Social Media. Using Social Media Tools with Enterprise Video. Introduction. Social Media

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1 Social Media Using Social Media Tools with Enterprise Video Introduction You might think that social networking, as popularized by sites like MySpace and Facebook, doesn t have much to do with business communications. You ve already friended your boss, so what s left to do? As it turns out, plenty. Social networking is the Next Big Thing in Enterprise 2.0, the quest to leverage Web 2.0 technologies for business applications, and the reasons are pretty straightforward, although they re very different from the ones that made consumer social nets a multi-billion dollar business. Instead of building connections with friends (like Facebook) or connections with professional contacts (like LinkedIn), enterprise social networking is about building connections with the information that s the lifeblood of a modern enterprise, and with the people who are, in turn, connected to that information. In other words, it s about opening up new modes of communication inside the business. Traditional communication in an enterprise is all top-down: The executive team make Q: What is the decisions and policies, which are passed average age of down to managers (classically as a series of user on Facebook? unconnected memos or directives) eventually reaching the individual contributor. It s a A: 38, The fastest good way to maintain centralized control and growing group is authority (works great for authoritarian age range. governments too), but it creates lumbering corporate bureaucracies that are slow to adapt to change. Social networking in the enterprise is about changing the communication dynamic from top-down-only to include bottom-up and side-to-side; about enabling a many-to-many mode of exchanging information in a business. If the idea sounds familiar, it should It s one of the central accomplishments of the internet in general: The democratization of communication, turning regular joes into creators and publishers and linkers of information, not just consumers. When regular employees start to do the same thing in an enterprise, the accumulated experience, expertise and insight of every level of the business can start to emerge. The idea is that the internal connections that result make the business smarter, more connected, more agile. And everyone knows that agility is a key to success in a fast-moving marketplace Kontiki, Inc. All rights reserved West Maude Ave, Sunnyvale, CA

2 Enterprise social media can have many different components, including blogs, wikis, personal pages, etc. etc., but in the context of video, we re really talking about two things: 1) Tools that enable and encourage employees to enrich the video content that you, the corporate communicator, are already producing and distributing to them and 2) Original employee-created video. They re fairly different, and also independent it s possible to do one without the other. Let s talk first about enrichment. Increasing Relevancy and Value There s a reason why YouTube is the #2 search engine on the planet. Simple social media tools and plenty of users have allowed YouTube to create the most relevant and valuable listings of content ever created. Not only is it easy to find content, but since it s all video users know they ll be a big payback. This applies in the Enterprise with the use of ratings, tags and comments. Tagging, or keywording, is the process of adding descriptive terms to a piece of content like a video. Many video publishing systems make it possible for the publisher to create tags when a video is posted, and then let users find that video by searching for the tags. The social part comes in when you let users add tags. This lets everyone enrich the content by adding search criteria that a creator or publisher didn t think to include. Ratings might seem less of an enrichment, but especially where there s a large library of content, peer rating is a valuable way to help us find video that s worth watching, especially where user-created video is part of that mix. Comments can be searchable, they also add another powerful component-- they open up the possibility of starting a conversation around the content. And whether the opinions expressed are good, bad, or indifferent, when employees are thinking about and responding to the messages you re giving them, the dialogue that results can be the start of real change in the business. The ability to share content with a colleague also results more views on any video, and gives employees another way to draw on their peers for help in finding and choosing content. All of these features help users to make the video content that you publish more useful for themselves and each other. But it s not all about utility: As YouTube and a dozen other consumer sites have shown, when users expect to interact with video content using social tools, they become more engaged with that content in the process. That means they pay closer attention, they may watch it through a second or a third time, they start to watch and listen with a critical eye. They re more likely to really think about the messages because they know that they ll be able to share their reactions to those messages with others. This is doubly true in the enterprise, where it s much harder to hide behind a cryptic username and the broader anonymity of the internet. People stop and think before they write a comment on a corporate video posting, in no small part because no one wants to say something dumb in front of their coworkers. If a comment on an official video gets employees engaged, imagine what s possible when they can submit their own video to the site. Social Media Perspective Do you know what to do when an employee gives away a trade secret, verbally attacks another employee in a meeting or some other inappropriate action? You know what to do if something inappropriate is done in a Social Media Environment. As long as the rules are clear, we have found that employees can be trusted to use this environment Jon Iwata SVP of Marketing and Communications IBM 2010 Kontiki, Inc. All rights reserved West Maude Ave, Sunnyvale, CA

