Over the past few months we have been hard at building some internal social media projects. Now we can’t exactly tell you who we are doing the projects for but we can tell you a bit about how they are changing the way the do business.
Social media is more than Facebook or any other platform. It has become a very clear and valuable communication tool that, when harnessed correctly, can be leveraged to create very real value for business.
Managing knowledge with Wiki’s
A wiki is like wikipedia. A safe place where knowledge can be stored by anyone who works in your company. Allowing a dynamic process of knowledge management over a wiki can break down geographic silo’s in organisations and bring the company closer to a database of employee knowledge about the company and its processes, intellect, idea’s, projects and vision.
We have recently launched three internal wikis for companies ranging from mining to consulting and they are already benefiting from the collective gathering and distribution of information through this fantastic social medium.
The biggest success factor in implementing these systems was not the technology but instead was found in the strategic implementation of the project as it was deployed in tot he organisation.
CEO Blogs
CEO’s need a place to communicate and interact with their employees. No matter what size the business this need for communication will never end inside business. Employees need to hear from their executive and board members.
We have been involved in deploying a number of internal CEO blogs for our clients who are using the medium to connect with their employees and they are adapting well to the new communication style.
CEO blogs break past the hierarchy and allow leadership and employees to interact. The flat nature of blogging platforms mean that anyone can connect with anyone. Making the CEO more approachable. This approach leads to better leadership ability for the CEO as he/she will have a more personal connection with employees.
It has also been great to see how employees have responded well to the direct communication of company vision, goals and future ideas for the company. Internal blogging has definitely proved to be a wonderful technology to deploy better communications in both large and small organisations.