I don’t know the exact number of organisations that have experimented with social software or social media for internal communications, but from those that we’ve connected with and listened to it’s clear there are a large number of them that didn’t get the results they wanted because they didn’t know where to start or were unsure of how to build adoption. So if you fall into one of these categories, here are a few pointers that you may find useful.

More than just push messaging tool
First off, social tools (wikis, forums, tagging etc), and more importantly social networking behaviours, can be deployed to help information flow more freely, enhance knowledge sharing and internal collaboration, activate deeper employee engagement, and even has proven results in achieving staff retention. They shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as a replacement for those things you are already doing, and they should be seen as something more wide-reaching that simply a communication tool versed with message pushing!

Command and control no longer
The days of command & control are numbered as social tools place greater emphasis on people at all levels by providing everyone with a voice, whether they choose to exercise it or not. Therefore, their is no such thing as ownership - it is owned by everyone, and more so by those with a hunger, passion and willing to participate and contribute. This is heightened by the fact that there are less rules than before - but guidelines are vitally important nonetheless, as leaders seek to engender adoption.

Social networks are a solution, not a problem
There are a lot of organisations and business leaders out there banning the likes of Facebook and other social networking sites from the workplace as they see it as a threat to productivity. I question, is technology the reason that people want to do something other than what they are paid for within the workplace? Perhaps job satisfaction should be studied very carefully, as should the behaviours that are now commonplace among staff in their private lives, for it is this which needs to be harnessed in the workplace.

Host the conversation, it’s taking place anyway!
Business also fears that their workers will talk negatively about a range of work-related issues. To this I say embrace it, listen carefully, and if it becomes such a problem then let the community themselves report it and deal with it in a way they deem relevant. By offering these controls, you will find such negativity rare indeed! What’s more, these conversation are taking place elsewhere, so better to be able to gather them and respond to them in the best way possible.

Don’t be afraid to experiment (and fail)
When considering the use of social tools within the workplace, don’t be afraid to experiment, and we advocate starting small. Invite a number of people whom you believe will be early adopters, and allow them to spread the word. Make them champions within the business, and they will help culture the guidelines and behaviours that can achieve your goals. Social tools are by their very nature flexible and cost-effective, so create a playground, sit back, watch and learn.

A range of business applications and solutions
And finally, developing social tools for internal communications isn’t an initiative that should be led or driven by your IT department. Why? Simply put, they exist to implement now out-moded command and control systems, and are much more focussed on the ‘tech’ rather than the all important behaviours.

Wrapping up, social tools can help you with a plethora of business cases, including the following;

• Internal collaboration
• Knowledge sharing
• Business networking
• Learning
• Internal communications
• Resource management
• Sweating knowledge capital
• Sales support
• Customer service

If you’re asking yourself how you can achieve some of these points, and want to learn more how social tools can benefit your organisation on the inside then drop me a line, I’d be happy to help, advise, guide and get my hands dirty.

Last night, a few of us from the office went along to One Alfred Place to listen to a presentation by Jemima Gibbons on her new book, Monkeys with Typewriters. The event was actually hosted by the Society for Organisational Learning (SOL-UK), and was attended more by academics and those in the business of Knowledge Management and Learning, than Social Media/Business/Software people like ourselves. This however was what made the debate captivating!

To in part quote Jemima herself, Monkeys with Typewriters sets about debunking the idea that social media are an amateurish distraction for today’s organisations. Having only seen snippets of the book at the present time, I can’t reassure you that the book actually achieves this, but what became evident was the progress and development in social media and social software that have been achieved since Jemima set about writing the book. Many of the chapter hooks such as co-creation, passion, openness and transparency have already been well document elsewhere, leaving the book feeling the somewhat dated. However, it soon became clear that this particular audience were naturally some way behind our own thinking and work practices

What I feel Jemima has done well is to engage and strong selection of web entrepreneurs, practitioners and industry spokespeople. This has allowed her to present many varied views of such topics as co-creation, openness and transparency, whilst hitting home the point that entrepreneurs of the future will create much flatter (non-hierarchical) business structures, and harness the power of ‘we’ thinking.

Among those interviewed include Scott Monty (Ford Motor Company), who’s view was that Ford is essentially a news organisation, Craig Newmark (Founder of Craigslist) who emphasises his role as a customer service manager, and Lloyd Davis (Tuttle Club) who states that if you can’t come to Tuttle Club because of work commitment then you simply don’t get it - it is work!

Perhaps my main take-out of the session was that of the perspective of the learning professionals present in the room. They were adamant that ‘learning’ will never take place in such an effective manner online as it does offline (or face-to-face), despite knowledge flow and information the internet puts at out fingertips. Learning clearly needs to combine the two within organisations, but must understand how, when and where to integrate the two, and provide a real purpose to the social tools that support it.

