Author: Amy Smith, Senior Project Manager, Perficient
SharePoint Fest Chicago, held September 25-27, included sessions by industry experts and implementation leaders from the user community. One of the user sessions was entitled, “Going Social – Nalco’s Journey”. Daniel Flynn gave an excellent presentation on the process Nalco went through to define, plan and implement their social intranet project. The goal of this project was to share expertise from highly mature markets/countries to associates in less mature markets, using social media tools.
Like any organization, Nalco had a diverse user community; some of whom would embrace the technology quickly, and some of whom would resist it every step of the way. This part of their project was the most interesting to me as a newcomer to social media. Flynn highlighted some key points to involve, interest and turn naysayers into enthusiastic social users:
- Plan for their negativity, right from the start.
- Make sure the solution does not add another thing they have to keep track of. Instead, replace other tools. If they can get by with less email or instant messaging, and gain greater reach, GREAT!
- Since this was a project about sharing expertise, show them, over time, how they are becoming the “go to” person for their specialty, growing in stature in the community, adding value for the company, and improving their resumes.
- Finally, as these experts become more ingrained in the community, use them to help evangelize others.
As you refer to above, the thing about social that is obvious but seems to be often disregarded (especially in companies) is that people will only use what is valuable to them–especially if, like all of us, we’re busy. Things like LinkedIn, Facebook, and company-based social tools that are easy to use, meaningful, and give back in some way to their users will survive (and hopefully thrive for the long run), whereas (and I won’t mention companies or technologies) hard-to-use tools and tools with less-than-stellar buy-in, either by corporate or by the users themselves, will obviously fail. While to anyone reading this my points are not news, I guarantee we will, at one point or another, find ourselves faced with the same depressing prospect of having to sign up for another new social site (business or personal) that will wither on the vine, along with the account details we leave behind when we abandon that account. But it’s not our (the user’s) fault. It’s the people behind the initiative to use that media fault, because if it fails, it’s because there was either a) No need for a new tool, or b) The tool does not take the user’s requirements into consideration when building said tool. Personally, I do feel a little overwhelmed with the number of sites (corporate and personal) that I’m on, but there are a few (again, I’ll not name them) that are my goto sites daily–and it’s because they add value, are easy to use, and fulfill that one main check box that’s key to my returning: They give me what I need, when I need it, and in a way that’s easy to access.