5 steps to launch your enterprise social network

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So, you’re ready to launch your company’s new social network.

It might seem like it will be easy - simply open it up and let them loose, right?

Not quite!

Not quite! To make it work, a launch needs to be planned out and managed carefully.

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Here are five steps that you should consider to help you launch your enterprise social network out of orbit.

1. Conduct a pilot launch

In most cases, a big launch will be a flop.

Throwing users in the deep end and expecting them to become adept social networkers straight away, immediately changing the way they work and communicate with one another, is unrealistic.

Instead, do a soft launch first with a select group of users before you roll it out company-wide.

This way you can work out any quirks in the system and establish a plan of action for getting users fully involved with the platform.

2. Get your champions started

Get a group of champions to start using the enterprise social network.

They’ll help you iron out the bugs and will help you to roll it out to a wider user-base later.

Invite a spectrum of people from across the business to be your first users.

Include a mixture:

• Early adopters

• Socially savvy people

• Contributors

• Spectators

• Key users

• Executives

Train these users on the system and encourage them to start working in the platform.

Once they get to grips with the system they will become advocates and will be able to help and train other users later.

3. Build out your content

Your champions will help you to build the content within the platform.

It’s important to have the enterprise social network seeded and alive before it is opened up to the rest of the organisation, so that there’s somewhere to start and work from.

Populate the network with valuable content and information like:

• User guides

• Templates

• Brand files

• Onboarding documentation

Joining an active, vibrant community will help to enthuse new users into getting involved.

New users will take clues from the existing community on how to use the system.

They will find it easier to try microblog posts, comments and mentions when they see experienced users doing so.

4. Educate users

Don’t just train everyone once at the start – run top-up sessions.

4. Educate users

Train all new users so that they understand:

• The technicalities of the enterprise social network

• The benefits of the system

• How it can help them to streamline their work

• How it can improve communications

4. Educate users

Take care to help users with lower levels of expertise or those who use the system less frequently to avoid user drop-off.

5. Document wins

Once you’ve launched your enterprise social network, remember to continually identify and document wins to promote the success of the platform.

5. Document wins

These could be things like:

• Increases in product knowledge scores since the launch

of the system

• Reductions in the time certain projects take to complete

• Improved inter-team communication

5. Document wins

Broadcasting successes with colleagues via the enterprise social network will demonstrate the value of the platform to users, particularly those who may be skeptical or haven’t fully signed on to using the system yet.

5. Document wins

Broadcasting successes with colleagues via the enterprise social network will demonstrate the value of the platform to users, particularly those who may be skeptical or haven’t fully signed on to using the system yet.

Consider starting a hashtag to group these wins together and use them to measure the results of the system.

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5 steps to launch your enterprise social network

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