13 Take-Aways from the ALI Internal Social Media Conference

 aligroup.jpg

Your SMUG Chancellor had a great couple of days attending the Advanced Learning Institute’s conference on Social Media for Internal Communications in San Francisco. With a colleague from work I presented on Mayo Clinic’s early experience with social media, and we heard lots of great case studies that will definitely find their way into the curriculum for Social Media University, Global.

Here’s a recap as I digest the presentations and try to synthesize a bit. The links below will open in new windows, so you won’t need to keep hitting the “back” button.

  1. Conference Chairperson Michael Rudnick kicked it off on Tuesday. Biggest Takeaway: By the end of 2008, at least 70 percent of companies without official support for blogs and wikis will have multiple unofficial deployments.  To alter the formulation from Kevin Costner’s last good movie, “If you don’t build it, they (your employees) will go.” They’ll go to Google Groups, or Facebook, or a free blog from WordPress to enable themselves to work smarter. And they’ll think you’re clueless.
  2. The presentation from Sun Microsystems showed what you can do when you have buy-in from the highest levels of corporate leadership. But even with that executive leadership, they recommended starting small with social media and getting some quick wins.
  3. Kay from the CDC gave a good case study from government. Because of trust issues, they allow anonymous comments to really encourage open sharing. That seemed to be a major difference from most internal programs. They use WordPress open-source software for their blog.
  4. Then Linda Donlin and I presented on Mayo Clinic’s experience. I didn’t blog about that. I was otherwise occupied. I did recommend, however, that everyone should enroll in Social Media University, Global and begin getting hands-on experience with social media. So if you attended the conference, and if as part of your SMUG enrollment you start your own blog, your first post could be about our presentation, and you could link to this post. I’d really like to hear what parts of the presentation you found most interesting or helpful, what could be improved, and any questions you have that we didn’t get to address. Or if you’re not ready to take the plunge yet with your own blog, please just leave comments below.
  5. Dan Miller shared his poignant case study of how Toyota’s internal blog ran upon the rocks of a sexual harassment lawsuit after a year of relatively clear sailing. “Sound Off” is in dry dock right now, but Dan is building support for another voyage.
  6. J.C. Bouvier and Kevin Reid shared the story of social media and the IFAW’s Stop the Seal Hunt campaign. IFAW has been characterized as “the pragmatic PETA,” and this campaign lived up to that billing, as J.C. and Kevin showed practical applications of social media to accomplish results.
  7. Maureen Kasper’s presentation on Cisco, like the Sun example, showed a technology company with a widely dispersed workforce using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate in a way that would be physically impossible. Check out the video from YouTube about Cisco’s Telepresence program. I think I’ll skip past Second Life and go straight to Telepresence. And Maureen’s point about needing to take away some of the old communications crutches in order to drive adoption of social media tools is something to consider. Nobody is going to take away e-mail, but if leadership pledges to communicate via blog instead of sending company-wide e-mails, and if important information is put on the blog, people will be more likely to go there.
  8. Chuck Gose’s presentation was about social media for people who don’t have consistent access to computers, using digital signage. He had several good ideas, and one of the things I thought was most interesting was pulling RSS news feeds in to provide the ticker that runs on the bottom of the digital signs. It’s a great way to keep the content fresh. Digital signage is a great way to distribute messages to be passed along through off-line word-of-mouth on the shop floor.
  9. Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation rocks! It’s a great example of what you can do with open source software, and a project that probably wouldn’t have worked if it had been done in a top-down, buttoned-down corporate blah-blah-blah manner. After they had some success, they got more resources. And they accomplished one really big corporate goal through the 401(k) video contest.
  10. Chris Heuer’s Tagging Workshop was a good illustration. He didn’t have enough time to do much more than just introduce us to the topic, but I think he created an appetite to know more about tagging. And his really great point is that people use tagging to make their lives easier, so they can find what they’re looking for. It’s not primarily altruistic. The benefit to others is a side effect that increases the power, but if you’re depending on people to change behaviors because it will make life easier for others, you’ve got an almost impossible sales job. Make the new tools the easiest way for individuals to work, and they’ll be used. Then the benefit to the team will create further momentum. Here’s an example of tagging within WordPress that relates to the ALI conference. If anyone else uses “ALI conference” as a tag on your WordPress blog, we all would be able to see everything that was written about the conference. Maybe Chris can answer a question for us: Do WordPress.com tags get fed up to Technorati, too? In other words, if I use the WordPress tags, do I need to use Technorati tags, too…or would that be redundant?
  11. Kevin Winterfield’s presentation on IBM’s experience, covered here and here, gave a vision of what may be paradise someday for large organizations. As a tech company filled with early adopters who have been playing with these tools for a long time — and one that makes its money by developing hardware, software and networking solutions — IBM shows the power of maximum integration of social media tools. That obviously has a significant price tag as other companies buy what IBM has produced for itself. Depending on an organization’s readiness and culture, a vendor-provided all-in-one system like this may make sense. I think, and Kevin indicated in the comments that he agrees, most companies need to at least get some quick wins with low-cost tools before they will see the value of a major expenditure for a social media platform. One way to make it work, though, is to tag onto an IT-driven initiative. If IT is implementing a system like Sharepoint or Lotus Notes 8, blogs and wikis may be an extra benefit.
  12. American Express and AAA illustrated a couple of those quick-win approaches. They got practical results while spending practically nothing.
  13. The first post-conference workshop (covered here, here and here) gave a great model for communication planning that enables communicators to respond thoughtfully and strategically when the boss says, “Get me a blog!” or “We need a newsletter!” Out of that discussion we also decided as a group to create the mother-of-all communications tactics lists. Not because there aren’t some lists like this out there somewhere, but because it gives us a chance to try a wiki as a collaboration tool. So even though we’ll be dispersing across the globe (or at least the half that’s dark right now) from California to the Pepperidge Farms HQ and from Canada to Stockholm, Sweden, we can continue to work together.

