by David F. Carr

Social Collaboration

Social Collaboration For Dummies®

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Contents at a GlanceIntroduction ................................................................ 1

Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration ............ 5Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking .................... 7Chapter 2: Getting Familiar with Social Collaboration Tools ..................................... 41Chapter 3: Putting Social Collaboration to Work ........................................................ 69

Part II: Organizing Work with Social Collaboration....... 85Chapter 4: Everyday Sharing on a Social Network ...................................................... 87Chapter 5: Working Your Network .............................................................................. 105Chapter 6: Managing Projects and Tasks.................................................................... 115Chapter 7: Collaborating on Content .......................................................................... 133

Part III: Exploring the Social Collaboration Software Market ...................................................... 147Chapter 8: Beginning Your Search for a Social Collaboration Platform ................. 149Chapter 9: Charting the Products and Vendors ........................................................ 171Chapter 10: Social Collaboration in the Cloud ........................................................... 193Chapter 11: Standards for Social Networking and Integration ................................ 213

Part IV: Managing Social Collaboration ..................... 227Chapter 12: Succeeding with Social Collaboration .................................................... 229Chapter 13: Managing Successful Collaboration Communities ............................... 249Chapter 14: Engaging External Collaborators ............................................................ 269

Part V: Playing Your Part in a Social Business ........... 277Chapter 15: The CEO and Executive Management Guide to Social Collaboration ... 279Chapter 16: The CIO Guide to Social Collaboration .................................................. 293Chapter 17: The Workplace Leader’s Guide to Social Collaboration ...................... 301Chapter 18: Social Collaboration for the Sales Team ................................................ 311Chapter 19: Social Collaboration for the Worker Bee ............................................... 323

Part VI: The Part of Tens .......................................... 331Chapter 20: Ten Common Themes in Social Collaboration Success Stories ......... 333Chapter 21: Ten Obstacles to Social Collaboration Success .................................... 341Chapter 22: Ten Ways to Make Social Collaboration Pay Off .................................. 349

Appendix: Case Studies: Learn from Others ................ 361

Index ...................................................................... 375

Table of ContentsIntroduction ................................................................. 1

About This Book .............................................................................................. 1Foolish Assumptions ....................................................................................... 2Icons Used in This Book ................................................................................. 3Beyond the Book ............................................................................................. 3Where to Go from Here ................................................................................... 4

Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration ............ 5

Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Defining Social Collaboration ......................................................................... 8Seeing how social collaboration can help your business ................. 9Social collaboration: not about cloning Facebook .......................... 12Socializing software ............................................................................. 13Making social networking serve business purposes ....................... 16

Distinguishing between Collaboration and Social Networking ................ 19Accelerating teamwork with collaboration ...................................... 20Reaching across the organization with social networking ............. 21

Bringing Collaboration and Social Networking Together ......................... 24Sharing expertise within the organization ........................................ 24Introducing new collaborations ......................................................... 25Finding new connections through existing connections ................ 26Linking knowledge, documents, and projects to people ................ 27

Competing and Coexisting with E-Mail ....................................................... 28Providing social discussions as an alternative to Reply to All ...... 30Linking to documents rather than attaching them.......................... 31Encouraging sharing beyond the personal inbox ............................ 32Bridging the gap between social collaboration and e-mail habits .... 33

Exploring Practical Applications of Social Collaboration ........................ 35Helping sales teams close more deals with social collaboration .... 35Finding answers to questions............................................................. 37Coordinating projects from the social activity stream ................... 38Generating ideas for products and business improvements ......... 39

Social Collaboration For Dummies viChapter 2: Getting Familiar with Social Collaboration Tools . . . . . . .41

Introducing Social Collaboration Tools ...................................................... 42Taking a look at corporate activity streams..................................... 43Sharing links, media, and documents ............................................... 47Determining what to post to an activity stream .............................. 48Monitoring an activity stream ............................................................ 49Connecting external applications to an activity stream ................. 50Addressing your post to a specific person or group....................... 52

Moving Beyond Social Media ....................................................................... 55Introducing Facebook and Twitter users to social collaboration .... 55Keeping social collaboration productive with policies

and community management ......................................................... 58Navigating the Enterprise Social Graph ...................................................... 59

Defining the social graph .................................................................... 60Making friends with reciprocal links ................................................. 61Following people and subscribing to their feeds............................. 61Subscribing to feeds about documents, events, projects,

or customer records ........................................................................ 62Searching for expertise ....................................................................... 62Searching the social graph ................................................................. 63

Forming Groups ............................................................................................. 64Making room for projects ................................................................... 65Configuring levels of privacy in a group ........................................... 65

