Social media sites can be a great way for businesses to reach customers, but it’s hard to keep an open forum like Facebook anything but informal. So how do you utilize social media in your business and still keep an aura of professionalism?
Many businesses, of all sizes, have begun adapting social networks to the workplace. As most people are already comfortable with the idea of following their contemporaries via social networking, it translates easily over to the office. But whereas Facebook or Twitter may be the place to say just about anything on your mind (however inadvisable it may be), in-office social media is definitely more business-like: employees exchange messages about purchase orders, new goods, closing deals, and other routine business matters. Bottom line: if it’s something you wouldn’t discuss with the CEO, don’t post it.
It can be a thorny process to transfer the customs of social networking into the office place. Some employees may select to be lurkers, only reading posts rather than writing any. Some may just not be interested in networking in this way. At one company, a few employees were not so happy with the idea of an intra-office social network, but used the service anyway to express their dislike.
Making sure posts stay relevant is important to the success of intra-office social networking. Extraneous or inappropriate content will only irritate users and cause them to disregard the service. As well-meaning as you may be, some people might not care if there’s free food in the break room (as shocking as that may sound). Of course, workers are free to stop following certain colleagues or quit groups in which they are no longer involved.
One major concern is how to protect corporate or customer secrets. Systems are usually set up for companies to determine who can see specific files and who belongs to particular groups on the network. Problems could arise over where data is stored – some network providers use their own servers, but that may conflict with the wishes of some clients. Companies can highlight their meticulous security, or go with a provider that let customers to keep their data on their own servers.
A benefit of in-office social networks is a decline in calls, meetings and e-mail usage. Rather than sending out mass e-mails, employees can post messages or collaborate on projects within the service. Dialogue concerning projects would be visible to everyone in the group – a somewhat burdensome feat to achieve via e-mail (how many times have you forgotten to “reply all”?).
There are a several big providers out there. Salesforce.com offers the Chatter network, which the San Francisco-based company says is used by 80,000 companies. Yammer, a start-up from the same city by the bay, estimates 100,000 companies using their corporate social network. Other providers include Cisco Systems, Socialtext, Jive Software, SAP and SuccessFactors. Both Chatter and Yammer have free version available, in addition to offering premium networks, available from five to 15 dollars.
For those who may be thinking in-house social networking is sounding awfully stiff, it doesn’t have to be completely without quirk. Yammer has introduced a new feature that lets employees praise co-workers by giving them a gold star, among other awards.
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