I tweeted snippets of the presentation here for you to view, and was astonished to even get a response from the Craig Newman himself as praised him for his beliefs!

(New things I learnt: Tuple and Panopticon!)

Socialising Best Practice and Lessons Learnt

The Design Council, a UK Government-funded strategic body, promotes the use of design through the UK.  They help business be better at doing what they do by instilling design thinking and by helping designers be more effective and public services more efficient.

Having embarked upon the development of The Designers’ Business Knowledge Base (DBKB) - an essential Best Practice resource from which design professionals, design buyers and design educators can seek inspiration and guidance - the client required a strategic overlay describing how the DBKB could be delivered as an interactive communication and collaboration tool.

The core of our work saw the development of a Digital Framework for the DBKB focusing on how users could submit and extract experience-based stories and case studies. Insights were by way of formal submissions and more conversational stories of the kind designers of all ages and experience could submit using simple, easy-to-use social software tools.

The  framework was constructed on four pillars; The User Model, Content Model, Business Model and Sustainability Model.

• The User Model proposed a variety of benefits and rewards for each of the stakeholder groups, including those of a social, emotional, financial and experiential kind.
• The Content Model explored how the resource would harness user-generated content to provide insightful and inspiring best practice examples.
• The Business Model looked at and made recommendations as to how The Design Council could monetise the service
• And finally, the Sustainability Model took inspiration from what we believed to be some of the more forward-thinking online services around, and how the DBKB could integrate their behaviours in order to be more future-proofed.

The crux of our strategic recommendations was for The Design Council to harness its existing offline design practitioner network connections for traditional push messaging, but also to engage them in more dynamic and ongoing online conversation in order to trawl for ongoing insights and knowledge around design best practice. The development of best practice guidelines in a traditional sense had proven to be expensive, and often the outcome would date very quickly. Digitally captured knowledge could be kept alive, nurtured and extended by the community, and knowledge shared over time to the extent that the community became self-helpers.

Our recommended process and methodology is currently being developed ready for implementation.

Heroes is a talent business that helps its clients (businesses and agencies) find world-class innovation, creativity, branding and communication expertise on an as-needed basis - a kind of ‘talent on-tap’ offering. The talent - known as the Heroes - include such luminaries as Stephen Bayley, Kevin Duncan and Alistair Fee among others.

The business owners wanted to tackle how talent businesses operate by creating a powerful knowledge base and collaboration tool that delivered greater connectivity, networking and knowledge exchange. Despite counting some of the UK’s most prestigious creative and problem-solving minds as their asset, they were disparate and disconnected.

Working closely with the business owners, we designed a solution using an existing professional grade forum and KM  software package. Known as the Green Room, we customised the interface and functionality and created a communication and file-sharing structure that focused on three core area; Community Discussions, Work Opportunities and Idea Development.

Community Discussions
By engendering greater network connectedness, and turning some of the weaker ties into stronger, more collaborative ties, we created an online community of creative and branding experts. Community Discussions was a place where hot topics and general issues shared by the community through their work could be discussed, and where knowledge that could help solve briefs was located.

Work Opportunities
An innovative development was to provide a forum upon which not just briefs for talent were shared and discussed, but also a place where end-client briefs could be brainstormed and where participation could be activated.

Idea Development
We found that the Heroes themselves were an entrepreneurial group of individuals, so set about creating a space where their own business ideas could be cultivated by groups of like-minded and ‘interested’ collaborators. The collective intellectual property that was generated became a valuable asset to the business and it’s individual stakeholders alike.

Not only did the Green Room help innovate a traditional talent business, it provided a powerful collaboration tool the likes of which many of the Heroes themselves had not witnessed in their professional lives, but had become commonplace in their own social networking activities. We made full use of these behaviours such that the Heroes were able to adopt the new tool with ease. Heroes' new connectivity also brought about a new sense of belonging, companionship and a sense of 'we', which, when working on a contractual-basis, is often lacking.

Here’s what our client had to say about the experience, which naturally we’re rather pleased about;

Dub has been a very positive transformational force for my business.  Not only have they worked on a consultancy basis to create a culture of understanding around the complex issues of on-line networking, they have also worked very hard to create a networking structure that answers the needs of my business.  From the outset of this project, Dub has explained in a clear and jargon-free way the opportunities and potential downsides of setting up an web-based network.  In a sector in which it is easy to be dazzled and left bewildered by the technology of the process and to lose sight of the desired outcomes, dub have always been reassuringly 'non-techy', non patronising and yet have managed to operate at the forefront of the sector without making me feel left behind in my own project.