Working Together on Content ..................................................................... 66Creating, editing, and linking documents wiki-style ........................ 66Incorporating file sharing ................................................................... 66

Forecasting the Future of Social Collaboration ......................................... 67

Chapter 3: Putting Social Collaboration to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69Harnessing the Energy of Social Networks for Business .......................... 69Gearing Up for Implementation ................................................................... 71

Forming the team ................................................................................. 71Organizing advocates .......................................................................... 73Borrowing freely from consumer innovations ................................. 74Branding the network .......................................................................... 75Publicizing the launch ......................................................................... 75

Addressing Enterprise Requirements for Social Collaboration ............... 76Ensuring security and balancing trade-offs ...................................... 77Archiving content for backup and legal discovery.......................... 78Integrating with existing portal and document management

infrastructure .................................................................................... 78Linking to corporate directories and HR systems .......................... 79Layering social connections onto existing applications ................. 79Connecting multiple social applications ........................................... 80

Putting Social Collaboration in Context ..................................................... 81

vii Table of Contents

Part II: Organizing Work with Social Collaboration ....... 85

Chapter 4: Everyday Sharing on a Social Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87Sharing and Targeting Posts ........................................................................ 88

Posting a simple status message ....................................................... 88Knowing your audience ...................................................................... 89Sharing with the entire organization ................................................. 90Sharing with a group ........................................................................... 91Tagging other users to get their attention........................................ 93Classifying posts with hashtags or formal taxonomy ..................... 94

Choosing Types of Posts Useful for Social Collaboration ........................ 96Asking a question ................................................................................. 96Polling the organization ...................................................................... 97Thanking people and recognizing employees for achievement .... 98

Sharing Files and Media ................................................................................ 99Sharing files and documents ............................................................ 100Working with collaborators on a business record ........................ 100Sharing images and video ................................................................. 101

Responding to Another User’s Post .......................................................... 102

Chapter 5: Working Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105Making and Cultivating Connections ........................................................ 105

Returning the favor ............................................................................ 107Cultivating connections .................................................................... 109

Looking Professional Online ...................................................................... 110Fleshing out your profile ................................................................... 110Answering questions ......................................................................... 111Sharing useful information ............................................................... 112Joining the right groups .................................................................... 112Having fun while showing respect for the workplace ................... 113

Chapter 6: Managing Projects and Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115Sharing Progress Reports as Simple Social Posts ................................... 116Using More Sophisticated Social Task Management .............................. 117

Creating a task as a social object ..................................................... 119Assigning tasks to other users ......................................................... 119Setting deadlines ................................................................................ 120Exploring additional social task management options ................. 121

Structuring Work in Podio .......................................................................... 121Introducing Podio apps and tasks ................................................... 121Building a Podio app ......................................................................... 124Creating a task .................................................................................... 125Creating related tasks ....................................................................... 126

Managing Activities in IBM Connections .................................................. 128

Social Collaboration For Dummies viiiComparing Approaches to Social Task Management ............................. 130

Building social features into project management tools .............. 131Adding tasks to a social platform as a social object type ............ 131Coordinating activities through informal social sharing .............. 132

Chapter 7: Collaborating on Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133Sharing Document Files .............................................................................. 133

Uploading and downloading ............................................................. 134Previewing in the browser ................................................................ 135Checking in and checking out .......................................................... 136Sharing documents as social objects .............................................. 136

Writing and Editing Documents Together ................................................ 138Collaborating on content, wiki-style ................................................ 138Editing simultaneously, à la Google Docs ....................................... 142

Keeping Content under Control ................................................................. 144

Part III: Exploring the Social Collaboration Software Market ....................................................... 147

Chapter 8: Beginning Your Search for a Social Collaboration Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149

Developing a Plan for Choosing a Social Collaboration System ............ 150Identifying Key Distinguishing Features ................................................... 152

Mobilizing for results ........................................................................ 152Searching for the best social search engine ................................... 153Managing content beyond the status post ..................................... 156File sharing and the cloud ................................................................ 157Motivating behavior with gamification ........................................... 157Supporting innovation and ideation ................................................ 159

Choosing Software to Organize Ideas ....................................................... 160Understanding the Different Types of Vendors and Products .............. 162

Comparing established system vendors versus startups ............ 162Seeking simplicity .............................................................................. 164Going lightweight ............................................................................... 165Insisting on sophistication ............................................................... 166When you need it all .......................................................................... 167

Weighing Trade-Offs .................................................................................... 167Getting started trumps perfection ................................................... 168Trusting future features .................................................................... 168

ix Table of Contents

Chapter 9: Charting the Products and Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171Examining Selected Social Collaboration Vendors ................................. 171

