Corporations tend to fragment specific tasks, and for good reason. Efficiency requires structural fragmentation, a calibrated process to move along something as complex as a large company, a living organism complete with working parts.

Social media has generated a flurry of organizational buzzwords and catch phrases — collaboration, enterprise 2.0, knowledge share, cloud computing, community, online reputation, social CRM, crowd sourcing... and the list goes on and on. One of the phrases that you hear more and more frequently is actually one that has been around for quite some time: employee engagement. (And one that is very near and dear to my heart.) With this renewed focus on engagement, organizations are now assessing how they can leverage social technologies to engage their most important audience, employees. And where better than the your company intranet? The corporate intranet is (or should be) the hub of all employee activity and transactions; where employees go to manage money, career, life events, and health. Taking your intranet to the next level means using social technologies to not only enhance the every day activities and transactions necessary for employees to learn, plan and do their jobs; thereby making them more efficient, engaged and productive: a social intranet.

Read more from the original source:
Creating a Social Intranet where Employees can Learn, Plan and Do

One of the main inhibitors with regards to a successful adoption of social software within the enterprise that I keep bumping into from fellow knowledge workers and, specially, their managers!, is that perception that social networking, you know, “things” like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like are just for fun. Social spaces where you goof off at work and get away with it, because they are all hyped and everything, and everyone needs to be there. No business value. No value add at all. They have never been meant as serious (social) applications people can use to do business with their customers and business partners.

More here:
Social Networking Gets Serious – #prayforjapan

Some 200 GE communicators gathered in Orlando from around the world to get steeped in a newly-thought-out model for communications. The conference included speakers from outside (I was one, PepsiCo’s Chief Communication Officer Julie Hamp was another) along with members of the communication team. But it wasn’t the speakers that set this conference apart. It was the panel discussions that turned the tables, with the panelists—communication leaders—asking questions of the audience.

Originally posted here:
GE Takes Internal Conferences to a New Level

Building and supporting a knowledge network is not something you can just unwrap and plug in. The processes for creating and supporting knowledge networks need to be approached in a step-by-step fashion, and carefully considered from both social and technical perspectives. Here are 10 critical success factors to creating a useful and vibrant knowledge network.

Go here to see the original:
Knowledge Networks: How To Avoid Information Marriages of Convenience

You so often hear the argument that social media keeps people from forming real relationships, that it isolates people. Nothing could be further from the truth in my mind. I’ve received encouragement, advice, knowledge and support from dozens of people whom, without the Internet, I would have never met. SXSW is a great opportunity to form an even deeper relationship with my peers.

Continued here:
SXSW 2011: The 10 People I Most Want To Meet At SXSW

Just because it’s online, and not in front of a person, it doesn’t mean there is a new code of conduct. The best commercial boundaries are always based on elements of the above points. Social media engagement is just the same. The old rules of business apply here, too.

Originally posted here:
Social Media Engagement: The Old Rules of Business Still Apply

Today, I’m headed to Beirut, Lebanon for the E-Mediat project, a multi-stakeholder capacity building project for NGOS and Social Media in the Middle East. I’ll be sharing insights about the project as it unfolds here on my blog and other social media channels, including #Emediat tag on Twitter.

Read the original:
E-Mediat: Beirut Bound – Guess What’s In My Suitcase?

Recently I had the privilege of meeting Social Media Today's co-founder and CEO Robin Carey - we were on a panel together at Opus Research's Conversational Commerce conference in San Francisco. As our panel discussed social media and customer care, Robin asked me a great question about the role of social media in rigid, regulated verticals like government and health care. The question was a good one, and got me thinking more broadly about companies that might be more "traditional", silo'd, less open, less transparent just by their heritage, their culture, or their industry. What's the role for social media in these organizations? Where to start? How to progress?

Originally posted here:
Social Media & Rock Slides

Last week, I facilitated an interactive keynote in Seattle at 2011 Tech for Good Leadership Summit sponsored by Microsoft Community Affairs, in partnership with NPower Seattle. By all accounts, the event held the space for peer learning.

Link:
The Knowledge Is in the Room: How to Let It Out

One of the more fascinating sessions was the first, which touched on how social media is offering a continuous feedback loop for organizations, particularly when it comes to customer service. As Pete Blackshaw (@pblackshaw), formerly of NM Incite but recently (as in Friday) named Nestle’s Global Digital Chief, said: "Customer service is THE #1 driver of organizational external communication.” The audience couldn’t seem to agree more.

See the rest here:
Bridging the Marketing/Customer Care Divide - Thoughts from #C32011

Boesky was wrong. Greed isn't good, it's the absence of good. Thankfully the new business model created by social media has turned the greed is good philosophy on its head and allowed authentic communication between client and company to flourish.

Follow this link:
Social Media Means Certain Death of the Greed is Good Paradigm

On-line community discussions - peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges that allow soldiers to quickly adapt to rapidly changing situations. There are 60 BCKS functional communities (CompanyCommand, Platoon Sergeant) and as many field communities (CAVNET). A fulltime facilitator supports each community. Lessons Learned Integrators (L2INET) – Analysts are deployed with units, as well as being stationed at Schools, the National Training Center, TRADOC and Headquarters. L2INET members are responsible both to actively collect what is being learned in the commands and to disseminate the lessons learned from other commands. The network of 29 members meet regularly on-line and in monthly teleconferences to exchange what they are learning in the field and to understand what other members need.

More:
A Model Lessons Learned System – The US Army

We seem to be in the period now, if social business could be plotted on a bell curve, where we are deep into “early majority” adoption and heading to the down-slope where such concerns as compliance and effectiveness will be, of necessity, brought into corporate review of social media. Hearsay addresses this with integrated, home-grown search that alerts the governance teams of large companies of possible infractions on social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, a critical requirement for highly regulated businesses like insurance, financial and health care.

Here is the original post:
Compliance and Social Media: It's Hearsay

Within the social enterprise itself, there is no place for “information silos” – management systems incapable of reciprocal operation with other, related management systems. If productive and timely communication about insights drawn from the social sphere cannot occur among key stakeholders internally, there is no way to achieve the scale and velocity of social conversations that are necessary to engage a community quickly, efficiently, and with a response that builds customer satisfaction and brand affinity.

Read more from the original source:
Why Social Media Success Will Not Be in a Silo