Top Five Practical Microblogging Applications For Enterprise Businesses And Government Agencies
Guest post by Mike Strand, a Business Relationship Manager for Microsoft IT based in Bellevue, WA.
I hate hype. Believe it or not, I’ve never seen the movie Titanic. To this day, I refuse to "fist pound" people as a greeting. The bottom line on hype for me is that if something is too popular, I get turned off.
At times, my experience with microblogging felt similar. Everyone from Ashton Kutcher to the Library of Congress was using Twitter. Smart colleagues were predicting that new hires straight out of college would treat it as a required part of their skill set. And still - at the time, I couldn't think of compelling business scenarios that microblogging would support. More traditional communication media - telephones, email, and the Web - covered my bases pretty well. Call me square, but as an IT professional and a business decision-maker, when thinking about trying something new I need to see a value proposition.
How Micro-blogging Melted My Icy Heart
Despite my skepticism, I did eventually try microblogging. I did it in two styles,externally using Twitter,and internally within my enterprise using new social tools within SharePoint 2010, as well as a 'concept test' called OfficeTalk developed by our Microsoft Office Labs. I have to admit that my personal microblogging adventure felt forced initially. Why was I spending part of my busy day reading complaints about how slow our corporate wi-fi is?
Was it just information overload?, I wondered.
Nevertheless, I kept interacting with this new form of communications, searching for the nirvana that so many others seemed to have found. And so, after a few months of experimenting with it, I have come to the conclusion that microblogging, done right, really does enhance numerous business scenarios. I had found my nirvana in the form of a value proposition. Not sexy, but sometimes you have to go with what works.
Five Enterprise Use-Cases For Micro-blogging
Ironically, the shoe is now on the other foot, as I find myself defending micro-blogging to the very group of anti-hype naysayers that I was once an enthusiastic member of. Here are the six most compelling business cases for using micro-blogging, applicable to most any organization, from small businesses to government agencies to non-profits.
Seeking subject-matter experts: Historically, my network of contacts was limited to one or two degrees of separation. But with enterprise microblogging, hierarchy is less important and gaps and boundaries in the social network are easily bridged. It’s effectively the same as sending an email to everyone in the company asking for help – but it’s actually okay in this case because the culture of email and microblogging are very different; people are less annoyed by a constant stream of mini-updates and micro-requests, and know they can ignore them without penalty, too. The next time you need to find out who can fix that pesky bathroom sink at work that’s been broken for six months, the proper Web link to connect people with a new white paper, or to get a feeling for how many people are going to come out for an impromptu office happy hour, consider using enterprise microblogging first.
Collecting feedback: Collecting feedback has proactive and reactive variations, both of which are valuable. Proactively, an alternative to the "survey" can be done that includes not only the people who often traditionally respond to surveys (people with an axe to grind), but also respondents rooted in positive experiences. From a more reactive standpoint, the Twittersphere contains the pulse of communities, which can quickly change in reaction to events. Thus, monitoring microblogging conversations via keywords, hashtags, and the like can be incredibly valuable, and newer, cutting edge monitoring software like LookingGlass will make this easier in the not-so-distant future.
Creating virtual teams: Much of the truly impactful work in businesses occurs in gray areas - after hours, or in casual settings, maybe on golf courses, any of which perhaps without a project plan or executive mandate. Being able to make grassroots connections between employees of of otherwise unknown or disparate passions and skill sets is strongly enabled via microblogging. For example, an employee in finance may have a cost-saving idea that requires engineering to do tests, and marketing to approve new packaging. A well-networked finance employee who has been "ambiently intimate" with people in engineering and marketing through daily microblogging will be better able to turn that idea into action.
Being well-informed: I read the news on my phone just before I go to bed every night, and part of what I enjoy about this is that I have no idea what news and information await me as I fire up my browser. In a similar way, I've now become accustomed to skimming Microsoft's internal microblogging site to see what news and information await me there. Promotions, product launches, business gossip, competitive news, and creative ideas are some of the many things I find there daily, and the more people participate, the better it gets. While on the surface this may seem very unfiltered, that makes it no less valuable; overall, I'd argue that it is no better and no worse than a "professional publication," because it is uniquely valuable precisely because of its different qualities.
Exposure: I mentioned earlier that I hadn't seen the movie Titanic. I'm obviously aware of it. But how? Naturally, because information about the film was seemingly everywhere at the time. I know who the stars of the movie were, that it was the second-highest grossing film of all time, and other facts because the information reached me through various communications channels that I used. Similarly, through micro-blogging you will be generally exposed to information and news that you don't necessarily go looking for, but may someday find useful (imagine how silly you'd seem at a dinner party if you simply didn't know a Titanic reference - unforgivable). Conversely, you can use microblogging to expose others to information they weren't necessarily looking for. Maybe someday someone will find it useful that you're very passionate about collecting mold in your spare time. Maybe.
Booz Allen Hamilton: An Enterprise 2.0 Success Story
So, you might ask, is Microsoft the only organization using micro-blogging tools? Certainly not. Just one example is a leader in consulting the public sector on these very issues - Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2009, in fact, BAH won something called the Open Enterprise Innovation Award to recognize the work the firm has done in promoting and using collaborative tools. Their portal, hello.bah.com, is a portal to all kinds of collaborative tools, including blogs, wikis, and so on.
Steve Radick, a lead associate at BAH, has seen the ups and downs of enterprise microblogging and related technologies. Interestingly, he wrote at one point that while strides had been made among younger employees and senior leadership, buy-in and participation has been much slower among middle management, even within his own company. He writes:
Why middle management you ask? Because in my experience, that’s the demographic who are most likely to avoid social media and in fact, often actively discourage their teams from using it. At Booz Allen, we’re seeing great gains among both the junior staff and the senior leadership, but the middle management has been slower to get on-board.
This is far from unique to BAH, or even businesses. In a 10/4/2010 Wall Street Journal editorial titled "From Wikinomics to the Tea Party," L. Gordon Crovitz writes that, "government is the institution most obviously frozen in the pre-Web era." Ouch. He continues,
At a time when pharmaceutical firms increasingly make their basic research public, and the biggest computer software companies [Editor's note: Microsoft! ] both use and contribute to open-source software, it's jarring to see how little the public sector has changed. It took until last week, for example, for the world's air safety regulators to come to an agreement on sharing data on airplane accidents.
In the public and civic sectors, which Publicyte is primarily focused on, there are currently great struggles for many, not the least of which "middle management," to adapt to the rapid pace of technological change in social and other (cloud, mobile...) technologies. There are many cheerleaders, but there are many more detractors. Government 2.0 is probably at a significant inflection point (Andrew Krzmarzick has a nice summary post about this at GovLoop.com).
Network Effects: A Sixth Reason To Participate
A network effect (also called network externality) is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service increases as more people use it.
From my perspective, it seems like enterprise microblogging has the status of a cell phone in 1995 - it's great for the person who has the phone, but less good for those who didn't. But, as more people got phones and as they are now ubiquitous in business, the benefits increased as people found new uses and applications of the technology. A classic network effect.
So if you find yourself like I was, a hype holdout - I encourage you to identify a practical use-case in your work that aligns to one of the scenarios above. I suspect you’ll like the view from inside the network.
Melting icy heart from Linda and used through Creative Commons. Icy blue heart from Pip Briscoe and used under a Creative Commons license. Network effect diagram from Wikipedia.