Reviewing the leaders ....................................................................... 172Collaborating in the cloud ................................................................ 174Cloud, hosted, or on premises ......................................................... 175But wait — there’s more! .................................................................. 178

Building a Short List of Candidates ........................................................... 179Getting Started for Free .............................................................................. 180

Taking advantage of freemium and free trial offers ...................... 181Calculating the cost of “free” ............................................................ 181

Conducting a Pilot Project .......................................................................... 182Planning the pilot project ................................................................. 182Considering the cost ......................................................................... 183Designing a successful pilot project ................................................ 183Generating buzz ................................................................................. 184Ensuring access to data .................................................................... 184

Identifying Distinguishing Characteristics of the Leaders ..................... 185Choosing a comprehensive platform .............................................. 185Focusing on the activity stream ....................................................... 186Supporting a specific application like sales collaboration ........... 186Managing tasks and projects ............................................................ 186

Dealing with SharePoint .............................................................................. 187Assessing commitment to Microsoft’s collaboration platform ...... 187Using SharePoint as your social platform ...................................... 189Extending SharePoint ........................................................................ 190Linking SharePoint to your social platform .................................... 190Scrapping SharePoint ........................................................................ 190

Chapter 10: Social Collaboration in the Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193Playing in the Cloud .................................................................................... 194

Recognizing the innovation taking place in cloud computing ..... 195Making collaboration services available from anywhere ............. 196Providing private cloud alternatives if public cloud

is unacceptable ............................................................................... 196Distinguishing between Cloud and Application Hosting ........................ 197Assessing the Advantages of the Cloud .................................................... 198

Reducing the burden on your IT department ................................ 198Taking advantage of continuous improvements ........................... 200Reaching out to telecommuters and traveling employees ........... 200Automating account provisioning ................................................... 201

Appreciating the Advantages of Cloud-Only Products ........................... 201Delivering continual innovation ....................................................... 201Focusing on a single version of software ........................................ 202Upgrading difficulties become a thing of the past ......................... 202

Social Collaboration For Dummies xAvoiding the Pitfalls of Free ....................................................................... 202Embracing ad hoc efforts, where possible ............................................... 203Weighing Simplicity Versus Control ......................................................... 205Addressing Concerns about Cloud Services ............................................ 206

Understanding key security practices ............................................ 207Trusting but verifying service provider security and reliability .... 207Integrating existing resources .......................................................... 209Complying with regulations.............................................................. 209Achieving integration across a firewall ........................................... 210

Negotiating a Better Contract .................................................................... 210

Chapter 11: Standards for Social Networking and Integration . . . . .213Surviving Shifting Standards ...................................................................... 213

Coping with immature technologies ............................................... 215Recognizing de facto standards ....................................................... 215

Leveraging Common Social Web Standards ............................................. 216Authorizing social app access with OAuth ..................................... 217Standardizing feeds with ActivityStrea.ms ..................................... 219Embedding apps in HTML iframes................................................... 219Setting social context with JavaScript APIs .................................... 220Charting Facebook’s Open Graph .................................................... 220

OpenSocial: Providing an Enterprise Standard for App Embedding .... 222Calculating the Odds for the Future of Social Software Standards ....... 225

Part IV: Managing Social Collaboration ...................... 227

Chapter 12: Succeeding with Social Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229Organizing Social Collaboration ................................................................ 229

Putting someone (or some team) in charge of community management .................................................................................... 230

Naming group community managers .............................................. 233Developing a Strategy for Success ............................................................ 234

Positioning your team for a quick win ............................................ 234Going boldly forward ......................................................................... 235

Seeking Strong Sponsorship ....................................................................... 237Making the Case for Broader Use .............................................................. 238Getting Employees Up to Speed ................................................................ 239

Offering training resources ............................................................... 240Focusing on the essentials ................................................................ 241Setting and communicating acceptable use policies .................... 242Providing guidance on which communication tool to use ........... 244

xi Table of Contents

Putting Social Collaboration in the Flow of Work ................................... 245Avoiding duplicate communications ............................................... 245Embedding project and task management ..................................... 246Seeking opportunities to simplify processes with

social workflow ............................................................................... 246Recognizing Participation and Performance ............................................ 246

Show your people you like them ..................................................... 247Engaging participants with gamification......................................... 247Highlighting corporate performance and network participation..... 248

Chapter 13: Managing Successful Collaboration Communities . . . .249Keeping a Social Community Healthy ....................................................... 249

Learning from external communities .............................................. 250Analyzing the community population ............................................. 251Models of social community quality ............................................... 254Moderating conversations ................................................................ 258Coaching community members for success .................................. 259

