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How to take your first tentative steps into the world of Web 2.0

Over the past couple of years there's been a huge buzz around social media tools, perhaps even more so now since the launch of Twitter. But is it something you, as an internal communicator, need to be taking seriously and if so, where do you start? Here's some advice from Grant Saunders, creative director of Wilding McArdle Wilson.

Here's where we are. Web 2.0 has finally filtered through to the corporate consciousness and internal communication professionals are being told in no uncertain terms that they need to make it an integral part of their future plans.

Trouble is, no one knows exactly how to do so. Not only is there a widespread lack of knowledge about how it all actually works but – more significantly – applications that deliver a measurable business benefit are currently all but non existent.

So, you've got two choices. Do nothing. You could just stay where you are and wait two years for other people to be the guinea pigs for you. The other is to embrace the new opportunities social networking presents and accept that there will inevitably be some trial and error along the way.

Why you need to act now
If Web 2.0 was simply a technological advance, then waiting for other people to iron out the bugs would probably be the smart choice. Ask any of the early adopters who invested in one of the spectacularly fault-prone first batch of Xbox 360s. But social networking is not primarily a technological change. The top 2.0 players like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr didn't reach pre-eminence through technological superiority – they simply came up with innovative new ways for people to harness the unique attributes of the web.

In reality, Web 2.0 is (or, in the case of most businesses, will be) a cultural change. Its significance lies in the way it's changing people's behavior; the way they connect, collaborate and share their opinions, ideas and experiences. But why is this distinction so important?

Because technological changes are relatively straightforward. You finish work one evening and overnight the IT fairies replace your clunky old file server with a leaner, meaner machine. That's a slightly trite example. But the fact is that cultural change invariably takes longer and is far less predictable.

Take flexible working for example. For more than a decade we've been promised a revolution in the way we manage our work/life balance. The reality is that even now most organizations are struggling to adjust to the implications of this change, and flexible working is either a matter of swapping an hour here for an hour there or simply not an option.

We'll look at the nature of the cultural change that Web 2.0 will demand of your organization in a moment. The important point here is that if you're going to be equipped to embrace the benefits of social networking when it matures, you need to plant the seeds of that cultural change now. Otherwise, when the time comes you'll simply be giving people tools they have no interest in or ability to use.

Things are gonna change ‘round here
Even today, communication within an organization overwhelmingly travels through the y axis: vertically, from top to bottom and – when a mood of egalitarianism takes us – from bottom to top. So, the Board tells the senior managers and the senior managers tell the line managers and the line managers tell the team members. Or the other way around. The IC team's job is to manage this flow effectively, making sure the flood of information is channeled into neat little streams that (to extend the metaphor) irrigate the right people. It's manageable, it generally works and, best of all, it's a known quantity.

But here's the thing. If we had a penny for every time an organization told us that one of the most insurmountable problems faced by their business was a tendency for people and/or teams to work in "silos", we'd have retired to live the high life a long time ago. We claim to live in the Information Age, yet genuine cross-functional knowledge sharing is remarkably rare.

Our contention is that social networking has the power to add an entirely new dimension to the IC model – the much sought-after x axis of horizontal knowledge sharing. While peer-to-peer is not the only application of social networking – a CEO's blog, for example, is a useful way for people to keep abreast of the latest developments – it's certainly the most credible and appropriate.

Giving Twitter feeds exclusively to the executive team, for example, is a woeful underuse of its potential. The power of micro-blogging lies in sharing a high volume of "snippets" that can be searched, organized, redirected and responded to, revealing insights and trends that may otherwise have remained hidden; not as a forum for a limited number of individuals to espouse the company line.

This, of course, is antithetical to the ubiquitous command-and-control style that (to a greater or lesser extent) almost all organizations are built around. There are understandable anxieties about a lack of control of the messages that go out. But this control has always been an illusion.

Come for a drink with us after a bad day at the office and you'll soon realize that people have always been able to communicate ideas the "Company" may not approve of. The difference here is that, through social networking, these views – both positive and negative – can be harnessed to make changes for the better or stimulate innovation rather than being frittered away into the ether.

Put simply - and whether you like it or not - the future lies with those individuals and organizations that understand how to use social networking to connect with their colleagues and, indeed, the world outside the business. Influence is born of relationships, and increasingly social networking is where these relationships will be forged.

You better be ready. Because you know your competitors will be.

What not to do
We mentioned earlier that you could always take a step back and wait to see what happens. Who knows, maybe all this Web 2.0 stuff is a fad? You could just hop on the Web 3.0 bus when it turns up. But what you simply can't afford to do is take the actively Luddite approach. By which we mean: do not ban Facebook. Or Twitter, or Bebo, or Flickr or Delicious or any Web 2.0 site.

