Social networking benefits

We hear about this from time to time, but I actually saw it happen (and helped it happen). I saw two intranet managers from the same, very large global group connect to each other via NetJMC & Co (linkedin group for intranet managers) when one of them posted a question that the other had already worked on.

There was no way these two people could have come together other than through this or a similar initiative.

I have three comments about this:

• They connected via an external platform, created by an external party (me).
• They had no internal means of making this connection.
• Yet, they already knew each other through other means.

They can now choose to continue the discussion privately (one-to-one) or inside NetJMC & Co, hoping to attract other people with experience to share, or both.

Have you witnessed similar of other benefits from social networking within your organization? The more anecdotal evidence we can build as a community, the easier it will be for intranet managers to convince their organizations to experiment with social networking features.

Social networking features were among the lowest internally-used social media tools in the data from the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies survey. One percent have optimized social networking or use it throughout the organization. 28 percent are experimenting with it or use it in some parts of the organization. 70 percent say they have no intention to use it, at least for now!

One Response to “Social networking benefits”

1. Jeremy Schultz Says:
   March 12th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

   “Have you witnessed similar of other benefits from social networking within your organization?”
   Absolutely! I’ve seen it on both sides of the firewall. I’ve personally made dozens of connections I’d have never made without our intranet social tools. Now that we’ve instituted professional networking (just last Saturday!), I expect such serendipity to explode. I hope to share more of this story soon…

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