How does social networking (internal and external) matter to an organization?

I look at my BB handset in awe of its power to keep me socially connected. This handset ensures I am told what my close relatives, my peers in office, my dear friends and at times even what their pets do on a daily basis!

How does it pay off is you are socially networked over the Internet and not in the society you are in? Why are we dependent on our mobile phones, laptops to know what’s going around than meeting people in our neighborhood?

I guess, the answer is simple: Convenience!

Internet socializing offers me the comfort to keep in touch with my friends and relatives at any given point of time, day or night. I do not have to spend money on phone calls, travel to my friends' place, post a greeting card on a friend's birthday and without much effort; in between my travel or at work place I can keep all posted on what I am doing. Convenience. Speed.

How does social networking matter to an organization?

I have and am still playing a key role in evaluating various social networking applications from multinationals selling packaged tools. It is impossible for any ambitious organization to ignore the impact on social networking presence on its public and even industry image.

But why do we need a presence in all the micro blogging, social networking sites?
Is it because all my competitors have a profile of their own? Is it because my business gets a boost with what I post about my organization? Is it because I get to keep track of my alumni? Or is it because, social networking is a combination of informal and formal way of advertising with minimal cost and bigger returns?

I think it is a combination of all the points mentioned above.

Government organisations that are more conservative when it comes to public relations too have realized it is impossible to keep social networking out of their workplace. Young, ambitious organisations have discovered social networking as one of the few powerful medium to expand business and even retain talent. Matured and stable organisations have discovered the wider reach and high volume of responses to their profile refreshing and motivating.

Reasons are many but objective is one: Be seen, followed and read by as many as possible at any given point of time.

Is there a price to pay for being socially connected?

The answer is YES! One has to pay in cash if you are to buy an application that ensures your organisation needs to be socially networked, internally. You will need to pay by adding a couple of teams to be organisation’s spokesperson, professional representatives and even individual teams watching over misuse of the facility.

You may have to pay for application licenses if you are to buy a multi-featured tool which might come free if taken as is but with the plug-ins you like making the vanilla application more useful, trust me you will be shelling out more than what you have budgeted for.

What should one watch out for when negotiating for a good social networking application?

Ensure you KNOW what your organisation wants and be very clear about your requirements when meeting vendors. Tell yourself and your team, just before you get into the meeting room, we will not be lured to shell off more money for 'nice-to-have’ features. Ensure you buy an organization license and not user based. Read and re-read the agreement on after sales technical support, hidden charges on usage, customization of the branding, content editing part after you buy the application and how end user friendly is the UI and features.

The change management should be to showcase the ease of use of the application to your end users and not on how to wade through links before they can create a simple profile! And finally be very careful if there are integrations involved with other systems in your organsiation. Please see to it that the vendor installs, integrates, tests, transfers knowledge about managing the tool before they exit your organisation.

After all these efforts, is it worth enough to have your employees blog, micro blog, create their professional profile, fish for people with skills and add them to a group to chat and share information... all during office working hours?

The answer in today's world is YES. You need to be socially connected on the Internet with outside world by creating your organisations’ profiles, code of conduct in social media for your organization, designated teams to use the public profile and internally linking your employees with internal social networking applications.

Most companies are always on the lookout for innovative retention engagements. I will not totally support the claim that having a social network application will help you retain talent in your organisation but it is indeed a very effective medium to connect with your peers, esp. in a medium to large organisation (5000+ employees)when it comes to knowledge sharing without delay. It feels good to find out how many other employees are there in your organsiation who are as skilled or more skilled as you are and in what technologies or trade.

As this is not a blog to market any particular social networking applications, I have not mentioned any product or company names. I don’t think they need a mention in my blog for more business. :-)