There is currently much focus on how companies can use social media to its customers and the benefits have, but we should not forget the benefits social media can contribute within the organizations. The interpersonal relationships within a company facilitate communication and make the organization more open, which is crucial for achieving good results. Social media can promote a strong corporate culture, help the staff to develop and maintain close links with each other.
In my master thesis I have written about how social media can help the student community in a positive way. I found that the most important for students' well-being is that they have someone to talk to and work with. Cooperation, feedback from others and discussion is important for motivation and learning. With the opportunities social media provides, there is great potential in using social media to create a better environment. The same positive effects of social media can have on students can be transferred to apply to the work environment at a workplace.
Uniting, real-time communication for Company Social Media
Private social media provides the opportunity to meet new people and keep in touch with old friends. By using company social media, active employees can maintain or intensify relationships that are created offline and get an overview of people who normally would not have known who was. In an organizational setting, employees will be able to identify the experts or stakeholders involved, creating a sense of belonging and promote cooperation, transparency and discussions.
There are various social tools that can be used by businesses and other organizations. The tools will give the user the ability to create informative profiles, "collect" on colleagues, and enable relationship building by facilitating ongoing communication among employees. Examples of such tools are chatting, Yammer, Yoolinkpro, Ning and Socialgo, Google Talk, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger and Skype to name a few.
According to a survey conducted by Yammer (with 1,000 respondents) indicated 83% that they feel better with their peers because of it. Most of the companies now use Yammer to share fun and interesting things, finding people with experience in different areas, provide information on things happening and to discuss various topics. This means that we get an overview of our colleagues, what projects they're working on and what areas they specialize in.
For me, as a new employee, this has been a particularly useful tool to become familiar with the company and its employees.
The benefits of social media can provide for the working environment requires a greater percentage of employees are active. For a social medium will be a success, it is necessary to have many users who contribute regularly, and not just passive members. The biggest challenge is getting users to register, but to encourage active participation.
Both my own and others' studies show that continued use of a social medium is dependent on friends or other interesting people also use the medium. If there is something interesting in the media, it is not perceived as important or useful. For many users, it is also important to be left with the feeling that one has contributed something unique that others can benefit from, and therefore are easy feedback tools (eg. Same button key).
80/20 principle of Company Social Media connections
Even the most successful online community is a small part of the members who produce most of the publications, some of which produces some occasionally, and many only read without even contribute. Company Social Media (CSM) connections has a great role in creating better relationships within the organization. There will also be some who for various reasons do not want to either watch or participate. It is therefore a challenge, especially during the introduction of a medium, to achieve broad user participation that will make media interesting. For this reason it may be appropriate to recruit a core of users to use the media actively in an introduction phase.
The functionality that the medium offers is also critical to retain users. For someone to join something new, it is important that an experience that one gets something unique to join, while it is also useful. It's hard to compete against the big, such as Facebook. In order to succeed in another medium, it is important to offer something more or different than the others do. For the companies Yammer gives a network where all employees are gathered, where we can discuss and share things that are not public access. It is not always the unique medium provides needs to be something revolutionary and new.
Yammer is an enterprise social network site used by more than 100,000 companies all over the world. Popular companies like Ford, Pitney Bowes, and Thomson Reuters are a few to be named for using this enterprise social network service.
Another thing that is important for many people is that it is available on mobile devices. More and more people spend their time on the bus or train to catch up on events that have occurred over the last few hours, and it is therefore important that the media are accessible to this.
Do not wait!
Social media internally supports open communication, and makes it easier for employees to have real time discussions and share information quickly. This makes it easier to cooperate in the enterprise, as well as the answers to your questions quickly, and discuss relevant issues. The benefits of introducing a social tool for communication between employees are numerous, so there is no reason to wait.
Company’s online presence and social media connections within the organization has a new effect on the production level and customer satisfaction.
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