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Communications Enterprise 2.0 Featured Articles Intranet

Intranet Browser of the Future

Funny really when you think about it, a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and hard cash budget goes into the intranet itself, the CMS, the platform and portals, etc., etc., but little all goes into the browser. What of the Intranet Browser? A few searches on this shows not a lot being done, apart from one notable exception Shiv Singh at the AppGap Intranets are not just intranets anymore. Here Shiv rightly to my mind, talks about the core business functionality and says that:

Today, employees demand more consolidated interfaces where all the information, collaboration, self service and business application access needs are met.

This is certainly so, but for Shiv this is ‘post-browser’ issue and ultimately a question about ownership within the corporation and a need to realign to meet employee, not application or dept needs. Yes, indeed, this is an item I plan to write on shortly, but for the time being I think one needs to ask if this is really going to happen. I for one won’t be holding my breath here. There are possibilities – WebEx Connect for example, or Microsoft’s Surface Table technologies, but for the time being, let’s get tactical.

Getting Tactical

I think there’s a low hanger ready to be scrumped in terms of Shiv’s one stop consolidated interface, in terms of what we can do with the browser now. The model I believe is Flock. I’ve written before about the way that Flock so neatly integrates RSS into the browser experience and that if this was more widely adopted in the enterprise then tales of RSS’s death might certainly seem to be exaggerated (Kick my RSS – How to make Enterprise RSS work). But, and it’s a but as big as Galway Bay, why stop there? Why not use Mozilla technology to do what Flock has done for the average social media savvy punter and do the same for the enterprise?

Enterprise Social Network Browser

This is what I’d have in my Intranet Browser of the Future:

1) At the top left there would be a series of buttons to access the core built in functions. These button would provide access to function bars such as RSS

accounts

2) There would also be a direct hard wired button to Directory. The Directory would have full Tagging and self-personalisation functionality

3) This tagging would tie in to other social media tools, all accessible from the browser. One would be Favourites – my personal and social bookmarks that I could share with my colleagues

4) I would naturally also be able to connect a wide range of other enterprise social network tools, not only bookmarks, but also my internal corporate blog, my forums, my videos, etc etc. In the corporate example these would be Yammer or Jive, all or a mix. The key thing is the access to their functionality is hard-wired into the Browser, not the apps.

social-tools1
5) So continuing in the same logic, all the corporate video and streams would be available within the browser – these could be live IPTV shows, streamed Video on Demand (VoD), or user generated YouTube type video.

youtube1

And so on and so on. To reiterate, the Browser holds all this together to create the ‘consolidated interface’. It’s a Pareto fix I grant, but 80% consolidation in the near future would be better than waiting indefinitely for the full delivery.

Apologies for the duff formatting – I need to look at how WordPress is handling images.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0 Featured Articles

How Microsoft Surface video to win deals

Using internal comms video to empower and inform a highly mobile and technically savvy workforce is one of the things I’ve spent a lot of career years on, so it was with keen eyes that I watched a Microsoft Surface video on how they’re doing it with cutting-edge surface table technology. The results look funky and efficient. I’d like to know more about how it all fits together. The questions that come to mind are:

How is the information is structured behind the creatives?

What the field sales guys reckon – nice or must have?

Tagging – I like tagging – what’s going on here? There looked like a means of synching up the info across multiple devices inc iPhones. This was the killler app I always wanted to provide our field sales guys with – don’t bombard but synch up so that the devices know when a message has gotton through. This looks like it delivers.

But delivery – is it push or pull, how do they find out about new content, how good is the engine behind it all?

It’s a good job that the presenter is on Twitter so I can now follow @tosolini and learn more…;-)

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Communications Enterprise 2.0 Featured Articles

12 tips for a successful internal comms video channel

trivet-oskayIn a previous role I was lucky enough to manage an Internal Comms video channel aimed at our field sales force. The channel’s aim was to deliver short video messages that were business-aligned, relevant, timely and targeted. Topics covered in these videocasts included sales updates, product launches, new marketing initiatives and company meetings.