Structuring Collaboration with Groups .................................................... 261Controlling the proliferation of groups ........................................... 262Reserving the company-wide activity stream for items

of company-wide interest .............................................................. 264Segmenting discussions to cut down on noise .............................. 265Encouraging open group access ...................................................... 266Supporting private groups, where appropriate ............................. 266

Chapter 14: Engaging External Collaborators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269Recognizing How External Collaboration Is Different ............................. 270Setting Ground Rules for External Sharing ............................................... 272Providing for Proper Security .................................................................... 273Engaging Customers .................................................................................... 274Engaging Partners ........................................................................................ 275

Part V: Playing Your Part in a Social Business ............ 277

Chapter 15: The CEO and Executive Management Guide to Social Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279

Leading with Social Collaboration ............................................................. 280Driving Innovation by Getting the Whole Organization Thinking ......... 282

Managing innovation ......................................................................... 283Focusing innovation .......................................................................... 284Organizing ideas for improvement .................................................. 285

Social Collaboration For Dummies xiiMaking a game of it ............................................................................ 285Rating the best ideas ......................................................................... 286Showcasing leaders, recognizing winners ...................................... 286

Blogging and Sharing for Leaders .............................................................. 287Listening to the Social Network ................................................................. 288Understanding the Implications of Transparency .................................. 289Encouraging Connections Across the Organization ............................... 290

Chapter 16: The CIO Guide to Social Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .293Integrating Applications and Organizations with Social Collaboration ..... 293

The integration opportunity ............................................................. 294The importance of making exceptions ............................................ 295

Balancing Requirements: User, Community, and Enterprise Needs ..... 296Building Communities to Last .................................................................... 298Planning for Integration .............................................................................. 299Embracing Innovation ................................................................................. 299

Chapter 17: The Workplace Leader’s Guide to Social Collaboration . . .301Using Social Collaboration to Create a Welcoming,

Productive Workplace ............................................................................. 302Knowing Who Leads on Workplace Design .............................................. 303Choosing Social Workplace Applications ................................................. 305Recognizing Achievement .......................................................................... 308Synchronizing with HRIS ............................................................................. 309

Chapter 18: Social Collaboration for the Sales Team . . . . . . . . . . . . .311Coordinating Sales Teams .......................................................................... 311Choosing the Right Tool ............................................................................. 313Cracking the Market for Sales Intelligence ............................................... 315Building a Culture of Collaboration ........................................................... 316Sharing to Win Sales .................................................................................... 318Capitalizing on Competition ....................................................................... 318Recognizing Achievement .......................................................................... 320Examining a Successful Implementation .................................................. 320

Chapter 19: Social Collaboration for the Worker Bee . . . . . . . . . . . . .323Using Social Collaboration for Everyday Tasks ....................................... 323

Working out loud ............................................................................... 324Understanding when to ditch e-mail ............................................... 326

Practicing Proper Etiquette ........................................................................ 327Keeping Discussion Productive and Professional ................................... 328Building Your Professional Brand ............................................................. 329

xiii Table of Contents

Part VI: The Part of Tens ........................................... 331

Chapter 20: Ten Common Themes in Social Collaboration Success Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333

Executive Sponsorship Makes a Difference ............................................. 333Familiarity Is Just a Starting Point ............................................................. 334Don’t Hamstring Use ................................................................................... 335Build on What Works .................................................................................. 335Get Off to a Good Start ................................................................................ 336Show Relevance ........................................................................................... 337Conquering Time and Space ...................................................................... 338Fight Fragmentation .................................................................................... 338Maintaining Order ....................................................................................... 339Showcase Success ....................................................................................... 339

Chapter 21: Ten Obstacles to Social Collaboration Success . . . . . . .341Overcoming a Commanding-and-Controlling Culture ............................. 341Fending Off Negative Connotations ........................................................... 342Avoiding Fragmentation ............................................................................. 343Lacking Resources for Integration ............................................................ 343Generating Buzz ........................................................................................... 344Competing with Free Public Social Networks .......................................... 344Complying with Industry Regulations ....................................................... 345Attracting Participants ................................................................................ 345Suffering Groupware, Knowledge Management Hangover ..................... 346Falling Back on E-mail ................................................................................. 346

Chapter 22: Ten Ways to Make Social Collaboration Pay Off . . . . . .349Starting with a Purpose .............................................................................. 349Accelerating Sales ........................................................................................ 351Aligning Marketing and Sales ..................................................................... 352Backing Up Customer Service .................................................................... 353Creating New Products ............................................................................... 354Boosting Productivity ................................................................................. 354Stopping Time-Wasting Activities ............................................................. 355Improving Employee Engagement ............................................................. 356Breaking Down Silos .................................................................................... 357Acting Like a Social Business ..................................................................... 358

Appendix: Case Studies: Learn from Others ................. 361SAS Institute: Connecting Experts Worldwide ......................................... 361TD Bank: Start Small, Think Big ................................................................. 365

Social Collaboration For Dummies xivDenMat: Social Collaboration for Salespeople and Distributors ........... 367Unisys: Expanding from Knowledge Management to Social

Collaboration ............................................................................................ 369Ford: Driving Social Business Standards .................................................. 371

Index ....................................................................... 375

Introduction

T his book is about getting work done with social media and social net-working technologies. This is what’s often described as the use of “an

internal Facebook” or “Facebook inside the enterprise” — even though many of those who work with the technology have grown to hate the comparison as trivializing what they do.

