9 Months, 9 Thoughts on Social Collaboration
In the world of enterprise, social collaboration is becoming a big thing. More companies want to get their employees into the social media game by having them sign up for collaborative platforms such as Salesforce, Cisco Quad, and other homemade platforms. Social collaboration promises employees the benefits of working within a team, being social about what they are getting done, and getting more done, in addition to learning more about the people they work around.
I’ve been in this realm for the last 9 months at the company that I’ve been working at. In the 9 months I’ve been there, I’ve gathered many observations regarding how social collaboration is viewed.
1. Technological fatigue reigns in some spaces
This always seems to be the number one reason people don’t want to collaborate. Facebook and Twitter and YouTube already seem to be a part of people’s lives, and adding collaboration at work seems to be an even bigger headache. For companies where technology changes by the month or even week, employees get tired of technologies being tossed to them, and they just want to get work done.
2. Some just have a lack of desire to collaborate
There are many lone wolves in this world, and in corporations when you are just a number, there is also that lack of desire to collaborate. Some just want to get work done, and there is not much else to say beyond that.
3. There is a great deal of potential
The upside to collaboration is big. People want to use these tools because a central location for everything is absolutely necessary. There is a want to eliminate email clutter and notifications popping up left and right.
4. But there is also a lot of technical downside
Social media in general has yet to get the UI/UX story right. Tumblr is one of the few exceptions, but there are many cases in social collaboration and social media where things simply do not work. Even if its not Facebook, sometimes pages hang and just prevent people from getting more work done.
5. There is also a lot of technical knowledge that needs to be learned
Part of the case of social collaboration is that sometimes, people need to learn how to do a little bit of coding. For those of us who dabble in this often, that’s not a problem. For those who have non-technical backgrounds, this presents more problems because even if they can copy and paste, some just don’t know where to copy and paste to.
6. Will we ever really eliminate Email?
In using collaborative tools, I feel like the need for email actually increases. How do you notify people of where things are? Notify people of recent replies to posts and uploads? Notification systems are key here for any social platform, but I think email is still around here to stay, even if some people detest it completely.
7. Speed still Matters
Gone are the days of 56k dialup, but here are the days of slow loading feature-rich sites. Social media is no doubt a clear and concrete example. Load time for a website still matters, and sometimes loading up a social media page or a collaborative page takes an extreme bit of time. When people want to get things done, give them the opportunity to do so. Don’t create lag.
8. Collaborative ROI is still a phrase I have yet to see
In the consumer based social media world, where Facebook and Twitter reign there is still a lot of debate, but that debate is still heating up on how ROI is to be measured, whether that be in Klout, TwitterCounter, followers, lists or clients closed. In enterprise social collaboration, I have yet to see what matters be hashed out anywhere. Is it the number of members in a community? Is it how many visit a community? Documents uploaded? Posts created for discussion? Time spent? Until these numbers are agreed upon many will still be somewhat wary.
9. Its still a content-driven space
Social collaboration is just like social media. Both are content driven spaces and both require immense about of upkeep and content management in order to thrive and survive. Even though one is internal and the other is external they still share a lot of features.
What do you think are some interesting points about social collaboration? Share with me below in the comments or leave a tweet @albertqian
