Reflections on Enterprise 2.0 2009 in Boston
June 29, 2009
I’ve been looking
forward to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference
this past week in
Photo courtesy of Alex Dunne.
Lessons Learned From Internal Communities
View more presentations from Peter Kim.
Many companies, both big and small,
are interested in social media as a business tool. The general feeling I got though,
and still do, is that they’re not sure where to start. People are hungry for
the knowledge of those that have gone before them on where to get started for
both an internal and external social media presence – be it communities, how to
use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,
Flickr, etc – it’s all on their minds. I
imagine that’s one of the many reasons our panel was jam packed. Types of questions that were consistently
circulating around (of which these will make an excellent future post):
- What are some steps to get
started?
- How do I convince executives
that we need to do this?
- Who funds the initiative?
- Who manages/staffs the
initiative?
- Who monitors/moderates?
- Where do HR and Legal come into
the picture?
- How do we treat international
participants? Is there translation?
- How do we deal with
international laws, regulations, etc.?
Analytics are a hot topic.
Everyone’s
trying to figure out how to measure success of these initiatives. Nearly all of
the vendors offering community solutions, also offer some sort of analytics
package to go along with it, and some (although few and far between) even offer
independent analytics packages.
One huge
miss I was feeling is that the push was on the numbers themselves, but there
were no actionable recommendations coupled with the tools to suggest what could
be done with the analytics. Numbers are only numbers without a keen
understanding of what you want to gather, why you want to gather it, and what
you want to do with the numbers to improve.
You need not only to know what you’re trying to measure, but what your
goals are and why they are important, and then you need to take action and be
willing to modify your plan if you’re not getting where you want to be. Key
questions that need to be answered include:
- What are your goals?
- What are you trying to measure?
- Why is the measurement
important?
- What will the measurement tell
you?
- What actions can you take as a
result of the measurement?
- What changes will you make if
you’re not meeting your goals?
There was a keen interest in
understanding the complete social media/social strategy package.
Many folks
seemed to be interested not only in what the tools are that are available for
use, but how they are being used currently. There definitely seems to be a
tendency to want to be “everywhere” (have a presence on all of the tools) NOW
vs. slowly moving into using each of the tools as one is mastered. I’d
personally recommend the second option – get involved in a few and see how that
goes rather than joining all that are out there and attempting to master them
all simultaneously. Key questions on a
social strategy include:
- What are your goals for using
social media?
- What are the tools available to
you and what can they be used for?
- Who is your key audience? Or
who are you trying to communicate/converse with?
- Where are they already
conversing?
- Is there anyone that has
experience/expertise in these tools at your company already? Find them –
you’re going to need them!
Twitter is still huge, but…
There was
hardly a person in each of the sessions, myself included, that was not busy on
their laptop or cell phone tweeting their way
through the sessions.
…How do we use Twitter as an
enterprise tool?
Clearly at
the forefront of everyone’s mind was how can people use Twitter to achieve
business goals. The first step to that is, of course, defining your business
goals. My strong recommendation is that you do not need a Twitter account just
because “everyone else is doing it.” You need to instead, answer the following
questions about Twitter and then create an account:
- What are your goals for using
Twitter? How do you want to use it?
- Who is your target audience? Are
they on Twitter already?
- Are others (companies) doing it
and can we learn from their example?
- Who will be responsible for
monitoring and engaging?
It’s not
practical or even possible to just focus on only the people or only the
technology. For the longest time, many have said it's about just the people,
and the technology doesn't matter...but a consistent theme at the conference
this year was that if you're not also paying attention to the technology,
you're missing out.
My favorite
quote on this topic was by Peter Kim
"If its just relationships and technology doesn't matter, we should all go
home."
A good social media strategy will
take into account both the people and the technology. The people you expect to use the
tools on behalf of the company, the people you expect to communicate with, the
people that will be impacted by your strategy. The technology you wish to use
to support your strategy, the technology people are already using, or will need
to learn to meet the organization’s goals. It must be about both the people and
the technology.
Enterprise 2.0 tools are an
extension of other tools, not a replacement for them.
There has
been buzz off and on that these tools will replace other tools we use to work
and live, such as email, phone calls, traditional media, etc. However, the
consistent theme at the conference – which I wholeheartedly agree with – is that
these tools will not be replacements, but that they will and should work in
harmony with other, existing tools as supplements to them. Amen.
Social interaction in-person is just
as important as online interaction.
Might seem
like a no-brainer for those of us that use these tools and talk to people, but
we’re all aware of the perception that is out there than people would rather
interact online using social tools instead of chatting with folks face-to-face.
The response to that theory - and also self-evident by the participation at the
Tweetups during the event – is an overwhelming I don’t think so.
This is
particularly important to make note of companies who may be relying heavily on
community or Enterprise 2.0 tools in and of themselves to help with employee
satisfaction and employee retention. Keep in mind that they are only a part of
the bigger picture. Sure, they’ll help, but they’re not a replacement for
face-to-face interactions and discussions.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and conference in general. Although the sessions were great, my favorite part of the entire conference was finally meeting, in-person, folks that I've chatted with for weeks, months, even years online or via phone, but never had the opportunity to meet until this wonderful event!