Is it important for you to understand the psychological and motivational factors that drive engagement on social intranets? Maybe it’s more helpful for you to understand the factors that drive engagement with the content you create for blogs and social media. Either way, I’m committed to learning and sharing the best practices for creating content that accelerates engagement on social intranets and other collaborative platforms.
Terms like social and collaborative may sound sexy but can mean many things to our audience, which creates confusion. This impacts workers looking for actionable business reasons to use the social intranet, as well as those creating content for the social intranet (and other social platforms), who want clear guidance about the business issues that should be communicated there. This won’t happen unless the social intranet is introduced and maintained from a change perspective, using change management communication principles that make the most of psychological factors that unleash engagement there.
Use of social intranets is growing at most organizations, where the focus has shifted from if we should have social tools to how we should use them.
Many organizations talk about the benefits of the technology solution without first laying the groundwork for its importance to the strategic goals of the organization. Workforce change, adoption and engagement are business not technology considerations. But technology trumps all in too many cases, compromising plans for a well-designed launch and sustained engagement.
Going Deeper
Based on feedback from posts like Six Variables of Social Intranet Adoption and others I’ve created an e-book that you can download below. I draw from experience as a corporate communication leader with Pitney Bowes as well as successes we’ve had in my own as a communication practice since 2009. I’ll also reference inbound marketing strategy, where my firm has been privileged to help a number of clients realize business goals using content marketing and social media solutions.
The e-book steers clear of content migration plans and technical aspects of content strategy, such as information architecture, usability and taxonomy—important topics that remain ripe for future e-book endeavors. Here we’ll focus on great content creation and the process of leveraging psychological factors that accelerate and sustain engagement on social intranets and collaborative platforms.
Download this e-book to learn:
- The Cultural Value of Social Intranets
- Psychological Keys for Unlocking Engagement on Social Intranets
- The Cultural Barriers to Success on Social Intranets
- How to Get the Right Answers by Asking the Right Questions
- How to Create the Right Context Before Creating the Right Content
Click for your e-book download:
Thanks for listening, and feel free to comment below or contact me directly at [email protected].
very interesting
very thought provoking
Dom, nice job with the e-book.
You mentioned that terms such as “social” and “collaborative” can mean different things to people. Given that ambiguity is a problem with buzzwords, I am curious to know a couple of examples of the different ways people interpret those words. Thank you.
Hi Ken: I think when people hear social they think of random postings on Facebook and Twitter about what people had for breakfast—e.g., comments and rants with little or no business value. So this is the context most people have for social and for concepts like collaboration. My challenge is to help communicators try and direct the conversation—not to try to control it, but rather to facilitate it for business purposes. When we speak of a “social” intranet we immediately turn off people who may not choose to be active on (external) social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But being social/collaborative around the solving of a business issue has great value to any organization—and yet, social and collaborative behaviors on the corporate or organizational intranet should also have a fun, entertaining component, where colleagues can get to know each other better and share a laugh together occassionally. It’s the melding of these two worlds (business and personal) and understanding the psychology of why people want to interact on social platforms that helps us to understand why employees would want to collaborate/be social for business purposes.