What is true is that social collaboration products humanize the online work-place by putting a friendlier face on it. We get to know our online collabora-tors better in something like the way we get to know our Facebook friends and friends of friends. Public social networks are great for the joy of discov-ering a long-lost high school friend or making a connection with a favorite author. The business equivalent would be connecting with others around the company whom you may never have met in person but who share a profes-sional interest or are willing to share tips and make helpful introductions.

The more expansive enterprise social networking platforms go far beyond cloning Facebook, also including tools for maintaining internal blogs, wikis, document repositories, and project workspaces.

Because this is a book about a category of software products and cloud ser-vices, rather than any single social collaboration platform, I can’t promise detailed instructions on how to perform every task or configure every fea-ture, although I do provide examples.

Consider this your guidebook to what is possible with social collaboration and how to get the most out of it.

About This BookThis book is for social business strategists, community managers, and com-pany leaders seeking to put social collaboration to work. I also want you to consider this a resource to share with others in your organization whom you’d like to give a basic understanding of the principles of social collaboration.

If you’re using the software, rather than driving the strategy for its use, I hope I can help orient you to use it more effectively.

There are many business uses of social networking, but Social Collaboration For Dummies specifically focuses on software and cloud services that make it easier for employees to connect with each other in productive ways. It’s

2 Social Collaboration For Dummies

about busting communications out of the e-mail inbox and turning them into corporate knowledge that makes the organization smarter. In a well-run, social collaboration network, everyone from the CEO to the new hire gets a better picture of activities from throughout the organization, plus the ability to network with others in specific professional disciplines.

I won’t tell you how to market your business on Facebook or respond to cus-tomer complaints posted to Twitter. Behind the scenes, social collaboration can be a tool for helping you do those things better. Internal and external uses of social media are complementary as part of a complete social business strategy.

Like every book in the For Dummies series, this one is designed to deliver information in easily digestible chunks, translating jargon and breaking pro-cedures into simple steps wherever possible. As you read, you will notice a few standard typographical conventions:

✓ Web addresses appear in monofont. This information is also used for Twitter handles like @davidfcarr. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, note that you can click the web address to visit that website, like this: www.dummies.com.

✓ New terms are highlighted with italics the first time they are used.

Foolish AssumptionsThis book assumes some basic familiarity with consumer social media although I also explain some of its conventions (such as the use of hashtags) and how they apply to social collaboration for business.

I try not to make many assumptions about your familiarity with social col-laboration software. I assume some readers will just be getting started with or planning for a social collaboration initiative. Others may have some social software in use, or even several such products, in which case I hope this book can be useful for developing a better strategy for using it effectively.

Although I tried to make the material in this book relevant to small busi-nesses, some of the concerns I raise will be more relevant to large, compli-cated enterprises. Social collaboration can be useful for small businesses, particularly those that operate across multiple locations, or employ home-based workers, or forge virtual teams with contractors or business partners.

Multinational corporations may get even more value out of some key enter-prise social networking applications, such as the ability to locate experts from throughout the organization and connect them with each other. At the same time, big companies must manage more complexities in terms of techni-cal integration and regulatory compliance.

3 Introduction

If I’m spending too many words on a topic that’s not relevant to your organi-zation, you have my permission to skip ahead.

Icons Used in This Book The Tip icon marks tips (duh!) and shortcuts that you can use to make social

collaboration easier or more effective.

Remember icons mark the information that’s especially important to know. To siphon off the most important information in each chapter, just skim through these icons.

The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that nontechnical readers can skip.

The Warning icon tells you to watch out! It marks important information about pitfalls and headaches to avoid.

Beyond the BookThis book is not the last word on social collaboration. It’s not even my last word. Here are the additional resources you can find online:

✓ The Cheat Sheet for this book is at

www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/socialcollaboration

Here you’ll find a summary of the essential elements for social collabora-tion success.

