If you’re considering migrating to an enterprise social network but are concerned with how your employees will respond to one more application to learn, good news! Building an online community is easy if you know where to start.

With a few of our tried and true methods, you’ll be well on your way to a new social workplace, turning your employees into cheering fans and wondering how you ever survived without it.

Get Everyone on the Same Page

With any new application or technology, it’s always important to start with training. A good way to get everyone on board is with “official launch” training sessions, which explain how to use the application features and also give them an opportunity to get comfortable. If you can, make some video demos available as well as cheat sheets, which outline “quick tips” on using specific features.

Another way to spread the word is by recruiting internal champions to promote employee adoption. Most likely you already have some social gurus in your midst, why not convert them into champions? These employees can reach out to others, get everyone engaged, and quickly up-to-speed.

For example, We have a customer who used their social savvy IT admins to be the point of contact for user questions . This was a great strategy, as the IT admins were already familiar with fielding questions and could help users to overcome obstacles quickly.

New application adoption can be easy if you give your team access to helpful resources, and with the right tools they won’t be able to use ”I don’t know how…” as an excuse to not use the new platform.

Start with a Small Group

Many of our customers purposefully begin working with just a single department or team. This makes it easy for the group to learn the new application through routine activities like posting questions, sharing files, and assigning tasks. Over time, the group can bring in colleagues or teams from other departments to work with them.

For example, if you launch with just your marketing team, your enterprise social network could grow organically connecting marketing to the other teams they frequently work with, likes sales and product management.

The benefit of launching with a small group, is you create ambassadors for your company’s social network. These employees can quickly get other departments on board, and help your social workplace reach a critical mass of users.

Make It Fun and Social

One of the most engaging ways to capture employee enthusiasm is to reward those who help your social network grow. Some great ideas we’ve seen are prizes to the first 10 employees who complete their users profiles; gift cards to teams that rack up the most comments in a week; or free lunch to the team with the most social tags. You could also do weekly contests on social productivity milestones, or give a prize to the employee with the most creative “About” bio or the best “1st grader” profile picture.

Fun contests grow adoption quickly and they ease employees into their new social workplace with teamwork and camaraderie. The more creative you get, the more they’ll engage.

Also, encourage employees to socialize around non-work related activities. A great way to promote casual participation is to get everyone involved in planning a company office party. It’s important to let them know that the company social network is more for just work, it’s the place where they can connect and converse openly.

Set Easy to Follow Guidelines

Because enterprise social networks are new to organizations, you should consider establishing company-wide best practices for using the new platform. Here is an example of a few policies one of our customers used to migrate users to the social network and eliminate email:

• Messages with more than 2 recipients had to be sent through the social platform.
• Project managers could only answer messages posted to the community.
• Employee’s day-to-day interactions should occur on the social network (or in person).

In the End, It’s a Natural Transition

Although at first it may seem like a hard habit to break, with a few simple steps, you can overcome your dependence on email as a primary means of company-wide communication. By educating, encouraging, rewarding, and guiding your employees, you will soon be on your way to stronger employee collaboration and embracing all the benefits an enterprise social network has to offer.

Have your employees become less dependent on email? Please share your tips with us. We’d like to hear from you!

Many companies realize that a social workplace is also a productive workplace, with better employee collaboration and more job satisfaction. To create a social workplace, some companies choose enterprise social software, while others rely on their existing Intranets to share and access information.

Although Intranets can provide your company with significant value, they’re not always the ideal platform for workplace collaboration. At blueKiwi, we’ve seen many companies become successful social workplaces with the help of an enterprise social network; something they were unable to do with their Intranet.

Here are the top 5 reasons why many blueKiwi customers make the switch to enterprise social software:

1. Cultivate a community for your company.

An enterprise social network creates an environment where your employees connect and work together. It’s ideal for organizations that wish to unite distributed teams across locations, or want to improve interactions between departments. In one place, everyone can discuss ideas, share feedback or news, or launch new projects. Together, your workforce makes up a unique social community and sets the tone for your company’s culture.

Intranets, on the other hand, lack the social networking tools such as activity streams, messaging, and quick posting that are critical to collaborative work. Even if companies want and push teams or departments to collaborate, ultimately they find that their Intranet is not conducive to building a company-wide community.

2. Work with your colleagues in real time.

With a company social network, everything happens in real-time. With activity streams that update immediately, employees can respond to questions and get answers fast. And they can also accomplish more in less time with collaboration tools such as Wikis and polling. With a company social network, your employees have instant access to exactly what they need, and can use social workspaces to stay on top of multiple projects at once.

By contrast, Intranets are passive tools, unable to provide real-time updates or activity streams. They are most frequently used to store company information and documentation. And with no means to bring together teams to collaborate on the fly, workforce engagement doesn’t take place.

