Social Media, What’s the Rush?
by Patti Anklam
A couple of interesting notes from twitter pals this week. @kanter alerted me to a post by Alexandra Samuel, “Don’t Keep Up with Social Technology.” Ms Samuel makes the point that when you spend a lot of time trying to keep up with all the changes, new tools, new techniques, new options that you are taking time away from actually using social media to get work done. She states it thusly:
The minute you stop trying to keep up, you open a far more exciting possibility: getting ahead with what matters to you, your team and your business.
There is no magic solution that will emerge; you just have to choose the available tools that will do the job for you. (She also provides, by analogy, a delicious observation by a friend who watched her poring over organizing options at IKEA: “there’s no combination of boxes that’s going to turn you into an organized person.”)
Recent research by Jakob Nielson, Social Networking on Intranets, via @sammarshal provides deep insight into the adoption of social media inside enterprises. It begins by suggesting that with respect to responding to expectations about being driven by Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0:
- Taking the slow road means that companies will risk losing workers who expect innovation in the outside world to reflect directly on how they communicate at work.
- Going for quick adoption means that companies must find ways to overcome the risks to corporate culture that adopting these tools can entail.
Nielson predicts that 3 to 5 years is a “common timeline for social intranet projects.” And it is of course not surprising to see that this research also shows that traction for using social media in companies comes from the grass roots, who are self-selecting tools that enable them to get ahead with business: “It’s about what the tools let users do and the business problems that tools address.”
The web summary of the report linked above contains a number of gems; it’s worth the read, as is the full report (168 pps, $$, from Nielson Norman Group.) I am always happy to find corroboration for my deep-seated belief in the power of training and in investment of community managers and facilitation to assist people in becoming comfortable with new tools.
