What is the first thing you think of when you hear the phrase “Social Media”? Is it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube? When it comes to owning a space, these companies have quickly become the “Kleenex” of social connectivity. But, what is the first thing you think of when you hear “Enterprise Social Media”? That one may take a little longer.
Enterprise Social Media, or ESM, is a completely different animal. While the technologies listed above tend to offer solutions and conversations that live in the public realm, what happens when you want to connect within your organization? How do you share your tribal knowledge (your success stories, competitive intelligence and customer sound bites) within your enterprise? I am not talking about the formal content like white papers and case studies – I am talking about the true “golden nuggets” of information that can help your customer facing teams. Think objection handling advice from your best sales rep, or the layman’s description of your product’s newest functionality.
A quick answer might be email. Certainly a lot of this information gets passed between reps and subject matter experts this way, but all too often email is a one-to-one conversation not traditionally associated with social connectivity. The conversations that happen via email tend to live in the inboxes of a small few within an organization, and these conversations can be easily lost or forgotten. That is why you need to think differently about how to effectively share knowledge in a way that is readily accessible to all that may need it in a manner that is easy to find.
That is why it is important to rethink exactly what ESM is. First, ESM has to be completely secure within your organization; obviously the sensitivity of your content is something you don’t want shared with the world. Second, ESM has to operate in a manner similar to what your people are using with traditional Social Media. With traditional Social Media people are used to being able to comment on and rate the information that is shared – this is a good thing. With this functionality your people will be privy to other people’s insights and you will also easily find out what truly is working and has meaning to those out in the field. ESM also needs to provide the most relevant and up-to-date information – this is why it needs to go way beyond just formal content. Finally, ESM has to be easy – your people need to get the information they need right away, without having to work hard to find it.
While there is a lot more that can go into defining what exactly ESM is, the points above give a good jump off point when trying to understand the space. As Social Media is changing the way people communicate, connect and share information on line, ESM is changing the way businesses share information with their people. If you have any thoughts on how you would define ESM, please share them below.
I totally agree with your description of ESM which I personally call the «other» web or the grey web. I found it most amazing that you refer to public social media as traditional social media (which is not false) when one thinks that social web is a concept which was not known 10 years ago.
For the last 9 years, I have been involved in learning/explaining, planning and coaching web based collaborative work mostly in the form of communities of practice (CoP). That is exactly what you are talking about. In my experience, though, CoPs are not limited to members/employees of a single organisation/entreprise. It can spread through a number of them and in that case, you can appreciate the fineline between what people share and do not share and above all, the challenge facing managers of those enterprises. However, I think that Knowledge Managekment Litterature has well established that within specific parameters, benefits of collaborative work among organisations outbalance the risks attached to it. In other words, is the future going to show that an optimal use of SM by enterprises relies in a wise combination of ESM and traditional social media ?
Sorry: at the very beginning of my post (above) I meant the «other» SOCIAL web or the grey SOCIAL web.
Michel –
To your last point, I couldn’t agree more. I think optimal use of what I dubbed traditional SM in conjunction with ESM is where smart business is headed. But I feel they are serving two unique purposes.
SM can serve as the external marketing channel to help enable direct one-to-one conversations, or in some cases many-to-one conversations in educating about your business. I feel the role ESM plays is to work as the tool to educate and enable your front line sellers and subject matter experts in having the best conversations when in front of a prospect or customer. We have all seen the stats that potential buyers do not think sales reps are conveying the right message to help solve their problem. That is where ESM can help in educating the sellers to have the right conversations, with the right people at the right time in the sales cycle.