In a previous post I argued to call the intranet not the 'intranet' anymore. The reason is that the 'Intranet' is not always taken seriously, mainly because of an often unsuccessful history or a strategy that is not in line with the IT vision. Last week I was reminded to this when I visited a company where the IT department has a decisive vote on the tools that are used within the organization.

IT in charge of budget and tools to use

The current intranet is built with a CMS that has poor 'social' capabilities (This CMS is actually better suited for marketing websites) The IT department is not in favor of bringing in other applications to add some social features to the intranet. And they have a good point. Instead they say: "Use SharePoint". My advice: Go for it!

(Apparently there is plenty of budget for some tools when it comes from IT)

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Ooh no, we're not ready for it. We have serious business to run.

Implementing open communication in the enterprise is a challenge. And for a good reason. It can impact the way you do business.

There are many arguments that can be thrown on the table against social media initiatives inside the organisation. People can become very creative when thinking of reasons to reject open communication in the organisation.

Most of these risks are based on fear. Command and Control (Top-down) management structures are often also based on fear. (But that seems okay as many countries follow the same strategy with success.)

These risks are serious concerns for decision makers and should therefore be managed carefully.

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Give employees a voice

Many organisations already have successfully implemented open communication or social tools in their intranet. Others are still hesitating because of various reasons like e.g. strategy, culture, technology or lack of recognition of the benefits.

The society has changed, organisations are now seeking for other ways to communicate with external customers. When will organisations themselves change? Recently I looked at Microblogging as an instrument to open up internal communication in the enterprise. In this post I elaborate on the impact it can have for the organisation and its employees.

Open Communication?

Come on, we are an open organisation

In this article I refer to communication that is interactive and between people:

Person A sends a message to person B. Person B receives the message, reads it, understands it, thinks about it and replies with a message back. Other forms are just sending information.

In traditional 'corporate communication' the focus is on sending information. This is usually done by email, a message on the intranet or a corporate newsletter. There is one limitation with this approach: The sender does not know if the message is received, read or understood as it was originally intended.

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The intranet does not have to be fun to make employees happy

This is another article in which I try to create adoption and acceptance for the intranet in the organisation. I will take another angle and look at what motivates employees and what role the intranet can play to create happy employees. I believe we all agree that organisations need happy employees to be successful. It is another way of identifying good content for the intranet.

How employees are motivated

After research on the Internet I learned that there are many theories on how to motivate employees. I definitely do not want to interfere with these discussions, but for this article I selected these four general more or less accepted motivators:

• Money - simply put: employees expect a fair financial compensation for their effort
• Creativity - We are all unique human beings and we all want to put our personality and ideas into our work 
• Recognition - A shoulder tap is in many situations more worth than a financial raise / bonus
• Future - is the job secure, what are the options to grow in the organisation 

Let's apply these to the intranet. 

Money

The reward that is paid and everything else that is related to money: compensation, bonuses, expenses, employee benefits and promotions

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Use Social Media to promote your brand or product on the web.

Are Social Media and Web 2.0 essential for your business?

... Or are they just hypes?

The article Before you start with Social Media mentions what being 'social' actually means. Just starting a blog because your competitor has one is just following the hype. And that will not help you.

For a long time many companies have done profitable business with traditional marketing techniques like advertisements, sales teams and account managers for maintaining the customer relationships. They didn't need a further or deeper relationship with the customer. This has gone well for many years and it might go well for the future too.

But now it is all different...

No doubt that social media has changed (and will continue) the world we live in right now. People don't want to be communicated at anymore. The power is with the people these days. People talk about your products and they reach more other people than the enterprise traditional marketing techniques did.

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What is Social Media?

Is your company already social?

You might answer this question with "Yes of course, we have a company blog" or "We tweet all our product updates" or "Stupid question, we have 14943 friends on Facebook" or something similar.

That is very nice, but are you really socializing with your customers? Does it bring you anything?

Just starting a blog or forum does not necessarily mean being social. It could just be using new media for an old marketing approach.

Social Media, what is it?

To get a better answer to this question we better should rephrase the question to a more simple:

What is Social?  - and skip the 'media' word.

This shorter question will return different answers. Some keywords that could be included: interaction, listen, interest, others, relationship, connecting, sharing.

An answer could be:

Being social is listen to others and show interest, invest in an interactive relationship, connect to strangers and share information.

I have no doubt that in 2010 and beyond Social Media will play a more dominant role in the enterprise marketing strategies.

Of course on-line Marketing and Social Media is a subject that contains more areas than the Social Networks listed here.

This overview is an excellent quick start on the most used Social Networks.

The original post can be found at: A CMO's Guide To The Social Media Landscape. On their site you can also find a PDF with a higher resolution image.