You open the internet, and it’s everywhere. It’s Twitter this and Twitter that. Why has it become so popular in the recent years, achieving a staggering growth of 500%?
It’s not because it is cool or it’s a cool piece of technology. It’s caught on because it’s changed the way we communicate on the internet for the better. It has made us move away from emails and telephones which are good only for 1-1 conversations to a more open, simple and faster platform. Let’s take a look at how micro-blogging can fit into an enterprise’s internal communication channels.
Current communications
Phone calls and emails take up most of our times, making it very easy for information to get lost; on top of it the closed communication structures hinder faster spread of information through the network. I mean seriously, how many times had you wait for days before the CEO can reach your mail in his inbox?
Current innovations
New media platforms like blogs, wikis and IMs have definitely opened up new things but they all individually lack something or the other. It’s either poor communication [wikis] or less participation [blogs].
What we need
In the trend grows for dynamic and huge [yet decentralized] organizations, we need to find something which satisfies:
- Simple, fast and secure collaboration
- It is structured
- Supports mobile platforms
- Is an open platform (within only the enterprise of course)
Now, before you read on all skeptical of this; I want to stress that such communications cannot replace emails; but should be used to leverage old school channels.
Here are some ways in which micro-blogging can be embedded into an enterprise
Broadcasting system
If the CEO or head of a department needs to quickly send out a short message regarding a new resolution or maybe the new dish in the cafeteria? :)
Central and collaborative knowledge management
As the number of documents grows in the central repository, a micro-blogging platform can be used to quickly broadcast and index links to the repository (a wiki). One more problem that every organisation faces at every stage of development is training.
This requires finding the key experts and then disseminating to the newly inducted. These new guys can be allowed to see the social streams of these experts to gain valuable and quick real time information.
Bring conversations into the workflow
Would you like to create a wiki page for every small issue? Brainstorming and solving queries can be the biggest asset a communications channel can give to the business.
Analytics and security
Like everything online, these internal Microblogging platforms can be tracked down to the smallest details like who’s the most active learner? Who’s teaching the most? What knowledge is a department lagging in and who needs to be introduced into the stream to solve the same. And all this can be done behind the firewall, keeping company information safe and secure.
Conclusions
Enterprise Microblogging can transform your business workflow by faster spread of information, tracking and brainstorming on issues.
Challenges
Can this model work for smaller teams of 10-20 users?
