Enterprise Social Networks (#SWChat)

Thanks to everyone who took part in this weeks Social Workplace Twitter Chat event (#SWChat).

Enterprise Social Networks

This weeks #SWChat was a Guest Event with Maria Ogneva from Yammer.

Yammer, a product most have heard of and with over 200,000 companies using it worldwide, it clearly is a well established solution in the marketplace. But why are Enterprise Social Networks becoming so popular? Maria Ogneva, Head of Community at Yammer, joined us to reveal all.

Event Statistics

• No. of Tweets = 1200
• No. of Contributors = 119
• Reach = 333,000
• No. of impressions = 3,600,000

Summary

Full Transcript Report via @hashtracking

Questions Asked

Q1) Why have Enterprise Social Networks generally become so important in business?
Q2) Do you see Enterprise Social Networks replacing more traditional forms of communication like email?
Q3) Companies are cautious of hosting sensitive conversations outside their own firewall. How does #Yammer get around this?
Q4) Apart from sensitive conversations, what other barriers are preventing companies embracing Enterprise Social Networks?
Q5) What are the main type of companies and company departments that are most likely to embrace Enterprise Social Networks?
Q6) What are the main business requirements for an Enterprise Social Network solution?
Q7) If you had to sell Enterprise Social Networks to your CEO in 140 characters or less, what would your sales pitch be?

Shared Reference Material

• Enterprise Social Networks - The Heart Of Any Social Business via @DavidChris
• Watercooler Moments And Enterprise Social Networks via @martincouzins
• Transparency Is The New Leadership Imperative via @dorieclark
• The ClueTrain Manifesto
• Technology Doesn't Change The Truth: Honesty Isn't Easy via @bigdragazzo
• Social Media vs Email - Are We Asking The Right Questions? via @themaria (Yammer)
• Digital Natives, Dinosaurs And Immigrants via @themaria (Yammer)
• Companies And Cool Tools And Technologies via Prof Soumitra Dutta
• Fear And Enterprise Social Networks via @themaria (Yammer)
• Six Ways Social Media Technologies Can Accelerate Large Scale Change via Accenture
• It's Not Information Overload, It's Filter Failure [video] via Clay Shirky
• The Cultural Imperative For A Social Business via @themaria (Yammer)
• Graduate Experience in Social Networks and Tools is Important [survey] via salesforce.com
• Real Threat: Social Engineering In The Social Media Age via @fjfonseca
• Enterprise Social Networking: Focus On Relationships [Alitmeter Report] via Jeremiah Owyang
• When It Comes To The Social Enterprise, Don't Ask "Why?", Ask "Why Not?" via @bigdragazzo
• Is Your Training Social? via @themaria (Yammer)
• Medicaid Hack Upate: 500,000 Records And 280,000 SSN's Stolen via ZDNet
• What Sells CEO's On Social Networking via Andrew McAfee

Useful #SWChat Links

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Enterprise Social Networks - The Heart of any Social Business

Yammer are our guest hosts today on Social Workplace Twitter Chat (#SWChat) which gave me the perfect excuse to write this post.

Social Networks in our personal lives have become so embedded in our culture that signs like "Follow me on Twitter" or "Like my Facebook Page" are becoming the norm. I even saw one on the side of a local bus recently requesting to follow the bus company on Twitter.

So if we have embraced social networks in our personal lives so readily to be better connected to our friends, why is it taking so long to do the same inside a company to better connect our employees?

A company that is socially connected is not just going to be more effective and more efficient, but it's going to have a knowledge reach spanning the entire company that any employee can tap into and make use of. This is the Power of the Enterprise Social Network and the heart of any Social Business.

"It's not important for you to know all the answers, but it's key that you know someone in your employee network that does"

Many of the presentations I now give uses this tag line because it's time we put more focus and attention on building employee social relationships. By doing so we build up employee trust and an expansive knowledge network which we can then utilise.

Let's take the following scenario:

Your CEO is tired of the scatter gun like approach to internal communications and wants something done about it. As your companies Head of Communications your CEO assigns you to deal with it quickly.

However, you already have a PR nightmare on your hands which is taking up all of your time...

So what do you do...

• bluff your CEO and drag out the project with high level strategy stuff that talks a good project but delivers nothing (oh yeah, you know what I'm talking about!) ?
• put in a lot of over-time?
• assign someone in your team to take on the project and re-prioritise their priorities?

None of these responses are ideal and are unlikely to deliver a good solution.

However, for a company that has embraced Enterprise Social Networks, there is another way....put a "Shout Out" to your employees asking for active participants (volunteers to be part of the project team) and passive contributors (volunteers to contribute from the sidelines).

This "Shout Out" approach provides some great business benefits:

• avoids duplication of time, money and effort if someone is already working on something similar in your organisation (in large enterprises duplication is often a common occurrence)
• delivers a better solution as the volunteers are interested in the subject matter
• allows you access to a large knowledge network to minimise risks and issues
• provides a better chance of adoption as the employees themselves have been involved in the delivery of the project

I call this Open Collaboration (yes, I avoided using the term social) and have been trialing it now for a while with some great success.

This is just one example of what you can do once your company's employees are better socially connected which couldn't be possible without first developing your Enterprise Social Network.