I’ve gotten a few questions lately on an older post of mine about using Web 2.0 tools inside the company firewall. One of those queries came in the form of an email from Michelle Rafter. Michelle writes for Inc. Technology and wrote a post specifically dealing with how companies are using or can use Social Networking tools internal.
Now that companies use social networking to connect with the outside world, more are bringing the same technology in-house. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, effort or money to get started.
The article is a quick but good read, be sure to check it out (and I’m not just saying that because she quotes me 
The other question I get is not just how to deploy the tools (probably since most people responsible for this aren’t the technical person) but what should be the topic? There are two answers I have for this: Pick one thing or Anything.
Obviously this isn’t an either or scenario but largely it depends on your company. At HP, the skies the limit. Want a team blog to share code updates? Yep, got it. Want a wiki page to organize the next site party? Do you need a Share Point space to collaborate and share documents? Want a personal blog to talk about how you disagree with some new corporate policy? It’s there.
This works for large companies like HP because there’s enough internal demand for these tools coming from Web savvy employees that if HP didn’t provide a forum we’d go find our own.
For some companies starting off with a C-level blog is a great entry point. Or start with one work group using an internal wiki. The key is to not force it. The topic should be driven by a need to collaborate.
Anyone else out there have an example of internal use of new media at your company?
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At MetaGeek we’ve been fans of Web 2.0 tools for a while now. Here’s our current setup:
Google Apps For Your Domain to host our email (IMAP interface to sync w/ Thunderbird and Mail.App) as well as Google Docs for collaboration on everything from development specs to balance sheets. We also use Google Calendar for scheduling (synced w/ iCal). And of course, Google Talk allows us to communicate with each other when we’re not in the office.
Remember the Milk works well for shared to-do lists (allows tasks to be sent to others, has RSS feeds for incoming tasks, email reminders, and a mobile interface).
For general knowledge sharing we use a mix of shared feeds in Google Reader and Delicious bookmarks using for: and then an RSS feed into Reader for “tags for you”.
Highrise CRM is working okay, and the RSS feed helps me stay on top of everything happening with customers and vendors.
Nice. Jeremiah Owyang has this beast of a list of white label social networks, very good reference for companies thinking about ways to pull this value in house.
http://tinyurl.com/2mwa6g
Thanks for the plug Tac. My next wave of stories about taking social media in-house go live on IncTechnology on Jan. 1. By then I’ve vowed to have my own blog up and running. After all the reporting I’ve done on this topic lately I definitely feel like a latecomer to the party.
Ryan, great tips. That’s a great example of how Web 2.0 technologies can be leveraged for actual ‘work’, not just ’socializing
Mike, thanks for that link, very cool. That reminded me of one I saw on TechCrunch a while so I went back and found it - http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/wlsn_comparison_chart.html
Michelle, I look forward to the launch of your blog, let me know when it launches.