I’d like to share our best practice findings with you. These are all based on practical first-hand experience and I believe, are relevant for any IC video channel, either as push, pull, streamed, video podcast or download. If you have any other tips or correction/qualifiers here, please let me know – I’ve jotted these down as pointers and I’m more than sure that there’s a lot I’ve missed out here! Enjoy…

12 Tips for Internal Comms Video

  1. Before you do anything, decide on the aims and objectives. Ask how the video channel will support your overall comms strategy and as a result the overall business strategy.
  2. Back up the aims and objectives with strong and agreed governance. Get senior buy-in to support it and make sure your stakeholders agree with it. Publish the governance.
    This will ensure the channel maintains focus and does not get used for off-piste aims such as self-promotional egocasts, superficial ends or irrelevant content.
    And remember – the more successful, the more you will need that governance!
  3. Content is king. An informative, entertaining and interesting video from someone with a web cam, will always beat boring studio-quality crap sub-optimum content. Even though content matters most, that’s still no excuse for not doing your best. Produce to the highest quality you can, with the time and money available. Always avoid basic Nobo mistakes such as presenters in patterned shirts and ties, clutter in the background, noisy interference or filming in front of a window.
  4. Don’t use video for the sake of it. Always ask ‘why use video?‘ and whether your aim will be be met with other formats. This can save time, money and ensure that the video channel maintains quality plus it keeps to the stated aims.
  5. Make all content relevant. No one will click on a video and watch it unless there’s something important in it that they will gain from. It doesn’t matter how well it’s filmed, scripted or delivered, if it hasn’t got relevant content it won’t get watched. Always put your audience needs first.
  6. The close cousin of relevancy is the target audience. When you tell people the video is available, use targeted messaging or pull technology such as RSS. Don’t spam. Even if you think the content is great and relevant to everyone they might not agree. The more that you spam them, the more likely they are to avoid your video in future. I’ll say it again, always put your audience needs first.
  7. It may be fahionable to be late but your audience wants punctuality. Decide on the frequency and make sure content is up to date. Don’t send out too many videos – your audience are at work and haven’t got the time. Decide on a max frequency for sending videos out and stick to it. If you must have lots of videos, consider storing them in a YouTube type site and send out a regular compendium update.
    Don’t be late – if it’s time-sensitive info and going to take 3 weeks to make and send the video out, the chances are that it’s going to be out of date by the time your audience see it. Bearing in mind that you might just might miss a deadline, avoid the presenter mentioning dates whenever you can and never ever have them saying ‘next Tuesday’. The chances are it will be watched by X% on the Wednesday after.
  8. Make it short. All the evidence says that online attention span is short, especially for video.If people get bored they will switch off. We found that 3 minutes was best with 4 minutes the max for sales-update video messages. If you’ve a longer event say a video of a company meeting, break it up into bite-sized chunks.
    nb This does not apply to training videos for Systems Engineers who will happily watch one of their colleagues talking about something technical for an hour or more.
  9. Script it/structure it. Even if the video is informal and very short, have a script if at all possible. A speaker may be very good delivering live ad hoc talks, but that isn’t necessarily going to work on an online video. Also, some presenters are more interested in themselves than either the content or their audience. Scripts will keep both the presenter and your video relevant and focused on your stated aims and objectives.
  10. Make it easy – make it linky. If you’ve done a good job and sent a timely, interesting and relevant message to your audience, they will want more. They will either want to learn more, or to do something with the info you’ve given them. Add tangible pointers to next steps – links to sites, documents and to you. Always provide easy feedback links!
  11. Measure it. See how many people watched the video. Ask people what they thought of the channel overall and for each video message. Ask them via feedback rating stars, online polls or simply by asking them. Look at what works and what doesn’t. Look at what your audience decides to watch rather than what you send them.
    Compare all data with the overall aims. Don’t do this once, but look at what’s been achieved on a regular basis.
  12. Use your data and audience feedback to experiment and improve the channel. Keep it fresh and don’t rest on your laurels. Try new approaches and ways of delivering it. But whatever you do, always make sure the camera is on and is recording. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen and senior vice presidents do not think it’s funny!
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Communications Enterprise 2.0

Kick my RSS – How to make Enterprise 2.0 RSS work

newspaper_feed_256x256The RSS debate – enterprise disruptor?

I’ve just been dragged into the RSS debate. However, I must admit when I saw Marshall Kirkpatrick’s ReadWriteWeb (RWW) had written a lamentation on the death of corporate RSS R.I.P Enterprise RSS, that I simply didn’t bother reading it. However, a ‘Tweep’ from Dave Winer prompted me to read this post: Incredibly RSS is dead! Here, Phil Jones reckons RSS is a no-no not in my backyard technology for the enterprise:

We *imagined* that social-software would burst the enterprise. Instead, the enterprise resolutely rejects it. No senior manager (who has a certain amount of “between-ness centrality”) wants to legitimize the automated software streams that would route around him (or her), bypass the company’s official PR outputs, bypass the company’s official sales department’s inputs.