✓ Online articles covering extra topics are available at

www.dummies.com/extras/socialcollaboration

✓ You can find significant updates from the world of social collaboration at

www.dummies.com/go/socialcollaborationupdates

Social software is a very fast-moving market, so there may be surprises like acquisitions of major players between the completion of the manuscript and its publication. If readers point out errors that the editors and I didn’t catch, this is also where corrections and clarifications will be posted.

4 Social Collaboration For Dummies

Where to Go from HereThis book is addressed to those planning a social collaboration initiative, as well as those who are farther along in their journeys and striving to get more value out of social software. Depending on who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish, you may want to skip or skim certain chapters and jump ahead to others. Like all For Dummies books, this one is structured so you don’t have to read it in a linear fashion — you can start anywhere.

If you’re just getting started with social collaboration, start at the beginning so you understand the basics of what social collaboration, how it relates to public social media, and how the private business applications of social soft-ware are different.

For more specifics about how to communicate, build a productive network, and manage projects on a social platform, read Part II.

If you’re in the process of selecting a social collaboration software product or cloud service, you may want to jump ahead to Part III.

In Part IV, the focus shifts to ongoing community management, which is something that you should plan for from the beginning but which requires even more attention as an online community matures.

I included Part V because I expect this book to be read by CEOs, CIOs, sales leaders, and human resources directors, all of whom will have different ideas of what would make social collaboration useful to their organizations and all of whom have a different role to play in making it successful. If you are in one of those roles, that may be the chapter you want to read first. I’d recom-mend you read the other chapters in this section, too, so you will understand what the other constituencies in your organization are likely to want from a social platform.

The Part of Tens chapters and the case studies in the Appendix round out the book with tips and examples of social collaboration success. Honestly, I want you to read all of it, but I’ll understand if you don’t.

If you have a complement, a criticism, or a suggestion for further research, you can reach me at david@carrcommunications.com or @davidfcarr on Twitter. Use #SocialCollaborationForDummies in tweets or the sub-ject line of e-mail to make sure you get my attention.

Part IGetting Started with Social Collaboration

social collaboration

getting startedwith

Visit www.dummies.com for more great online content.

In this part . . . ✓ Understand social networking and how it complements busi-

ness collaboration. ✓ Find out what collaboration networks borrow from consumer

social networks and how they are different. ✓ Discover how to put social collaboration to work.

Chapter 1

Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking

In This Chapter▶ Understanding what social collaboration means▶ Moving beyond the “Facebook inside your company” slogan▶ Accessing new resources in social collaboration systems▶ Competing and coexisting with e-mail▶ Finding practical applications for social collaboration

W e often talk about having a social life, separate from our work lives, recognizing that mingling the two can be hazardous. Social

Collaboration For Dummies isn’t a book about being social at work, in the sense of flirting or sharing jokes. By social collaboration, I mean recognizing that business is inherently social, even when social interaction is constrained within the bounds of professionalism.

In this chapter, I help you understand what social collaboration is (and what it isn’t), outline some of the benefits of implementing a social collaboration system in your business, and suggest some ways that you can help colleagues shift from e-mail to social collaboration tools (and know when to use one over the other). I also give you some real-world examples of how social collabora-tion can help employees solve specific problems and complete tasks more efficiently.

8 Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration

Defining Social CollaborationSocial collaboration comprises social networking and social media for the purpose of getting work done in an enterprise setting. The collaboration part is just as important as the social part. In this context, collaboration is about getting work done with teams of people, working together toward a common goal — which is essential to any business.

Used properly, social collaboration widens exposure to corporate knowledge, streamlines the flow of ideas, and gets everyone thinking about how to improve processes, products, and services.

Social collaboration is also known as enterprise social networking, and the products to support it are often branded enterprise social networks (ESNs). However, you don’t have to be running a huge enterprise to benefit from social collaboration because the same sorts of tools can be used by small businesses and nonprofit groups. That’s one reason I’ll stick to social collaboration as my preferred term — beyond the fact that it’s in the title of this book. I also use the term “collaboration networks,” used as shorthand for private social networks (as opposed to public ones).

You’ve probably heard the maxim “people do business with people they know, like, and trust.” My local Chamber of Commerce parrots this endlessly as a reason why salespeople and small business owners should attend its networking breakfasts and other events. And it’s true: Successful salespeople tend to be talented networkers. In the same way, people within organizations who have all the right connections often can accomplish tasks that others cannot — or at least not as quickly. When a company’s standard formal pro-cesses break down, the employee with a strong network knows who’s who and what’s what and how to get the job done anyway.

Social collaboration is nothing new, in that sense. What is new is the digiti-zation of the social network and the transformation of what used to be dry, impersonal corporate collaboration tools into friendly places filled with smil-ing faces. Online social networking has become famous for reconnecting long-lost lovers and sparking friendships between people who never would have met in the offline world. In a business or enterprise setting, social networking can be just as effective at connecting employees with other employees who share a common interest, or skill, or have the answers to each other’s ques-tions, even though they might be in offices in different states or on opposite sides of the world.