Throughout the whole project the dub men seemed to be as committed and enthusiastic about making my project work and work well as I was.  I never got the impression that  this was just another gig for them.

Dub does service, they do hard-nosed technical fulfillment and they do very sound consultancy. They are also good people to be around and a pleasure to talk to over lunch - not something I have ever said about anybody who has provided me with a technically-based service before!

We've said for a long time that online research communities provide better research experiences for both clients AND respondents, or members as we prefer to label them. Fun and enjoyment can be quite hard to measure, but seeing the feedback we've just received from a community that we've been running in Brazil, I think it speaks for itself. It's so good we had to share it with you.....

"I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be part of the project, I hope you enjoyed my ideas....I loved it and wanted you to know I did it with affection. I found it really cool, I hope you have received lots of good ideas."

and then there's this one..

"Thank you! I really liked taking part, I found it to be very dynamic and different."

and this one..

"I am available when if you need more research, okay? You can count on me."

I think you get the idea. These people thrived on the  creativity and fun that the tasks we designed offered them, and of course the very personal relationships they struck up with our moderators. I your research needs an injection like this, we'd love to hear from you.

Congratulations to Experian, Progressive and Vanguard for winning Forrester's inaugural Voice of the Customer Awards in NY yesterday. It's great to see that organisations that gather feedback and turn it into actionable insight to generate ROI are being recognised. It's a major task to gather feedback from the customer masses, and then collating and reporting on it at such a scale.

This new form of marketing is largely supported by some traditional skills combined with great new technologies including:

• Cloud Computing and the rise of the Software-as-a-Service business model
• Increased access to faster broadband
• Maturing social networking behaviours and social media tools
• API's that allow you to integrate mutliple systems such as CRM

All three companies awarded a prize emonstrated hat the voice of the customer was too valuable to ignore, and that by listening to and valuing individuals, the resultant insight and opportunities could propel the business through increased sales, greater advocacy and generally being regarded highly as a business that listens and acts upon what their customers are telling them.

At Dub we provide the tools to allow brands and organisations to do just this, whether it is your customers, your staff or even your suppliers that you want to engage and listen to.

I was saddended not to see any European businesses in this list, surely you are out there. If you are, and you think you should be represented in a more European-centric award scheme, let me know and we'll see what we can do about it.

We’ve recently had an international, multi-brand organisation benefit from using our web-based tools to gather ideas from their internal expert communities. It was a great project since a) the platform was deployed in a foreign language, and b) it allowed staff from all levels and various departments to come together to share their ideas. In effect, the brands were cross-fertilised and the resultant ideas were then opened out further for exploration, research and development by the relevant expert communities. Ideas were created and co-created by individuals and groups, thus providing a greater array and some more quirky, interesting thoughts.

This process of using staff to innovate collaboratively is fast becoming the norm thanks to the emergence of social media. What is especially interesting is that collaborative innovation provides a voice for all within the organisation, no matter what level they are. Young or old, Junior or Senior, Receptionist or Director - an idea can come from anyone, anywhere at any time.

Relative to this concept of providing your staff with a voice, and listening to them, Sainsbury’s - the UK’s oldest supermarket - has turned to it’s staff for help during these tough times. Justin King, CEO, needed fresh ideas to keep the supermarket ahead of it’s rivals. In a new Channel 4 program currently airing, King opened up the (shop) floor for ideas from his staff and gave a select few the opportunity to bring their ideas to life, to see if they could really make a difference.

In the first episode that I watched, a new employee of Sainsbury’s with a background in sales took to the floor and carried our face-to-face, or direct, sales. It was a hit, though it was clear that the personnel carrying out the sales had to be carefully selected. The lucky lady who came up with the idea and led the way is now in-charge of implementing the initiative across a number of stores as a further trial. Brilliant, bravo!

Organisations need to innovate during these tough economic times, and beyond. Collaborative innovation, and the identification of new leaders to bring it to life, is a strategy that should always be considered, given the right tools and support. Here at Dub we help our clients generate and manage ideas, spot the best talent and drive innovation using our proprietary technology and added value service. For more information, contact Stephen Cribbett

The UK's favourite retailer, Marks & Spencer, has garnered a lot of media attention recently following its decision to raise the price large bras by £2. The media I refer to is of course not only the tabloids, but social media and those vocal customers versed in using it to rally the crowds. Perhaps the best example of the groundswell is a Facebook group called Busts4Justice which as of today stood with over 17,000 members!