There’s a certain resonance with reality there, but I don’t buy the whole argument. RSS may have limited rollout in the enterprise, but I don’t think we can dismiss the whole bag of social media so easily. Yes for sure there are as Phil appears to know only too well, those who fear and loath the power of social media and its ability to transcend the normal corporate boundaries. What this misses is that the desire to control and batten down communications is a trait that can impact all communications and to my mind it’s a negative one. What such control can’t do is stop all communications and whilst many might fear the power of a blog to support an employee’s communications, they should equally fear the power of a one-to-one phone call. Or, put another way, social media create new channels but anyone can still send out a career-limiting e-mail…

I come to praise RSS, not to bury it

So back to our friend the feed that is RSS, why are RWW saying it’s no more? The quick answer is they’re not:

We love RSS and this makes us really sad. If much of the rest of the world wants to ignore this technology, though, it’s their loss. It’s our bread and butter. Neglecting RSS at work seems to us like pure insanity.

But they say, but, against all odds it hasn’t taken off. And this is completely against all logic, in fact given the competitive advantage RSS provides RWW think it’s nuts.

Any company that steps up to make serious strategic use of such software should be at an immediate advantage in terms of early and efficient access to information.

Marshall cites Forrester’s Oliver Young, who having wrongly predicted that 2008 would be the year of RSS, largely agrees and wonders if something has gone fundamentally wrong here. What has gone wrong though they ask – maybe it’s duff technology, maybe it’s too difficult, maybe it’s a fear of acronyms. I’m not convinced on the latter, acronyms go awol given a bit of tlc or even gbh.

High Stakes

The stakes are high here, massive competitive advantage and the chance of pundits like me getting rich quick here as Neville Hobson acknowledges:

What would make RSS grab attention within the enterprise? Heh, if I knew the exact answer, I’d be sitting back and picking up those royalties!

Well, I sure could do with some royalties, in fact as of today I could do with some regular income, but in the spirit of openness (if not humility) I’ll share what I think is going wrong here.

The acronym could easily be replaced, as e-mail did with SMTP, and I prefer the term ‘feeds’ or even ”webfeeds’. There is also the problem of explaining what RSS does and Neville describes well the penny-dropping moment when the advantage of RSS is understood:

You can see people getting their ‘light bulb moments’ when you illustrate the simple example of getting content from their ten favourite websites automatically delivered to them rather than having to visit those ten sites individually to see if there’s anything new.

What’s really gone wrong

So why oh why not use it? Is it the technology, there seems to be some large agreement that the RSS vendors haven’t quite got it right yet. I’ve tried both Attensa and Newsgator and both a OK, but neither really integrates into the electric working patterns of the average office bod. For sure Attensa has an Outlook plug-in but I don’t want RSS in Outlook, even if it’s in its own folder. And what I don’t want is a separate application, nor really do I want it in a web page though there are some very nice reasons for being able to make an enterprise Netvibes type thang, which I’ll talk about in a future post.

I don’t want these things and I know that a lot of other people in the enterprise don’t want them as I’ve actually gone out and talked to people about it and surveyed them. The feedback was a lot of confusion with some – ‘RSS what?’ etc but also, equally a lot of people asking why there wasn’t more use of RSS. This was despite the fact that I’d made sure that in my sphere of influence, almost every single web based news channel had RSS feeds available as standard. RSS was ubiquitous and it was still only being used by a small %. So some hadn’t a clue, others wanted more, but it still didn’t connect up.

And this to me is where the enterprise class readers and aggregators fall down – they don’t connect. For sure they might connect up backoffice, Attensa certainly does with Active Directory and auto-subscription and more metrics than you can shake a dirty stick at. What they don’t connect up with though is working patterns. RSS becomes another application to open up and use, it’s somewhere else to have to look to find information.

How to fix it

So what the vendors need to do is synch up the RSS readers with how people want to work. Attensa goes the right way with the Outlook plugin but it’s with the wrong app, it should be with the browser. I’ve written about this before Flock vs Chrome RSS and sung the praises of Flock’s built in RSS reader but not thought about it in enterprise terms.

The fact that Flock integrates RSS into the browser means it becomes part of the browser experience. The feeds I subscribe to become dynamic automatic bookmarks in my browser. This I like, it’s not another app to learn and I can use the Flock reader as a base while jumping from page to page (something that is lost in a pure web page experience.

Some may differ about Flock or prefer another way of reading their RSS, but I stand by the fact that what’s needed is a way of integrating RSS into working practices. Until that happens it won’t take off – it will be another chore rather than a helper. When RSS does become a true boon, the results will be immediate and of immediate benefit.

