The past week or so I did some light reading on how one would go about incorporating social media in a more formal environment – such as at work. While there are many things to consider before one could attempt a list of “what’s” and “how’s”, I have to share a bit on this tool that I came across. This tool is called Ning – a Social Network site in which you can create your own social network.
Social networks have become quite a popular web-based phenomenon – if, for instance, you consider the popularity of sites like Facebook and MySpace. Many people might not even be familiar with the term “social network”, but they are familiar with Facebook or MySpace or both. The popularity of this web phenomenon was (and still is) of such a grand scale that one might even go as far as to say that people became addicted to taking part in social networks. And this quickly became a huge problem at work as employees began to spend more time on social networking (outside the business sphere) and less time on actual work related matters. In light of this problem, a recent survey unveiled that in America, one in four companies block employee access to social networking sites. There are, however, a mere eight percent of companies who have realised potential in social networking and encourage employees to use these sites as a means of communication.
So why are social networking sites so popular – and how can this be incorporated into business? As I said – I did some light reading and can only comment from my own experiences – so feel free to comment, add or disagree – but I believe that having the ability to create a profile, add photos, videos and other sorts of electronic documentation is much like setting up a little space for yourself to which you can invite friends or colleagues to come and visit and have a conversation. Where you can share, reconnect and even make new acquaintances through shared interests – without time and spacial barriers. It is much like a corporate portal – but with less constraints and a personal touch.
And if your organisation is not a fan of social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, then Ning is the answer. With Ning, control is in your hands – you create the “Facebook”, you can customise it in a number of ways to make it more suitable to a work environment instead of a purely social environment. First of all you get to stamp the corporate identity on it, in terms of design you can add your company logo and if you know how CSS works you can make the whole site use company specific colours and fonts. Secondly you can add widgets – these are side-line applications that “stick” to the site to provide additional functionalities, for instance it might show a calendar, events and if you have different departments or communities of practice in the organisation who’ve formed groups – these can be displayed as well. And thirdly, each employee can create their own profile – in the same manner as they would on Facebook or MySpace.
There are so many ways in which you can modify your social network to make it a custom fit to your organisation – it would be better to explore it yourself. The last thing though I should mention is that you have the option to either make your social network public or private – according to the purpose of creation – if it is private then employees can join by invitation.
The nice thing about Ning is that because it is online – it is open for experimental use. You can start the network, invite employees or colleagues to join and try it out for a while. If it gathers too much dust, or deviates from the company perspective you can delete it and never look back. On the other hand, if it starts to work well as a means of communication and a platform to share corporate knowledge you can subscribe to its premium services which ranges from getting rid of the side-line advertisements and getting more storage space to using your own domain name.
With a site like Ning you can use the benefits of a social networking site and apply it to your business.
Filed under: social software | Tagged: social network
[...] the Breeze Odor Control community? While the value of creating a customer social network has been debated, there is often more value in reaching out to customers on existing social networks. [...]
Using existing social networks would be much better if you would like to reach a larger audience – especially sites like Facebook and MySpace. Particularly because they already house a large group of users. Just look at the example of the Arctic Sea Monkeys (I think that’s their name, not sure though) a relatively unknown band who made it big through their MySpace page’s popularity.
But if your aim is not customer relations, then Facebook might be a bit distracting to the idea of a corporate social network. Having free reign to add things like “movie compatibility tests” and “what type of zombie are you” might seem more interesting and fun than contributing content to a group or an event… All of which has some moderation if the social network is company specific.
But a good point none the less. The ability to create a social network to cater for any niche is extraordinary – be it for Breeze Odour Control or whatever. In fact, that is the beauty of internet applications such as social networks: it has the ability to appeal to any interest no matter what its size might be, because there are no physical constraints that govern the profitability or viability of an idea – especially if the application is free to use.
Nice Article On Social Networking ! Thank you for keeping up the good work. I look forward to returning to your Social Network space, and learning more about Business Social Networking from you !