3 User Generated Video User-Generated Video (or UGV) made YouTube the force of nature that it is, and it can be a hugely powerful tool for an enterprise. Whether it s a group manager that videotapes a brainstorming meeting for others who missed it, or a talking head message from a department head to rally her troops, or an interesting conversation recorded in a focus group, or even an employee showing a solution to a very specific problem, the possibilities for powerful many-to-many communications are as varied as the video medium itself. How to make the most of UGV? Making a few basic camera packages available for checkout is an important enabler to consider. Clear guidelines are also critical (see below) to avoid not only inappropriate content, but also lost productivity and time-wasting. Many businesses will want to start out with baby steps, maybe limiting the video submission ability to managers, at least initially (make sure your system can do this). And though every business will have its early adopters (the ones doing the playful diary-type video), the real challenge with UGV is not wasted time or inappropriate content. As with the enriching social media, the hard part is getting employees to use the capability at all. Because it s one thing to enable these features on a corporate video portal, but the benefits only come if and when large numbers of employees start to use them. Like many things in business, example-setting starts at the top. If management believes in the value of social media, they need to put their mouths where their money is, and add tags and comments and ratings to the content themselves, plain enough for all to see (you might encourage some busy execs to delegate their initial contributions, perhaps to assistants who know their opinions). Certainly everyone in the communications department should have a quota for social contribution to the site. Seed projects should be an important part of any rollout plan, where your communications team plans to go out and make video for a range of departments and groups, at various events and functions, etc. etc. not the slick produced pieces that you might be doing for all-hands meetings or important messages, but the same kinds of UGV-level projects that you hope the rank and file will learn to do themselves. And any way you can find to encourage individuals from across the enterprise to participate and interact is effort well-spent creative solutions like incentive prizes for things like most insightful comment of the week or most useful employee video can help get programs started. Another important enabling factor for enterprise social media participation is a clear set of content guidelines. It s critical to make it a matter of clear, up-front corporate policy that disagreement on a social network is not only allowed, it s encouraged. For there to be an honest, vigorous debate, safety is paramount everyone should know that nothing they contribute on a social net is going to get them in trouble with their boss or the company, as long as it s respectful and professional. It s equally important to make it clear that ad hominem or personal attacks won t be tolerated. The bad manners of the anonymous internet are not to be repeated here employees shouldn t be saying anything they wouldn t at least consider saying in a meeting or other company forum. Some social video systems also give you the option to turn off comments, ratings or other features for individual channels or even individual videos a convenient way to avoid the problem altogether, maybe for the HR policies channel (not a productive venue for debate), or perhaps for an individual CEO clip with a bad-news message (morale will already take a hit without piling on negative comments). But even with clear, prominent guidelines, social media site administrators will have a challenge in an unfortunate but necessary part of the job: Policing the site. First off, it s critical that any enterprise social media platform have the capacity to create admin 2010 Kontiki, Inc. All rights reserved West Maude Ave, Sunnyvale, CA

4 users who can remove inappropriate material. For larger businesses and social nets, an important tool to look for is the user flag, that lets individual users identify content that may be inappropriate. But at the end of the day, as the drill sergeant says, We re here to protect democracy, not to practice it, and ultimately you as a communications professional may need to make some tough decisions about when a negative postings or thread is potentially damaging to productivity or overall morale. When you do remove a comment or thread, it feels less big-brother-ish if you add your own comment explaining why it was removed. The line between censorship and tolerance will be a fuzzy one in places, and will be different for every business, but if you and management really believe that, like the bumper sticker says, Dissent is patriotic, then employees will learn to trust your decisions about removing content. In the final analysis, social media in the enterprise isn t an if, it s a when. For new employees who are entering the workforce today, social networking has almost certainly made up a huge part of the way they interact with their peers. They expect to be able to interact directly with their work peers too, and when it comes to their video, they expect to be active contributors, not passive absorbers. If your business has embraced video as a communication medium, it s at least partly as a result of the coming YouTube generation in the workforce. Social networking is just another piece of the Enterprise 2.0 puzzle to address the same workers, but with another title: the Facebook generation Kontiki, Inc. All rights reserved West Maude Ave, Sunnyvale, CA