Let’s Get Social: Best Practices for Leveraging the Social Computing Features of SharePoint 2010 July 12, 2011 SUSAN HANLEY LLC ©2011 SUSAN HANLEY LLC

Agenda  Should you care about Social Computing?  How does SharePoint do social?  How can you get prepared? – Key Steps  Clearly Identify the Business Problem  Decide Which Features Make Sense for Your Organization  Be Prepared to Respond to Barriers  Define Your Governance Plan  Define a “Do-able” Pilot Project  Provide Best Practices and Examples  Prepare a Launch and Communications Plan 2

About Me  Expertise: knowledge management, information architecture, portals and collaboration solutions with a focus on governance, user adoption, and metrics  President, Susan Hanley LLC. Co-Author: Essential SharePoint 2010 and Essential SharePoint 2007  Led national Portals, Collaboration, and Content Management practice for Dell  Director of Knowledge Management at American Management Systems   Mother of three “millennials” 3

Getting Social with SharePoint 2010  Blogs  Wikis  Profile  Interests, Expertise, Education – About Me  Personal Portal (MySite)  My stuff  Status Updates  Social Metadata: tags, notes, comments, ratings  Community Sites 4

Should I care? Business Results! Social Computing means User Generated Content results in Engaged Users results in Better Content drives which are why we care about 5

It’s not just about engaging … 6

Gartner predicts that you won’t have a choice  By 2014, Gartner predicts that social networking services will replace as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communication by as many as 20% of business users. Source: “Tapping the positive from social networks for collaboration,” eWeek, November 15,

And, it’s not just the millennials …  Social networking among internet users 50 and older nearly doubled to 47% from 25% between April 2009 and May

… and there are opportunities for measurable results … Results of internal micro-blogging from Deloitte Australia:  Frequent users 8-10x more likely to stay with the firm  Posting a question to the community saves an estimated 1 hour spent searching Source: Tim Walters, Forrester, Seize the Business Value of the Social Intranet, January 26, 2011 SlideShare: Making Your Intranet Social 9

… that directly tie to key operational performance  From Deloitte’s research report: Social software for business performanceSocial software for business performance 10

You won’t be alone …  53% have intranet blogs  52% have intranet discussion forums  51% have intranet instant messaging  49% have intranet wikis A recent survey of more than 525 companies indicated that: 11

Social computing is everywhere …  7,680,000 Google Hits  You can get a degree in Social Computing at the University of Michigan (School of Information)  It’s in every product description  Social: it’s the new black 12

But, …  There is only valid reason for implementing the social computing features of SharePoint: You have a business problem to solve! 13

So, what are the secrets?  Clearly Identify the Business Problem  Which existing business processes would benefit from social capabilities?  Define how you will measure success  Decide Which Features Make Sense for Your Organization  It doesn’t have to be ALL (or none)  Be Prepared to Respond to Barriers  Understand concerns, identify champions  Identify value proposition  Define Your Governance Plan  Mange content, plan oversight, define policies and procedures  Define a “Do-able” Pilot Project  Start small and build and expand  Have a cross-functional team  Provide Best Practices and Examples  Make sure people know what is expected  Prepare a Launch and Communications Plan  How can we ensure both adoption and participation? 14

1. Clearly identify the business problem  Increasing the speed of access to internal experts  Building relationship capital  Improving the connection between people and the content and processes they need to get their jobs done – even when the connection crosses traditional organizational boundaries  Increasing employee engagement  Identifying new opportunities for mentorship and knowledge sharing  Allowing users to contribute content to information repositories  Moving conversations out of the limited range of and hallways and in to online spaces where more people can benefit  Discover emerging opportunities and identify opportunities for innovation  Making it easier to recruit and retain new, Internet-savvy employees 15

Geoffrey Moore predicts major investments in “social” technologies  According to Moore, “Systems of Engagement” haven’t yet “crossed the chasm”  Individual companies are doing initiatives but everyone is talking about it You’re not doing this yet, either? No. Good, neither are we. CIO Conversations about Social Computing 16

Think about identifying the business problem for your organization this way …  Focus on the critical moments of engagement and work backwards  Services:  Sales process engaging with a new client  Analyst creating a deliverable  Product Development:  Engineer struggling with a problem  Resource Planning:  Project Manager looking for the most qualified resources for a project 17

Back to those millennials and “I’d better do it for them” thinking …  You won’t do it well  You won’t be focused  It won’t make it easier for people to do their jobs  It will be a waste of money  Since you do it badly, the millennials are going to laugh at you behind your back  on Facebook 18

