Comments on: Social media on a global intranet – how do you choose?

By: Vincent

Vincent — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:15:17 +0000

I Like this one and your conclusion Jane.
Yes I heard too many time give them some tools and come back a few months later to see what happens…
We have to think…more globally and put a strategy in place, communication, internal marketing, HR…

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:52:15 +0000

Richard – you’re absolutely right! When I wrote this last night, I was thinking about some of our conversations in Denmark earlier this year. I didn’t expect you to respond so fast! Thanks very much.
By the way, you’ll be very interested in some results I got in the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies survey but waited for this year’s results before communicating.
Preliminary analysis of early data in the current 2009 survey (still open) show that perceptions change about social media (both benefits and concerns) depending on whether an organization has adopted them, is in the planning stages, or does not currently plan to adopt them.

By: Richard Dennison

Richard Dennison — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:19:40 +0000

Hi Jane – some great advice as always.
My only concern with your approach is that it’s very ‘top-down’ … while I totally agree that planning is everything when considering any additions to your intranet, I think you need to acknowledge the ‘subversive’ nature of social media.
Getting the right balance between top-down and bottom-up is critical. If you’re too heavy-handed you can destroy the organic nature of these tools and one of the critical success factors for me is the ‘fashionability’ of SM tools. If they look like another corporate tool you will lose that key advantage which drives user adoption.
One thing I am certain of is that you can’t have bottom-up change without top-down support … even if that support is tacit. So I agree that ‘throwing things at the wall to see what sticks’ is not a strategy for credit-crunch times.
The key is getting the right buy-in, careful planning, user engagement … while making it all look like a bottom-up act of subversive action!
Keep up the great work!
Richard