So, this is what I mean by “social collaboration.” The collaboration element comes into play when employees use a social network to share their progress on a common project and work together on digital artifacts of that project, such as a sales proposal or a presentation to management.

9 Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking

Social collaboration initiatives have many fathers and mothers. Often, though, the impetus doesn’t come from the IT department but from a par-ticular project team that experiments with the technology and finds it worth-while. Other drivers could be

✓ A CEO wanting a way to unite business units that have come in through acquisition

✓ The head of HR wanting to promote a more collaborative workplace

✓ A sales leader wanting to speed sharing leads, production of proposals, and closing of deals

✓ An early adopter of new technologies anywhere within the company

At the energy company Apache Corporation, social collaboration cham-pion Randy Wagner’s official title is “drilling advisor,” and the success stories he tells revolve around the science and engineering of drilling for oil.

The specific interests of these different constituencies in social collaboration are discussed in Part V.

In this section, I explain social collaboration and the benefits it offers for doing business. I also clarify how social media tools like Facebook are differ-ent from social collaboration tools, which connect colleagues so that they can work together to solve problems and complete tasks.

Seeing how social collaboration can help your businessBy definition, an enterprise social network has different aims than a public social network or any consumer website. Some reasons why organizations invest in social collaboration include:

✓ Embrace social everywhere. Mirror the increasingly important role of social media interaction in customer communications, enabling internal collaboration that delivers results for external customers.

✓ Improve sales efficiency. Speed the production of proposals and improve the sharing of tips and leads within sales teams.

✓ Share information. Capture more of the tacit knowledge of the organiza-tion — that is, the knowledge not recorded in any formal document — by encouraging communications that are shared broadly rather than trapped in e-mail or discussed only offline.

10 Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration

✓ Promote agility. Allow employees to make the connections they need to create workarounds when formal processes break down or to react quickly to unanticipated events or opportunities.

✓ Improve the workplace atmosphere. Humanize the workplace and improve morale by encouraging employees to make more varied con-nections and recognize each other publicly for good work. In Figure 1-1, you see co-workers thanking Celeste, the creator of a helpful sales docu-ment. This example is from Jive Software’s social collaboration platform, and the comment I added includes a badge, a graphical symbol of recog-nition, created using Jive’s Props app.

✓ Coordinate activities. Improve coordination of routine work activities, such as gathering information for a proposal or resolving a customer complaint.

✓ Help colleagues connect. Bridge organizational divisions by depart-ment, work function, or geography, enabling productive collaboration between employees who otherwise never would have met, even online.

Figure 1-1: Social

collaboration gives

co-workers many

ways to thank each

other and recognize excellent

work.

11 Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking

A social collaboration environment like Yammer (see Figure 1-2) looks a whole lot like Facebook. Scratch beneath the surface, though, to find tools that promise secure business collaboration. Here, you can see that Yammer is built around a central news feed, a listing of recent messages, links, and documents shared by co-workers that is similar to the listing of updates shared by friends on Facebook, except that here the context is work rather than play. This user interface format for presenting a stream of messages is also known as an activity stream and can be used to represent all sorts of social and application events.

Yammer makes a distinction between the news feed, which is limited to updates posted by people, and the activity feed, which includes automated updates. Other environments mix the two, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

One of the most important elements of social collaboration is that you can view a customized and personalized activity stream of all the things that are most important to you. You see the updates posted by your closest collabo-rators, answers to questions you have posed, and feedback on documents or links you have shared. You pick the people and groups you want to follow, rather than having their messages broadcast to you whether you find them relevant or not. That also means you can share information with the people and groups most likely to care about it, rather than trying to e-mail everyone you can think of who may care, which often means spamming co-workers who don’t care and missing some who do.

Figure 1-2: The Yammer

home screen.

12 Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration

Social collaboration: not about cloning FacebookMany social collaboration advocates are wary of the easy and obvious com-parison to Facebook, which has positive but also some negative connotations. To describe a corporate collaborative application “as engaging and easy to use as Facebook” is a good thing in terms of getting people to use it. On the other hand, do companies really want employees posting the same sort of things on a corporate system that they would post on Facebook? No way.

By definition, an enterprise social network has different aims than a public social network or any consumer website. For example, Facebook says its mis-sion is “to make the world more open and connected” (even though critics often charge that its mission is to get people to share even more than they realize they’re sharing). In contrast, corporate network managers may be very concerned about making sure that sharing is carefully controlled and that proprietary information won’t leak outside the company. And although I’m using the big company, self-important word “enterprise,” these confiden-tiality concerns also apply to smaller businesses.

