Social Media part 8

Energising the customer

Using Social Media, according to Groundswell, we move on from listening and talking to energising. Here are some definitions of energising:

1. The activity of causing to have energy and be active
2. Supplying motive force
3. Charging of the body and soul with energy.

Social Media part 7

In part 4 of the above blog series I listed the factors identified by the authors of Groundswell:

• Listening - to better understand your communities;
• Talking - to spread messages;
• Energising - to engage your most enthusiastic people and allow them to spread the message even more;
• Supporting - providing tools for people to support each other: self-help;
• Embracing - integrating people into the way you work, e.g. getting them to help design and change your services.

In my last post I wrote about listening. Today we move on to talking.

Social Media part 6

I hope that, if you have read my blog posts so far, you are convinced that Social media is important. So how could we use it in our organisations? The ideas below (and in forthcoming posts) are not an exhaustive list, but hopefully they'll provide fuel for thought, give you an idea of the range of tools available, and show some practical things that we could do.

Social Media part 5

So far I've described some of the ways in which Social Media can and have been used to change the way in which people operate in relation to organisations, and how organisations themselves can embrace the possibilities.

Social Media part 4

Up until now I've tried to present a case for the need for organisations to seriously think about social media, and hopefully you find this compelling.

Social Media part 3

We've seen that social networking has a global reach, and that because it's in the hands of ordinary people, it can be impossible to control. This can lead to personal bias being widely broadcast very quickly. And because the medium is popular, the results can be seen and read by millions of people. In my last blog I mentioned Wikipedia. Another popular social media site is FaceBook. Here you can create a profile of yourself (or your organisation) and invite people to become "friends". The more friends, the higher up the popularity table you rise and the more chance there is of people viewing your FaceBook site.

Social Media part 2

Why is Social Networking so important?

New ways of working. What does this mean to you? What images does it conjure up? Possibly something about more people working from home and "hot desks", open plan offices? Possibly something about operations staff who need to be out and about being supported by computers such that they can record all they need to in the field. Possibly something about flexible working (much in the UK news right now Oct, 2008), reduced office accommodation and better work-life balance. And I'd agree that new ways of working is all of these things.

Social Media part 1

What is "Social Media"?

Put very simply, social media are a set of Internet-based technologies that allow people to connect without being under the control of some overall authority. For example, web "blogs" (online diaries) allow people to publish articles about anything they want using a medium (the web) that is accessible to anyone, anywhere, any time (so long as they have Internet access). Blogs can allow people to post comments to the articles the owner has put there. Another example is YouTube, where people can post videos they've made and other people can comment and vote on them. A third example is Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, where anyone can add and edit the entries.

Is this progress?

This article is inspired by the book A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (2004). Basically this is about the meaning of progress and its implications for civilizations both past and present.