We understand the temptation. Why should your employees spend salaried time essentially chatting with their friends? The same argument was made when email become prevalent. While some still deprive their people of this tool, the overwhelming trend was for company after company to relent and end the email embargo. Let's learn from history and not repeat our mistakes.

If that doesn't persuade you, here are three practical reasons why a light touch beats a heavy hand:

1. Unproductive people are unproductive people – if they aren't on Facebook, they'll be fashioning increasingly large rubber band balls. On the flip side, productive people are exactly that, and deserve your trust anyway.
2. We're talking about changing your culture to embrace the benefits of social networking. So, why would you prevent your people from becoming experts in it?
3. Like email, social networking is rapidly becoming seen as a "basic right" as the lines between company time and personal time continue to blur. You might not agree – but are you willing to disillusion your existing staff and alienate potential recruits?

Test the waters
The adoption of Web 2.0 doesn't have to be a binary decision – "you're either in or you're out". Like anything new, you might like to dip a toe before diving in. A simple way to do this is to 'borrow' some of the core mechanics of a social networking application and use them for a specific, limited (and therefore controllable) purpose. Here's an example:

We recently worked with mobile phone provider O2 to conduct a company-wide cultural "temperature check" to uncover 11,000 people's views on everything from their working environment and remuneration to their understanding of (and engagement with) the brand strategy.

One of the research tools we developed was an e-zine where employees could post short comments on a range of questions that were updated throughout the two-week research process. These comments were then dynamically posted to the e-zine so everyone could see what their peers had to say on the key issues.

We ultimately garnered a large volume of bite-sized views on a variety of issues ranging from the day-to-day to the big picture. Does all this sound familiar? Our "Twitter Lite" adopted some of the conventions established by social networking sites to enable us to gain a more textured and human understanding of O2's culture – enriching and complementing the insights gathered through more traditional research tools.

"Our brand is all about helping people connect, so exploring the benefits of social networking is a logical progression for us," explained Jenny Burns, head of internal communications at O2. "This project may have been only a small step forward, but it's provided an invaluable demonstration to the business that these applications can be harnessed for internal communications."

Another example of incremental adoption is found closer to home. One of our colleagues recently spent his lunchtime embedding our office Spotify playlist in our website. Visitors can see what we're listening to and even add their own choices to the mix.

All this hints that the immediate future of social networking within organizations may lie in proprietary applications that offer a greater degree of control then their full-blown counterparts. This will limit the impact of Web 2.0 in the short term, but that may be no bad thing at a time when we're yet to understand the implications of untrammeled peer-to-peer communication.

What this means for the communicator
If all this seems a little overwhelming, take solace from this: Your skills as a communication professional are as relevant today as they've always been.

Remember when everyone said the internet would herald the end of newspapers? Or e-readers would be the death knell of the printed book? In the same way, perhaps it's best to look at social networking as simply a toolkit of new channels – they are supplementary, not a replacement. Yes, we've all got plenty to learn. But all of it will be founded on the skills in empathy, clarity and information management that happily you already have.

In fact, dig a little deeper and you might just find that social networking will empower you like never before. IC has always been just as much about listening as it is about talking. And Web 2.0 comes equipped with a growing set of tools to help you filter, analyze and digest what's being shared across the social networks in your organization.

For example, tools like Trendrr will enable you to measure and compare words and phrases being used so you can, for example, identify hot issues being discussed by employees. Twitter allows you to search through a seemingly overwhelming volume of tweets to distil a list of contributions on a specific topic of interest. And semantic tools continue to improve enabling you to unearth more textured insights than those that can be achieved by basic word of phrase searches.

So, instead of picturing yourself sitting on the sidelines as a hailstorm of uncontrolled messaging rains haphazardly throughout the organization, imagine yourself sitting at the center of a web, plucking useful titbits as they flow past and redirecting them where needed. It's exciting stuff.

We’re all in this together
Whatever anyone might tell you, no one yet knows how to most effectively use social networking tools for internal communication.

Perhaps the best first step you can take is to sit down with your agency of choice and simply explore the possibilities of cross-referencing your business and IC challenges with the functionality offered by Web 2.0 tools.

Understandably given that it's all still in its infancy, people still seem to be getting to grips with the features of social networking. It's high time we all joined forces to explore the benefits. And those benefits will only emerge from a combination of business-specific insights, communication expertise and functional understanding.

 

Have your say
Are you an advocate of Web 2.0? If not, why not? Have you integrated it successfully into your communication strategy or are you still uncertain of how it fits with the business case? Let us know your thoughts below:

Recommended resources:
Facebook-style staff directories at IBM

How internal comms may change in a web 2.0 world

TOP TIPS: Cheap ways to roll out social media

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