How do you spell success? Focus on tangible metrics – not adoption  User adoption should not be used a proxy for success.  Operating metrics are near term measures of organizational performance and measure the success of key business processes.  Reduce superfluous s and meetings by 25%  Cut help desk calls by 50%  Focusing on operational metrics can prompt managers to use social software and encourage their employees to do so as well.  “I decided to use it because it helps me do my job – not because someone told me to use it.”  Your homework: Read the Deloitte research white paper called “Social software for business performance - The missing link in social software: Measureable business performance improvements.”  UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_ce_socialsoftware_fullreport_ pdf 19

2. Decide what makes sense – for your organization  You don’t have to have it all... or do it all – at least not all at once.  Consider promoting different features at different times – even if they are all available.  Tie what you choose to do with your organizational goals. If you don’t, don’t expect participation.  Figure out who should play.  Social computing initiatives driven by one department alone are more likely to fail than those led by a team with people from multiple departments.  Decide whether SharePoint alone is enough.  You may decide that you need a third party tool. 20

3. Be prepared to respond to barriers - the hall of blame U.S. monthly time on the internet in millions of hours (Nielsen) 21

Barriers you may hear – because I have! 22  “If we allow any user to contribute content (to a discussion board or a wiki or a blog), we risk exposing inaccurate information.”  “If we allow people to post anything they want in their profiles or on their blogs, they may talk about inappropriate topics or about other people or about information that can’t or shouldn’t be universally shared.”  “I don’t want to share what I know in a blog because then someone might take my idea and use it without giving me any credit.”  “Status updates and notes will be used for trivial purposes and provide a distraction from the main event: work.”

The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions | It’s real … e-hierarchy-of-digital-distractions/ SCENARIO 1  If Landline rings when your reading Facebook, Landline wins your attention …  … at least until a text message arrives. SCENARIO 2  linking to video of kittens frolicking trumps  Work until  announcing mass layoffs arrives 23

… and given some recent events, there may be some reason to worry about inappropriate content 24  “Don’t Be a Weiner (or a Loser): Think Before You Post”  Have you ever posted anything online about yourself that you regretted? 35% of everyone surveyed said yes 54% of respondents under 25 years old said yes 32% of respondents over age 25 said yes Of people who posted something online that they regretted: 11% said it didn't cause any other problems 3% said it ruined their marriage or relationship 6% said it caused problems at work or home 15% said it caused problems, but they were able to remove it.

But there could also be some very real show stoppers  Lack of a business case  Lack of executive support  Lack of IT support php?utm_source=MainRSSFeed&utm_medium=Web&utm_campaign=RSS-News

4. Define your governance plan  Number one rule inside the enterprise: no anonymous content  Explain what you mean  Ratings? What are you rating?  What do you think is the average grade for things reviewed online?  Status? What do you care about?  Profile? What should you include?  Blogs? What should you talk about?

5. Define a “do-able” pilot  Employee engagement is a key success factor  You could start with something as simple as a Note Board web part associated with your Announcements to allow people to comment about internal news.  Start with a small proof-of-concept focused on a specific business problem  Don’t “over-plan”  Focus on usability, look and feel, and information architecture  Engage the “seasoned veterans” and key influencers (energetic champions) 27

6. Provide Best Practices and Examples  Tips to get started – general  Ask questions  Share great content  Answer questions  Acknowledge contributions by others  Status updates  “Narrate your work”  Discussion Boards  Have a moderator  Be sure questions get answered  “Prune”  Profiles  People need people  But check with Legal and HR  Metadata  Create some to start with!  Monitor – it’s got to be someone’s job!!! 28

Best Practice Blogs  If your organization is nervous about blogs, consider limiting who can have them – at least in the beginning.  Include internal blogging as part of your social media policy (have fun, be smart)  Looking for a way to get started: check out Coca Cola’s   Create specific policies for bloggers  Have a list of policies regarding blogging to ensure that trade secrets are kept secret and personal lives do not become public.  Policies may include keeping financial information from being posted, as well as severe consequences for anyone using the blog for negative publicity, even if the audience is only internal.  Executive blogs should be authentic.  Allow associates to comment on blogs – if you don’t, it’s not a blog – it’s just a glorified newsletter.  Don’t allow anonymous comments on blogs – own it!  Keep content current – at least weekly if possible. 29

Executive blogs need to be authentic … 30

… and all blogs need to be accessible (or even promoted) 31

… and you need to have an actionable social media policy 32

Best Practice Activity Updates 33  Share exciting news like customer wins or client quotes  Post interesting and useful material you’ve found (links to articles)  Ask a question  Answer a question  Post project milestones

7. Prepare and launch a communications plan  Use the feedback from your pilot to help plan an organization-wide launch plan.  Be sure to capture user stories focused on how the community features helped them do their jobs more effectively.  Use these stories in your communications activities to help spread the value proposition across the enterprise.  Consider how you might want to use incentives to drive initial participation.  Promote different features at different times. 34

Contact Information  Susan Hanley  President, Susan Hanley LLC    (o)  (m)  Blog:  35