An organisation the nature of M&S - large, customer-facing, national/international - clearly had a business case to support their action, however, their reputation took a dive not only because of the decision they took, but the lack of engagement and consultation that took place ahead of making the decision and presenting the price hike to the public.

Social media allows consumers with a shared passion or common interest - in this instance large breasts - to hyper-connect and create unilateral campaigns that have been known to have an immense negative impact on reputation, brand trust and loyalty. Turn social media on it's head and it presents the perfect medium with which brands can engage in conversation and discussion with consumers, be it in an public or private environment.

As a business that helps and advises brands how to use social media to engage with consumers and staff, we take much from a story like this. The lessons to learn include:

Trigger the conversation, don't wait for it to happen - Before the announcement were made, but at the time of it being discussed internally, locate consumer that are already having conversations around this topic or subject, and invite them into a private conversation. These people will by their very nature be the most vocal and passionate since they are already sharing their views and opinions in the public domain. Knowing where to find them can take time and expertise, but the chances are there will be a public forum somewhere out there where they are already active.

Listen carefully - Once you've triggered a discussion, pay attention carefully and listen to the views and opinions of your customers. Use three ears to do it if necessary! Researchers and moderators have the necessary skills to do this as well as interpreting the information being shared, so consider using them.

Empathise - As the issue or decision is made public, continue to listen and acknowledge points that are being raised. Your Community Manager(s) should provide the voice of your brand at this stage.

Reward - Acknowledgement and involvement with the decision-making process are forms of reward, but there are many others. Loyalty schemes and price promotions are other forms that cab used (within retail businesses), whereby you nurture the customer relationships you have by offering them discounts on other associated products (in the case of M&S where the hike was publicised, for example).

The result of M&S not following some of these recommendations resulted in a very public u-turn, which despite giving customers their requests, left M&S bruised and with a new layer of distrust.

A new survey by leading senior marketing executives networking group MENG suggests that business is increasingly looking towards external collaborations as the source for new ideas and innovation.

62% of senior marketers questioned rated crowdsourcing and collaboration as either effective or highly effective, compared to 73% who said the same of internal research and development (R&D), and 63% for employee contributions (workplace innovation).

Most intriguing of all, only a measly 54% rated the use of traditional consulting firms and professional services firms as an effective source for new ideas.

The main pillars for crowdsourcing are:

• Self select / self organisation
• Meritocracy's
• Open-source development (Linux, Wikipedia, Google open API etc.)
• Customer service via mass collaboration

These findings are great news for the practitioners and followers of crowdsourcing and the open-source movement, however, what it doesn't highlight is the reasons underpinning this shift. A need for greater democracy is clear in emerging markets, but pressure to follow the example of such leading lights as IBM, Lego and Dell is perhaps going to lead to as many poor imitations as good.

For business to capitalise on the wisdom of the crowd, the right environment must be created. Business needs to be aware of the great challenges of the mechanisms of sharing & distributing co-created value (reward), be it of a social, emotional or financial measure.

HP, we're told, is reorganising their HP Labs facility to address "the most complex challenges facing technology customers in the next decade". The reorganisation will take in a more open approach, with the pursuit of 20 to 30 large research projects as a primary focus.

HP Labs has also created an Open Innovation Office "responsible for deepening HP Labs strategic collaborations with this in academia, government and the commercial sector"

Given all this fighting talk we couldn't resist making a beeline for the area that most excites us, their open innovation platform called HP Idea Lab.

On arrival we couldn't work out whether we were at an advertising platform, brand site or, as they say, an open innovation platform. It certainly didn't carry the features or activities of any open innovation platform we'd experienced! (IBM's Innovation Jam would be worth you checking out at this point if you're new to open innovation).

The richness of the interface gives it the perception of, say, a gaming or ad platform, whereas the type of platform they aspire to encourages participation and engagement through ease-of-use and established user behaviours. OK, so you can move the big colourful blocks around the screen. So what! What might the reorganisation of these squares tell you about your participants? Absolutely nothing.

Entering into one of the, er, colour blocks , you get a demo of some of the new technologies and initiatives HP are developing. And there the experience effectively ends.

There are opportunities to bookmark the site, comment on a HP blog and send to a friend, but these alone do not justify the label 'open innovation'. Sadly, HP have tried to reinvent the wheel rather than hook onto existing social media tools and user behaviours to get the audience to share their thoughts, refine ideas and become advocates. Henry Chesbrough states that open innovation is 'the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate innovation", yet HP appear to have done everything possible to stifle interactivity and sharing by presenting a poor user-interface. Our advice to HP is drop the whizzes and the bangs and focus on how best to get your very specific and passionate audience thinking about and interacting with your work and theology, and not just the visual design of the interface. Think about