This is a little follow up on an earlier post where I advocated Microblogging as a tool to open up the internal communication in the enterprise.
This article lists some usage examples for microblogging.
1. Share news
You can send news items or reminders quickly, there is no need to post them on the intranet or use email. You can attach a link to an article on the intranet to a document, a photo or an external link. All topics are OK: News, information about new products or services, industry (competition) news, Internal marketing and many more.
2. Survey the opinion of employees
It is easy to set up a quick poll with microblogging. Ask a question (with an identifying hashtag) and wait for the votes to come in.
3. Online virtual discussions
These discussions should be announced in advance and should last for a fixed period. The topic is predefined (use hashtags). You can strictly moderate the discussion or loosely and turn it into a brainstorm session.
4. Personal branding
Nothing wrong with personal branding. If you are an expert in a certain area or a creative thinker then help your colleagues and help yourself. Set your skills free. Helpful and knowledge experts will emerge.
5. Simple Workflows
Employees, but also automated systems can send alerts, notifications, critical information and updates made to the business transaction system. When these messages require a human action, there is a workflow.
6. Public forums & innovation areas
Set up topic groups where questions can be asked and answered quickly. News, policies, procedures and innovative ideas can be discussed here. Many microblogging solutions support threads, so it can replace traditional forums. If needed the conclusions can be reported back to Senior Managers.
7. Meeting notes
Share key points and important facts from meetings and other gatherings instantly.
8. Organize and mobilize Employees
Organize carpooling, send open invitations to happenings, who else is going to ...? Many opportunities here.
9. Support for new employees
Set up special groups to support employees. Set up a special group for new employees with relevant information. They can help each other or get advice from mentors. It helps new employees get up to speed in the company.
10. Social Stuff
Very important are interpersonal social chats. These happen anyway. Trust your employees!
Some examples of groups that could benefit from microblogging:
11. Works council
The works council regularly communicates top-down. Especially for works councils it is very important to know what lives in an organisation. With microblogging, it is easier for employees to give feedback (and if you're afraid your manager monitors your negative feedback, you can send a direct message).
12. Secretaries
The article: Secretaries: Communication and Information Hubs by Samuel Driessen mentioned secretaries. This was a group I didn't think of first that could really benefit from microblogging. But as Samuel says secretaries handle a lot of different types of information and they also collaborate together and share information. They often use email only. A great opportunity to use a better tool for collaboration and to share information.
Useful characteristics of microblogging
- Although microblogging is real time, you don't have to react real time (like in chat tools), you can read and reply when you have the time
- You can use filters on people, keywords, hashtags or groups to find the most relevant updates (search)
- With short messages, you stay to the point, there is simply no room for clutter in the message
- You can make a separation of people you want to follow, these are not automatically the people that follow you (like in facebook)
- Not every content is public. You can also choose to send a direct messages to a targeted audience. These messages are not visible to everyone
- With a proper dashboard setup employees have an overview with exactly what matters to them
- There are multiple ways to identify new connections: via hyperlinks, tags, keywords, follower relationships
- Microblogging can easily be deployed on mobile devices too, due the nature of the short messages
- You can add documents, photo's, videos and links as attachments
A few days ago, I stumbled on this excellent article 'Enterprise Micro-Learning' by Marcia Conner which gives some more benefits and ideas to use microblogging. Recommended!
These were just a few examples and I am sure you know more and better examples. Please share them in the comments. I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
This is the second post in a series of four in which I try to encourage the use of microblogging in the organisation, a way to open up the internal communication in the enterprise and to be prepared for the future. Other posts are:
- Open Communication in the Enterprise - give employees a voice
- 12 More things to do with Micro Blogging
- Open Communication Scepticism and Fears
- Implementation tips (coming soon)
You can follow me on Twitter at @BasZurburg. I mostly tweet about intranets and changing corporate environments due to new thinking.