Enterprise social software tools have multiplied manifold in the past year, but which one will work for your organisation? GigaOm Pro weighs in with several considerations in its recent report on “Social Media in the Enterprise”:
- Know what you want to achieve with your initiative. Social media tools can achieve a huge range of different tasks, from better internal collaboration to lead generation. What does your firm need to do?
- Understand your organization’s culture and leadership. Social media won’t change an organization’s culture. Understanding the culture and leadership of your organization will have a huge impact on your requirements, choice of tool and how to implement and configure it.
- Listen, watch, understand and interview or survey the constituent base that will be asked to participate in your social initiative. It’s important to figure out how your new social initiative will be received and used by the people you hope will utilize it. Make sure you have involvement and buy-in at an early stage, and understand your users’ needs.
- Ensure that you have an effective resource and content plan in place to manage your community. Your new social software can enable an existing community or form new ones, but in order to be successful, communities need ongoing cultivation. Make sure that you have the resources and a plan in place to cultivate your community.
- Initiate conversations with your legal, HR and IT teams early on, in order to understand the limitations and risks that may be associated with your initiative. As with any new business initiative, you should make sure that you understand the risks involved with implementing social software.
(via WebWorkerDaily)
And while you are at it, it never hurts to abide by some of the golden rules of social media.
