Social Media at Work

Corporate marketing departments have made huge investments - mostly in time and energy - in social media. The major names - Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - are all firmly established as necessary communications channels, deserving of strategic thought and management.

But what about internal communications? Will social media tools ever catch on inside the network?

Microsoft has built a variety of social media tools into its integrated offerings of Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, and Office 365. Yet activity streams ... which seem to be the primary currency of Facebook and Twitter ... have yet to become relevant to the day-to-day technology at work.
But I believe that will change soon. The answers to many age-old office space questions can all be easily answered with status updates and check-ins:

• Where is [fill-in-the-blank] today?
• Where are we meeting for lunch?
• How is the new product development coming along?

Right now, using a Facebook or Twitter-like tool for such things seems silly.

Two years ago, many people thought 140-character mini-updates ("I am on the patio") seemed silly, too.

Great apps for the iPad

In December, my boss got all of us iPads as an end-of-year gift. Since that time, I have tried to find the right applications that will turn the device into a real business tool. While there are some very large missing pieces, here are a three versatile applications that have made the iPad a worthwhile investment:

Taking Notes: So far, the killer app for note taking is still OneNote, from Microsoft. Unfortunately, the boys from Redmond have not made the application available for any of the Apple devices, including the iPad. Absent that, I use Notes Plus, available from iTunes. It comes with a variety of useful features, most notably a way to zoom in for hand-writing and drawing. I've tried EverNote and PenUltimate, and this app easily betters them.

Instant Messaging: Meebo is an instant messaging application that will give you access to multiple I/M accounts at once. After setting up an account at their website, add log-in credentials for the various I/M tools you use, like G-Mail, Facebook, AIM, MSN Messenger, etc. I don't believe that you can set up a group chat across accounts, but that's it's only shortcoming. Well, that and the fact that the current version is not optimized for the iPad. (I just hit the 2x button to make it easier to see.( They have not announced when an iPad version will be released, though a lot of users have requested it.

Task Management: I have a lot of clients, and remembering deliverables and tasks for all of them is really challenging. So I use Remember the Milk to manage and organize my tasks. After signing up at their website ($25/year subscription), you can manage all kinds of tasks from the web site and from the app on an iPad, iPhone and even a Droid phone. Like Meebo, no iPad-optimized version is yet available, nor have they announced one for release. Even so, it does a great job helping me keep one synchronized list of tasks managed and organized.

WEB SITES FOR ALL THREE APPS:
Notes Plus
Meebo
Remember the Milk

What are they saying?

Your customers may be talking about you .... are you listening?

There are plenty of reasons for getting into the social networking mix. The most compelling might be that it will give you the opportunity to tune into the conversation about you, your competitors and your customers.

TweetGrid (screenshot shown at right) is my favorite monitoring tool. It's free and easy to use. It won't give you reports or enable data capture, but it will keep you looped in on any chatter that mentions your company. Other tools are coming into the market that will integrate other networks, like FaceBook and LinkedIn, into a more complete picture of the web conversation that you're concerned about. Depending on your particular needs, you may find that such a tool would be a worthwhile investment.

If you're not tuned into what the market is saying about you, you are missing a massive opportunity. Call me now to talk about how we can help you enhance your online strategy and boost your brand.