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Communications

Tin Eye tinned

Just been trying to confuse Tin Eye the reverse image search tool. Theory is upload an image and it tells you where it came from and other sites where it lives. I tried to confuse it with the Wittgenstein’s Duck Rabbit but to no avail as neither a duck nor a rabbit was found. Will have to try again at a later date…wittgenstein_duck_rabbit

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

‘Origami in the Pusuit of Perfection’ – Mabona Origami & Nordpol+

I’ve just added a case study on Asics Shoe Company by the Blog Council to Social Media Case Study The Hot List. I’m mentioning this one out as it has some fab animation by Nordpol+ and Mabona Origami, really nice:


Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

I love the bit about the raw egg dropped from an extreme height…

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Communications Enterprise 2.0 Intranet

What should we call ‘Intranet Social Media’?

e2We have ‘Internal Communications’ as a reasonably well-established term for what happens inside the corporation, be it in vocal, print or electronic media forms. I’ve even found a nice and almost legalistically comprehensive definition from BNET:

communication between employees or departments across all levels or divisions of an organization. Internal communication is a form of corporate communication and can be formal or informal, upward, downward, or horizontal. It can take various forms such as team briefing, interviewing, employee or works councils, meetings, memos, an intranet, newsletters, the grapevine, and reports.

A further Google on just how long the term has been in existence has proved fruitless though, Miriam Webster has no definition and the Free Dictionary reverts to a revealing and accurate comparison, that of Internal Combustion:

a process in which a substance reacts with oxygen to give heat and light [!]

All the more problematic then when we come to social media. Social media is by definition, social. It happens out there, in the public sphere on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Twitter, Countless Blogs, forums, feeds , etc., etc.,. But as I’ve pointed out before, what we don’t see a lot of, is social media behind the firewall.

What’s more, we don’t even have a proper name for internal social media, social media that lives inside the firewall. Enterprise 2.0 goes someway in the direction but it seems to me at least as being too Operations driven rather than communication and collaboration lead. It also falls into the same trap as Web 2.0 and seems to curtail the simple richness that the term ‘social media’ has. Finally, it sounds, well just a bit too grand!

I suspect for now that Enterprise 2.0 will be the dominant term, but I wonder if a new, possible neologism will arrive…maybe social medianomics or some other horrid transmutation of the English language!

Is Enterprise 2.0 OK? Or, ideas on a postcard please….

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Communications

When your ship is sinking…

Shel Holtz has posted a fab article over at his blog ” A  Shel of my former self” called “Julia Hood of PRWeek elevates internal communications’ importance“. I’m pointing this out not only as it’s very worthwhile read (and it does what it says on the tin) but most particularly for this quote:

 

“When your ship is sinking, you don’t throw your radio overboard.” Dave Orman

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

2 new video case studies added

New video case studies on Best Buy and their Blue Shirt Nation and Gen Y recruits, plus MGM Grand and Employee Engagement added to Social Media Case Studies The Hot List.

 

I’m going to start tidying up, collating and providing more info on these case studies in the near future.

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Communications Enterprise 2.0

Social Media is not Internal Communications

Over at ‘Community and Social Media’, Chris Brogan has brewed up a rich discussion over social media in the enterprise: Aligning Social Media Within Companies. Mr Brogan’s obvious clout within the sphere of social media is there for a reason. He draws in info from all ranges of sources and this recent post exemplifies what this means in practice, in spades.

His posts have relevancy and impact across the different spheres of communications and here for me, what the post underscores, is that social media is not internal comms. This is drawn out by asking:

What if project managers decide to use Flip cameras to capture their weekly status meetings, and then podcast the results to the other offices? Not really marketing, eh?

Nope, it’s internal comms, or at least that’s we called it when we cast video to offices globally. But then this was in a marketing department. The soup kettle gets upset when we bring in HR to the equation. Take Facebook for example, Chris does and says: 

I think most organizations keep these kinds of efforts tied to marketing, but is that where it belongs? What’s Human Resources relationship to Facebook and what should it be?

Good question, there’s soup everywhere now. That soup is social media – it’s not comms, it’s not marketing, it’s not IT and it’s not HR. We’re looking at collaboration as much as communication. We’re looking at feedback and feedout as internal comms crosses the firewall. 

But what is it? It’s something new that’s what it is, and it’s us. It’s communications Jim, it’s collaboration Jim, but not as we know it. The big question then – where will social media ‘live’ in the enterprise? Communications and PR, Marketing, HR, IT? That question has long been asked about internal comms; social media accelerates the debate. Enterprises are already roling out social media, some like Ford are ahead of the game. They’re all going to have to address this question of location very very soon if they want to embrace the advantages of social media within the firewall.