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It only cost your company a few bucks to get licenses and there are very little infrastructure costs associated. In only a few short months, your teams will break down silos faster than you could ever have imagined.
- Software
- Infrastructure
- Maintenance including Service Level Agreement
- Corporate Communications and Marketing
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for result
A social platform without community management is like a party without a host. No one has any idea what the heck is going on and / or what to do. They show up, see that everyone is confused and leave.
Many organizational leaders simply don’t know what they are buying and what it takes to make this successful. When they are told what it will really take, they don’t want to spend the money they come to consider as “additional.” The only reason why they consider it as an extra cost is due to poor understanding of the social space and poor planning for implementation, support, and on-going day to day operations.
They believe “Not only will you get better collaboration, we will throw in cost savings, 100% ROI and you ..yes you … will no longer need email”! As soon as a “TOOL” is purchased for the company it will be … “SOCIAL.”
Wait..what?…Where is the focus on the people???
Story from the Trenches
This story / discussion comes from a colleague Wendy Woodson @iaqtworld
I was recently involved in a conversation related to this. I was sharing an image created to help the conversation. Nothing complicated.
One of the first comments I received was “you need to remove the people from the center of the image, it isn’t important and it makes it busy.” This is not the first time I have heard/seen this. All too often the people are left out of the equation.
I responded with that is the problem today. People are considered insignificant and left out until it’s too late. Leaders sit around wondering what happened, why aren’t they using/doing what we want?
I went on to explain it is important that the people are not only included but are the center or focus of it all. People are essential to it all. Remove them and there is nothing. No one to use the tools or to follow the process. Without them, who will manage the content who will use the systems? People are the nuclei and everything, we as knowledge managers do, is to provide benefit to them and the community they create. – WW
People in the Middle
This is very simple. Social media tools that are used for personal purposes are very different than tools used for a social intranet or social business. Beyond this social internal and social external for business use is also very different. The common thread is context and purpose. If people are in the middle and they are the center based the platforms are used more. Platform use does not by itself equal value. This is very important to understand. A page hit doesn’t mean anything. Every aspect of the human interaction has a specific context and it will change over time. That is why the community management aspect is so important.
Community
Community management is a key critical function for a healthy social network. Being connected can mean the difference between a new sale and a missed opportunity. It can be a channel for innovation, information, observation, awareness and it can also be detrimental. Placing social systems out in the wild without expertise is akin to running with scissors.
Summary
Whether you are building a social channel for your sales force, a place for your whole company to meet at the water cooler, or simply enabling your work force to have additional channels for communication and collaboration, people need to be the central focus. One thing is for certain as it stands today, tools without people will not build, produce, sell, create, innovate, enable or protect your company. The case for a social platform must include active community management, facilitation, leadership and communication.
The Cohenization Project 