The language of social businessYou may be hearing a lot of talk about “social business,” which is a broad term that encom-passes both social collaboration and tech-niques for using public social networks for marketing, market research, and customer ser-vice. A variation that turns up in vendor mar-keting, as well as press and analyst reports, is “social enterprise.”

One source of confusion: Both terms are also used in other contexts to refer to the business of running charities and social service organizations.

To my mind, a social business is a business with a coherent approach to applying the power of

social networking internally and externally, in complementary ways. For example, when a customer service organization picks up on com-plaints being aired on Twitter or Facebook about your company’s products (or even in a public forum on your company’s website), internal social collaboration can help the service organi-zation connect with the employees who have the right expertise or authority to answer questions or resolve a problem on behalf of those custom-ers. Social business is about more than collabo-ration, but social collaboration is an important element of success for social business.

13 Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking

Of course, social collaboration tools have indeed been heavily influenced by the design and functionality of public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, often with elements of Wikipedia, YouTube, and other popular consumer websites mixed in. Many basic social collaboration func-tions for posting, sharing, tagging, Liking, and commenting on content are judged at least partly on how well they mirror those functions on the con-sumer sites. (I discuss this idea in greater detail in Chapter 2.)

If you’re the person trying to sell social collaboration to the boss, arguing that it will be “just like Facebook inside our company” could be counter-productive, given that Facebook is associated with frivolity. So, if you find comparisons to Facebook troublesome, you might work LinkedIn into the conversation, given its reputation as the site for professional social networking. (You won’t see a lot of beer bash photos or tasteless jokes posted on LinkedIn.)

The social collaboration system inside your business should have a similar professional focus. People use LinkedIn to burnish their professional reputa-tions and find their next jobs. Employees use social collaboration to build pro-fessional connections at work and do their current jobs better.

Socializing softwareThis isn’t the place to explain all your social collaboration software options — that’s what Part III of this book is for — but let me pause for a quick rundown of the major products and types of products I will be using frequently as examples.

I’ve already mentioned Jive and Yammer. Jive was the first independent social software maker to become a public company and has many large enterprise customers. Yammer has to be counted a major social collaboration platform if for no other reason because it is part of Microsoft, which bought the cloud software startup in 2012.

Some definitions: By cloud software, I mean software sold on a subscription basis, where the subscription gives you access to software running on a remote server (or in a pool of remote servers). That’s in contrast to tradi-tional packaged software that an organization buys and installs on its own servers (or remotely hosted servers that it controls directly). You will also see references to the cloud, which essentially means the same as saying the Internet or the web — think of the cloud as the web of software and storage resources as opposed to publishing and marketing content. The rise of social collaboration is intertwined with cloud computing. I address the relationship in Chapter 10.

14 Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration

By platform, I mean a software or cloud product is more than an isolated soft-ware application but a foundation that multiple applications build on. Most social collaboration vendors would call their products platforms. I’m usually pretty generous about using the term where others might argue whether a particular product deserves it.

Here are a few of those platforms:

✓ Jive Software Platform: The enterprise social networking and collabo-ration product from the leading independent software vendor focused entirely on social software for businesses.

✓ IBM Connections: Like Jive’s platform, IBM’s platform provides a broad array of tools that include blogs, wikis, task management, and document management, in addition to social networking.

✓ Yammer: The one that looks most like a Facebook clone. You know you are on an enterprise social network because your co-workers are sharing spreadsheets instead of cat photos. Originally a spunky independent startup, Yammer was acquired by Microsoft in 2012.

✓ Chatter: The social collaboration companion to Salesforce.com’s software for sales and customer service.

✓ Tibbr: Social software from Tibco, a company better known for its appli-cation and data integration products.

✓ SharePoint: Widely deployed for document sharing and other collabora-tion applications, Microsoft SharePoint has been adding social features, most notably with its SharePoint 2013 release. However, Microsoft is signaling that its future social software plans revolve more around Yammer.

✓ NewsGator Social Sites: Adds more sophisticated and extensive social collaboration features to Microsoft SharePoint.

Those are the ones I have the most case studies on, although there are many others.

All of the products mentioned here are available on a cloud subscription basis. Yammer and Chatter are exclusively cloud-based. Jive, IBM Connections, and NewsGator are relative newcomers to the cloud, whereas Tibbr was created in the cloud era but offers an on-premises installation option.

Within an online collaboration tool, the activity stream is an important concept (and I tell you more about that in Chapter 2). A photo is just as important as information that you find in the activity stream because a profile photo puts a face on a collaborator or potential collaborator.