7 posts tagged “seth+godin”

Michael Idinopulos writes that SocialText may have come up with the Facebook equivalent for the enterprise. It's SocialText people platform allows people to organise content around what their experience says about them rather than around people and relationships. It is in the flow and very much a part of everyday working life, and could be an answer to what is the killer app for E2.0.

The organisation of in-the flow content is vital. Seth Godin points out in What happens when we organise?: "Wikipedia works because so many contributors figured out how to self-organize into a group that produced something far more useful than a traditionally organized document."

Techcrunch underlines that the organising ability of SocialText is simple and compelling: "For a lot of enterprise employees, having a single dashboard with secure company information alongside fun or useful outside services on a single dashboard is exactly what they need. It also makes SocialText the center of a worker’s day, which means they far less likely to ever lose the customer."

If Facebook is the social media frontpage, has SocialText delivered the front page for business?

The inevitable lag between external developments and enterprise adoption meant that it was not until the actual dot com bust that companies grasped the potential of Web1.0. But its place in the mix of communication channels alongside print and face-to-face was not clear, and many saw it as a trade-off between print and online.

Fast forward a few years: more and more companies are learning how social media in the enterprise could be rather useful. Again, there is uncertainty about where it sits in relation to other channels - an evolution of the corporate intranet with additional collaboration elements, a technological coup that casts the traditional intranet to history, or an approach that could rewrite the rulebook for all communication channels?

Cart and horse. Internal communicators need to know their audience, and one of the fundamental shifts in the past couple of years for communicators is the ability/neccessity to understand their audience as well as marketeers know their customers. Top-line functional/geographic distinctions from employee surveys are the bare minimum now. 

Seth Godin points out in How do I persuade you?: "Here's the thing: unlike every other species, human beings make decisions differently from one another. And the thing that persuades you is unlikely to be the thing that persuades the next guy. Our personal outlook is a lousy indicator of what works for anyone else."

Your audience is fragmented, information overload is a daily fact, the sources of information have exploded and, as a communicator, you have to revisit first principles to make a lasting connection.

Seth Godin shines a light on How to create a great website. It could apply to a social media/enterprise2.0 strategy, with a little refining:

1. Get the organisation out of the way, lead by example
2. Try different systems alone and together, make mistakes fast, learn, move on.
3. Add value - help make connections where there were none before
4. What works, works, theory is irrelevant
5. Have just a little patience
6. Ignore metrics for now
7. Don't jump on the latest system bandwagon
8. Reach out at the right time to your manager/techies
9. Hire a professional if needed but get the internal evangelists on board
10. Don't just stand there - do something

The latest edition of Management Today describes social networking sites as the 'latest interent craze', but they are here for good. Yet big companies are not listening and so are fading. And fast. As Seth Godin points out, it (almost) always happens this way.

So what's the management of today's excuse for not using, say Facebook? Enter fear, uncertainty and doubt, aka FUD.

• The fear is the company will screw up. They might. Wal-Mart did, yet picked itself up and tried again. Quickly. Mind, even a specialist can get it really, really wrong.
• Uncertainty comes in the form of not knowing what to do. Join the club! But there's a lot of good, solid tips out there for getting something rolling. The impact may be a little like a donut!
• The doubt is will it add any value? Well, look at Ernst & Young's Facebook page and you decide.

So what's the corporate alibi? As Nassim Taleb says in The Black Swan: "We do not spontaneously learn that we don't learn that we don't learn."

Life could not be better for internal communicators. Yes, budgets are low, demands are high, measures are scarce and information overload is abundant. Enter social media. As Hugh MacLeod says, "even the smartest people I know in this space have little idea about what's going to happen next...we're basically making it up as we go along. But that's what makes it so exciting."

Yet many internal communicators are defensive, either unconvinced or uncertain about what to do - something I witnessed myself earlier this year at a conference and the sad conclusion reached by Melcrum again this month.

If it's fear or lack of interest, then "the answer lies in trial and error and motivation and in overcoming the fear that makes us avoid the topic in the first place," says Seth Godin.

So, what's an internal communicator to do?

Besides the latest pointers from, say Forrester or McKinsey, and musing on some questions, the one practical piece of advice is:

• Try it out  - your opinion will count for more based on experience. No harm, no foul.

To move on your one-person fact-finding mission and into the company:

1. Get a little senior support
2. Start virally - social media is more culture change than technology, and can be easy
3. Build bridges across your company
4. Think big

Internal communicators are at the leading edge of E2.0 - more so than the geeks. If you are unsure or unconvinced then you need to find out how E2.0 can help your company.

The headline is from a sign that sits in the office of SonyBMG's Steve Barnett. I read about it in a Gray Lady interview with Rick Rubin (from Def Jam to Johnny Cash to Julio - genius!) in which he says that the world has changed. And the industry has not.

Not just the music industry - the world.

To change, the early adopters and fast followers of Enterprise2.0 should include internal communicators. Now it seems that the cavalry might be coming over the hill. Information Week talks about the Next Generation CIO - the fast-risers not caught up in the old way of doing things and for whom being a technology leader has always been about aggressively seeking and delivering business value.

Maybe these next gen CIOs can explain more about the potential of various E2.0 tools that can already help companies, or push to attend Office2.0. Maybe they will ignore the seocnd of Seth Godin's two kinds of 'don't know'. Maybe they will have a little more faith and a little less fear.

KPMG's report Enterprise2.0: Fad or Future? has been getting a lot of attention recently, not least because it's already out of date.

Just as business joins the picnic, the picnic moves on. Jevon may have predicted that 2007 would be The Year of Enterprise 2.0. And social media may be fragmenting information. But David Armano is already looking at how about social media itself fragmenting.

Enter the consultant (full disclosure: I'm a consultant). Not the Demotivators take on it, but more Headshift's and also Euan's. Internal communicators too need to step up and help fill the gap between what managers know and understand and what will work for their organisation. Companies are suffering from what Seth Godin calls scarcity shortage, in particular a scarcity of respect, honesty and good judgment.

Companies can't outpace social media, but they can stay current, work things out, and get ready, which, says Chris Brogan, means:

1. Make it easy for people to contact you.
2. Make it easy for people to understand what value you bring
3. Be there. It’s easier for people to include you.
4. Be everywhere. Use social media tools.
5. Have something to bring to the picnic.