I enjoyed getting to meet so many of you during this conference, and I hope the stories you heard will inspire you to get some hands on experience with social media. If you’re looking for continued step-by-step guidance, visit the Admissions Office for Social Media University, Global (SMUG). Then you’ll be able to hang out in the Student Union. You can share your key take-aways from the conference in the discussion board there, or in the comments below. And you can see photos from the conference and a video parable there, too.

Now I just need to figure out where these great examples fit into the SMUG curriculum….

The Parable of the Bagel

Once upon a time there was a guy. Let’s call him Lee, because that was his name.

Lee was attending a great conference in San Francisco, where he learned a lot about using Social Media for Internal Communications.

On the third day of the conference, when he arrived for breakfast he found that:

  • The continental breakfast table had bagels.
  • The continential breakfast table had cream cheese.
  • But there were no knives to spread the cream cheese.

Did Lee go hungry? Did he eat a dry bagel?

No.

Lee thought creatively.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=4WijLtAIYGA]

He used a spoon — not for its intended purpose, but to meet his need.

(And even better, he got someone else to do the work while he videotaped.)

The Parable of the Bagle has two major applications:

  1. You’re better off if you can pick the right tool for the job. Even though the bagel was pre-sliced, it would have split more nicely with a knife.
  2. Consider the social media tools you have, and how they can be used creatively to meet your needs. The spoon wasn’t intended as a cream-cheese spreading device, but it does a fine job of it. Likewise, Twitter and Facebook and blogs and other social media tools may have had purposes and applications envisioned by their developers, but what you need to do is see what capabilities the tools have, and how they might meet a need for you.

Twitter might just be a way to quickly activate a disaster response-team. A secret Facebook group might enable you to manage collaboration among external vendors without giving them access behind your corporate firewall.

Think creatively.

Comprehensive List of Communications Channels

Kay Sessions Golan from the CDC asked whether there is a comprehensive list of Communications Solutions or Tactics that communicators can use in their planning, to have a wide spectrum of old-to-new media as a reference that could be incorporated into an integrated plan.

So I said, “Let’s put it on a wiki!”

Sorry about jumping right to a solution, but this is a good way for people to get a feel for how to use some of the social media tools while also pooling our knowledge. So please go here to the SMUG wiki, where I have created a section called Comprehensive Communication Channel List. Add things wherever you think they make sense, or reorganize as you see fit. Let’s create the mother-of-all-tactical lists!

Change Communication Planning

bonfiremap.jpg

Bonfire’s Audience-Centric Communication Planning Map (click above to enlarge) moves through these steps from left-to-right in the map below, instead of just jumping to the final step. When the CEO says, “I want a blog,” that’s just jumping to a solution.

They recommend instead starting with:

  1. Audience Concerns: Who is the audience and what do they care about? Aggregate audiences by concerns and how the technology will impact them instead of artificial hierarchical structures or functional roles. For example, look at technological skill level of audiences. Create tiers of concerns. Some will cut across functional roles. What information is most essential? What will get people’s attention and address their concerns? What do people need to hear to jump on board? What is the connection and disconnection between the communicator and the audience? The great thing about Web 2.0 technologies is that they enable users to choose what they want to receive, and what information is relevant to them.
  2. Sponsor Concerns/Business Outcomes: What do we or our sponsors expect us to achieve? What business metrics are we chartered to move or influence? What are the stated and unstated expectations? What behaviors or actions are we to inspire or reinforce? What is the fundamental issue that we are trying to address? What are the business objectives you’re looking to achieve in how people Think, Feel, Know and Do in the Current State vs. Future State. What is the fundamental shift needed to get people to Think, Feel, Know and Do what you would like them to do? Example: a casino shifting to a consumer-driven healthcare environment. How do you get people who work in smoky casinos start to make healthy choices? “Just do it” wouldn’t work. Instead it was “Choose wellness where it works for you.” Tagline was: “Be at your best.” This is the way toward working together to lower healthcare costs.
  3. Communication Objectives. Look at three phases: Awareness, Understanding and Action. Match the Audience Concerns with the Sponsor Concerns/Business Outcomes. Explain to the audiences how these are aligned. What are our SMART communication objectives? Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Actionable, Realistic, Time-Based.
  4. Story/Key Messages: How can we create a conversation that moves people? Create a “North Star” or mantra, with key messages that support. Communicators are the most equipped group of people to guide the cultural conversation. How can we create a shared vision? How do we share a common view of current reality? What is our STORY from this journey and what actions will make the difference? What mantra will shift behavior?
  5. Design Criteria: How can we design communications for impact? How do our audiences take in information? How do they learn, share knowledge and collaborate? What design elements will appeal to them the most? If there is an existing brand framework, what is the relationship to the new design criteria?
  6. Communication Solutions: At this point in time, what are the right messages and solutions for these audiences? What are all of the possibilities that we should explore? What tools share knowledge, build skills and support change over time? What are our selection criteria? How do we create a rhythm and pulse while sustaining our efforts?

Changing the way people orient to information can shift their view of the world and influence lasting behavioral change.

Note: Photos from today’s session will be uploaded to the SMUG Student Union site on Facebook.