Online collaboration and Building Online Community

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You First Meet

You Exchange a Little Info

You Get into Deeper Conversations

You Discover Hidden Talents

Everyone can Share & Receive Info and Value

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Social Networks & Collaboration – The Opportunity

o Social Media isn’t a fad. If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest in the world.

o Online Collaboration allows you to get the most from your social networks.

o Billions are being spent on collaboration, community and reaching out to connect.

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Social Networking 1.0 - Connective Tissue of the Community

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Social Networking Evolved for ROE

What Are the Results?

What Are We Getting Out of Social Networks?

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People are social beings.The water-cooler has beenaround a long time it justlooks different now and ismost likely online.

Let’s Make it Useful!

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Let’s Be Real

Forget Theory

In It’s Infancy, It’s Evolving & It’s About Deeper Community Engagement

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Online Collaboration Defined

Collaboration is a recursive[1] process where two or more people or organizations work

together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor[2][3]

that is creative in nature[4]—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.

Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group

a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly..[5]

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What can you gain from Online Collaboration

Connecting with internal teams for:

Idea management

Creating a knowledge base

Promoting team interaction

Fostering employee satisfaction

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What can you gain from Online Collaboration

Connecting externally for:

Market Research

Gaining Product Feedback

Customer Intelligence for Targeting

Building Community & Brand Loyalty

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Tools for Online Collaboration

It depends on what you are trying to achieve:

Document Sharing tools – Sharepoint

Blogs, Wiki’s and Forums – Wordpress etc.

Mind-Mapping - MindJet

Project Management tools – Base Camp

THEY DON’T DRIVE TO RESULTS AND OUTCOMES CLEARLY & QUICKLY

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Tools for Online Collaboration

I didn’t mention the usual suspects - Twitter, FB etc.

There is a new wave of social tools that:

Enable collaboration at a deeper level

Eliminate the need and difficulty of complex decision-making via meetings, email, telephone & text messages

Allow threaded conversations that can be driven to results & outcomes

Enable communication between geographically dispersed people & teams to share ideas and questions & drive to actionable results via the cloud

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The Rise of Social Collaboration & Community

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It all Sounds Great, Right?

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If You Create The Space - Will They Come?

Uh No…..No they won’t…..

We found that out pretty quickly

Knew we had to adjust and change the way we were approaching the space – simplified the UI

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If They Come Will They Stay?

No? Really……

We knew that building,fostering and giving ahome online was one of thekeys to success

Created a CDM team & developed guidelines to reduce friction to signing up, getting engaged & immersing in the experience & the COMMUNITY

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How Can You Keep Them in Your Community? It’s about Adoption…BUT

Adoption is getting worse

2.0 adoption council info in the marketing data – (200 companies) – adoption requires management/training/development:

1-1/2 years ago: 70% encountered resistance & 40% couldn’t overcome it

As of a 6 months ago: 80% encountered resistance & 55% couldn’t overcome it

Underestimating time and money to manage the community

Can’t just give them a platform and hope they will get engaged

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But more-so how can you have them become an active participant in the Community and engage in Online Collaboration?

Adoption is fraught with ignorance & “I don’t know how to do this”

We need to help people understand what they need to do

Why are you collaborating? What is the specific purpose?

Once you know this – how do you collaborate and what tools do you use

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Living In the Trenches

You’re either a good example or a bad warning

Community Adoption = a cultural shift

Know who the influencers are prior to the rollout of a collaboration platform. Allow people to self identify that they add value via social platforms & collaboration platforms.

Stop trying to hold members hands through every step – make it friction free or make it required –> Schools!

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Living In the Trenches

Spread evangelists out around the organization – do it around what people are passionate about.

Focus on the people who are the content providers & the topics that they are passionate about.

Have a rewards system & keep members updated.

Promote users to moderators (not the police but a super user) in the community.

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Some Take-Aways & Wins

Building community is not easy, it’s complicated & takes shifts in culture and paradigm – or make it required (schools) – go to the session at 4:30.

Make it simple to use, navigate and see the results & give members a home.

Community members are the best source of finding what is the most important content and getting to the best outcomes.

Pay attention to the micro-communities in your overall community. It could be grouped around people (a champion), topics or geography.