that are in place, and the difference between social sharing and workplace sharing.

The issue of training isn’t limited to the Millennials, though. Take a look at the Baby Boomers and you may run into highly-efficient employees who are heavily reliant on phones and email and have no understanding or desire to learn about social media. “The Facebook” or “The Twitter” are just toys that kids play with and may not have any perceived value in the workplace. These social media ostriches require a different approach for training on the value of social media.  Often, the value needs to be tied to workplace productivity, return on investment for the effort, or furthering a business goal. Often, tying proposed social activities to customer service or call center activities can provide them with the frame of reference to demonstrate that social media isn’t just people talking about what they had for breakfast.

Gen-Xers aren’t immune to the issue, either. Although Gen-Xers grew up around computers, email, and the Web some have a tough time seeing social media as more than just an activity for connecting with old high school friends. Educating them on the value of collaboration and the cost savings that can be associated with it will be required to get buy-in on a new social Intranet.

The fact is, social media brings a new style of communication into the workplace and social Intranets that offer features such as status updates, wikis, threaded discussions, and microblogging also require a new level of training to help employees understand the new tools, leverage it to the fullest in their daily activities, and share only what is business appropriate.

Have a great story about a success in training your organization on the use of a social Intranet? Feel free to add a comment and let others know about the approach you took or success/failure story.

Sean R. Nicholson

Sometimes opportunities knock quietly….and sometimes they hit us with explosive force. The trouble is, we often miss them even though they are staring us right in the face. As an example, take a look at the recent volcanic explosion in Iceland. This natural disaster has demonstrated the need for business travelers to have access to their corporate information, regardless of where they are located.

The reality is that modern business travelers are more reliant on technology than ever. Sales professionals need access to updated rate sheets and sales contacts, marketing professionals need their product collateral, legal professionals need access to up-to-date case notes, and the list goes on. Without access to the critical information required to do their jobs, traveling professionals would be at a significant disadvantage to those that are able to access their corporate information remotely.

The MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured an Ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull Volcano over the North Atlantic at 11:35 UTC (7:35 a.m. EDT) on April 15, 2010. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team.

In addition, the ability to keep in constant contact with employees in the home office allows travelers to make alternate arrangements for travel,meetings, and information distribution. If a sales professional is stuck in the airport in London but has access to email, their travel reservation system, and their Contact Relationship Management (CRM) system, they could reserve a train ride to France, reschedule a business meeting with their customer, and send updated product information…all from the airport.

Estimates indicate that the recent eruption caused more than 100,000 flights to be canceled. Business travelers from Okinawa to Orlando were impacted and their activities potentially disrupted. In many cases, however, employees were able to continue operating remotely due to application access provided via Virtual Private Networks (VPN), remote meeting technology like GoToMeeting, and Web-based email systems.

As a result, Intranet professionals should be looking for ways to highlight the importance of portal, security, and productivity benefits offered by Intranet applications. Demonstrating to executives how internal social media kept employees in touch and helped them conduct business during potentially disastrous times demonstrates the value of investment in an Intranet infrastructure and highlights its benefit.

I’d love to hear stories of travelers who benefited from remote technology and access to the corporate intranet. Feel free to comment and share!

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

Continuing with my posts on great Twitter resources, this is a followup to my 99 Great Internal Comms Resources,  99 Great Intranet Resources and 99 Great ECM Resources posts. Below is a link to my list of 99+ great SharePoint Resources on Twitter. If you’re looking for the folks who tweet about SharePoint as an Intranet platform, ECM solution, and a collaboration tool…these are your folks! Pay careful attention and you may see folks who are also providing links to some valuable SharePoint alternatives, as well.

Sean’s list of 99+ Great SharePoint resources on Twitter

Know someone that I missed from the list? Definitely let me know. Shameless self-promotion is also allowed if you think you should be included, just make sure your tweets back up your request.

You can check out the list below, and feel free to leave a comment if there’s anyone else I should add.