Social Collaboration

Does your business have a social network? Is it an Enterprise social network? What collaboration tools do you have, are they the same as social tools? There are a number of different ways to describe social and collaborative tools, and they are often used interchangeably. This is fine in a general sense, as the two of course overlap, but when you start to consider what your social strategy is for your business, we need to dig into the detail a little, to understand what that means for different groups of individuals.

What is Social Collaboration?

In terms of a broad definition of social collaboration, Wikipedia’s definition works for me “Social Collaboration refers to processes that help multiple people interact and share information to achieve any common goal. Such processes find their ‘natural’ environment on the internet, where collaboration and social dissemination of information are made easier by current innovations”. Then we have a chap called Aaron Fulkerson, over at The Future of Collaborative Networks, has a nice example of what he thinks makes social networks distinct from collaboration networks (which I tend to agree with) –

Generally, technology or content businesses today need both social andcollaborative capabilities layered on top of their entire product portfolio – it’s the expected standard, and will eventually likely become commodity in its application.

I usually break down social collaboration into three camps – (1) external tools such as Facebook, or Twitter, (2) internal private client networks (Jive, Tibbr, Salesforce etc) and (3) internal private employee networks (intranets). To be a truly next-gen social technology company, businesses need each of these communities to interact with each other, as the value that can be potentially derived from that interaction is considerable.

For example, the intersection of (1) and (2) – clients that receive a good experience on your product(s) are more likely to share their experience on external media, if the ability to do so is quick and obvious – this doesn’t necessarily require any deep level of technical integration, but it does require an alignment of external social strategy and internal client network strategy; one needs to be able to monitor and influence that client activity (even promote it, if it makes sense). That internal private client network should also be deployed across the entire organization (or at least plug seamlessly into existing networks), in order that organizations can open up cross business and/or client community interaction. For example, if you serve both legal and financial professionals, there is probably an opportunity (and demand) to connect these two groups together.

The intersection between (2) and (3) is also critical – ensuring that your employees have connections into these client communities. Whether this is through a community manager, as a subject matter expert, or a business development executive, the potential for strengthening your client relationships and identifying cross-sell opportunities is huge.

The sweet spot, area (4), where all three broad communities interact, is a fascinating convergence point – your employees, your clients and external communities all interacting, connecting and collaborating; this is where truly innovative ideas are likely to incubate, where employees experienced in your current product lines are interacting with your clients, who are looking for new features, and external communities contributing additional market intelligence – it’s a cornucopia of product development loveliness!

Google, obviously..

So who does this well right now? It’s difficult not to look at Google , who has it pretty well nailed in terms of connecting all three of these pieces.

For example, using my Google Identity, I can access any number of different tools. I can head over to Google+ (recently revamped) to catch-up on friends & colleagues activity, or search for a particular area of interest and subscribe to feeds; I could create a private group and use Google Apps for Work to collaborate around an idea or project (and store my files in Google Drive), or jump into a discussion around that same idea (Google native discussion boards, or Stackoverflow if technical). All of this activity is completely integrated as far as the user is concerned. I know i’m using Google at all times, social and collaborative tools are never more than 1-2 clicks away, and all of these features are easily discoverable through their core search offering. In addition, some of these these features are linked to a ‘free to try, more to buy’ commercial model (GDrive, Apps for Work, App Store/Google Play etc). The whole experience just, well, works.

Of course, Google for a long-time focused on a ‘single’ service offering, search, and then augmented that service with additional features – that laser like focus on a ‘single’ tool in the early days, and their subsequent success, allowed them to diversify and innovate safely, to move quickly and capitalise on market trends (in fact, Google recognises this fact, calling it out in their Ten things we know to be true). We obviously don’t all have that same luxury – businesses are established and grow in a multitude of different ways, but we all have at least one thing in common – our clients are human, and therefore social, hence the opportunity to connect with our clients, to build more meaningful relationships via social tools, is an opportunity we should all be taking advantage of.

Social Collaboration Strategy

Big picture, what are the kind of things businesses should be considering in their social collaboration strategy? A few points that I think are critical to overall strategy –

  1. Wherever possible, deploy a single social collaboration solution for your entire organisation, and consider how to embed that solution within existing products. As the global economy evolves and new markets emerge, there is no doubt traditional business models will be challenged – the ability to collaborate across these emerging areas of commerce will be vital.
  2. Think about how to connect that platform (above) to both the external world and your internal employee community, to start breaking down walls and connecting directly with individuals that are potential customers, or future hires. Interacting with all parts of your (commercial) world should be seamless and consistent.
  3. Take steps to connect your broader social media strategy to your client and collaboration strategy – the former is about building brand, attracting new clients and selling products (amongst many other things); the latter is about enablement and retention – the two are inextricably linked, but often separate initiatives.
  4. Understand your community. Launching a social collaboration network, that connects you, your employees, your clients and the wider world can beincredibly powerful, but it can also be extremely damaging if not carefully planned. Ensure you fully understand why you’re connecting these communities, approach it like you would any other requirements gathering process, software or business.
  5. Be consistent. Your brand message should be present in everything you do, especially social collaboration – clients and external communities should always be aware of who you are, and what you do, and your employees should be advocates of that strategy.
  6. Ensure the business invests and buys-in to the strategy. This will require significant work – be able to explain a reasonable ROI, put together a solid business case, reference industry statistics and vendor success stories. If the business is not fully behind a social collaboration strategy, the project willfail.

There are obviously many other considerations around any sort of social strategy – the need to carefully consider what content is published where, consideration of data privacy, residency and other legal concerns, the need to carefully manage and promote social capabilities, appropriately seeding conversations and acting as the subject matter experts in advisory situations and so on. But these are all considerations and risks to be managed, as right now, it is entirely expected that a business should provide some level of social collaboration capability – it ought to be a part of your business development DNA.

The challenge (and opportunity) today is how you connect your various communities together effectively, to realise real, tangible value.