How can you manage social media? This is a big concern for web communicators and intranet managers alike. How can users find the right content in this big mess of tweets, posts, links, comments and more? And very importantly: can they trust what they find?
A few weeks ago, I met with Euan Semple, a man of many opinions when it comes to social media. One thing he said struck me:
Managing content through boxes, categories and taxonomies used to make things easier. But now the web is showing us that you actually need noise.
The noise, the social content, is what will bring the official content on your website or intranet to life. Your official content is no longer static and dead; it is being re-used as people are linking to it from their discussions.
What you need is tools to ‘filter the noise’; to help users navigate the streams. These tools need not only be technology, but can also be frameworks or guidelines that help users get their heads around the different kinds of content.
One example is the BT intranet, which distinguishes between 5 different types of content, to enable information to be managed appropriately and allow users to separate fact from comment:
- Formal: Authoritative, reliable and up to date.
- Team: Usually owned by a group of people, for a defined audience
- Crowd: Community owned information, open for anyone to edit and contribute.
- Personal: Opinion based content owned by an individual
- Services: Online processes where people do tasks to fulfill their roles.
Another example is the IBM intranet which serves more than 400,000 employees Worldwide. Here social media is integrated into “traditional” intranet editorial in multiple ways, from user generated content, video, live twitter feeds, Lotus Communities, commenting, rating and tagging.
You can see IBM’s intranet in action when Intranet Editor in Chief Ethan McCarty presents on the link between social media and editorial at the upcoming Philadelphia 2010 conference. Ethan will also be joined by lots of practitioners and experts sharing their experiences with social media.
Is your website or intranet noisy enough?
Ethan April 16th, 2010 11:16
Noise is one thing, activity is another. And in online community spaces, activity = influence. This is one of the reasons I am mystified when I hear about companies with policies prohibiting all online activity by their employees — they’ve basically shut off their ability to influence the market in perhaps the most scalable way…online.
Mark Morrell April 23rd, 2010 11:16
Dorthe,
I agree with Ethan. It is burying your head in the sand for your organisation to stop people.
I’m not sure I like the word ‘noise’ as it sounds like it isn’t good. I’ve always had communications from, as well as sent to, many people. It’s just easier and clearer which communications I receive and send or share and how I best do that.
People are very good at filtering. We all know people who never answer their emails but will always pick up the phone to talk.
Mark