3. Improve how your company operates from within.

To keep your business running smoothly, you can use your collaborative software to bring together a teams or projects, as needed. Everyone involved can stay informed with access to a collaborative knowledge base and work together faster in collaborative workspaces. With one platform for all, project tasks stay in sync and everyone knows their responsibilities and milestones.

With an Intranet, you don’t have the integrated social interaction, task management, or real-time information streams, that you have with an enterprise social network. You’d still need to rely on other applications, in addition the Intranet, to stay on top of projects. Unlike enterprise social software, they’re not designed to add to your operational efficiency.

4. Make your workforce the center of your organization.

An enterprise social network takes an organization of talented individuals and gives them tools to work as one. The company’s success is fueled by employee interaction, conversations, and collaborative work. Thanks to enterprise social software, you can build a company where employees work as one, using transparency and collaboration.

By comparison, most company Intranets are controlled by a few employees and these few decide what information is available as well as how it’s accessed. This creates an environment where it’s difficult to collaborate, share ideas, or maximize talent.

5. Create one space for all.

Bringing your internal activity into a social workplace is a great way to keep everyone in your company connected. Often the enterprise social network is the one place where Sales and Marketing can live in harmony. (Stay tuned for more on that!). A company or private social network provides a place where teams share important information, identify company experts, and collaborate on project. It becomes an all-in-one collaborative workspace for your company.

Unfortunately, an Intranet is incapable of providing this level of communication flexibility and connectivity. In fact many organizations don’t have company-wide Intranets, instead they are organized by department, which don’t support the needs of a cross-departmental team or project.

So, why are Intranets getting trumped?

The answer is simple: Intranets were never designed to be social. It’s not in their DNA. They are passive tools, used by many organization to host shared documents. And typically only a few members of an organization control what information is stored on the company Intranet and how it is accessed. Intranets simply lack the collaboration and communication tools that people—not businesses—need to work together quickly and efficiently.

By adopting a social network, you can successfully connect dispersed workers and teams, putting talent at the core of the company. With social networking transforming how we work and engage, maybe it’s time to consider a more effective collaboration tool.

Reading, UK, 17 November, 2011 –

blueKiwi has launched a new White Paper along with an ‘Enterprise Social Software ROI Calculator’ to clarify the benefits that businesses can expect from driving higher collaboration and communication among organisations and workgroups. Both available online, these tools are designed to help organisations estimate the potential savings that an Enterprise Social Networks will bring to their business.

Anecdotal evidence is not enough

Social networking has become an integral part of our lives – the culture of sharing and collaborating is changing how we react with one another. Within the workplace, Enterprise Social Networks are similarly reshaping how employees engage with each other, within an organisation, as well as with external partners and customers.

Anecdotal evidence stacks up, but during tough times, hard facts are more often required to convince organisations to invest in such tools. blueKiwi’s White Paper explains in simple terms how an ESN can have a real impact on productivity and more importantly, the bottom line.

A clear assessment in real terms

Jean-Luc Valente, blueKiwi’s CEO, understands that when times are tough, companies want a real understanding of the tangible benefits for their organisation before investing in new tools or software.

“We put together this White Paper to help clarify the benefits of investing in ESN by assessing both the Return on Value and the Return on Productivity. blueKiwi wants to help organisations thinking of investing in ESN to understand the potential returns, both  in terms of behavioural changes and increased efficiency.”

Understanding what your organisation could be benefitting from

blueKiwi’s white paper sets out two different approaches to understanding and assessing the ROI of Social Software, Return on Value and Return on Productivity.

Return on Value is where the strongest payback can be found yet it is hard to capture in any formula – it is the result of working together more effectively, locating expertise on the fly, facilitating better situational awareness and accelerating innovation and decision cycles. It requires behavioural changes through sharing and social linking, enables a flatter organization and breaks the traditional silos within organisations.
Return on Productivity is easier to estimate and applies to three specific areas:

• Improved Communication
• Collaborative Work and Knowledge Search
• Efficient Time Management

Study results reveal that a high level of engagement is critical to reaping the benefits of social business. As adoption time and engagement grows, the return on productivity increases exponentially.

Why is enterprise social software relevant now?

ESNs such as blueKiwi help companies create open, connected and more involved organisations, where ideas and discussions can grow in support of innovation and decision-making, as well as promoting a working environment, which is both efficient and motivating. With budgets flat or shrinking and resources limited, blueKiwi’s ROI effort is a welcome initiative that provides business leaders with the tools they need to understand what return they can expect from an ESN.

As part of blueKiwi’s ROI inititiave, the online Enterprise Social Software ROI Calculator enables organisations of any size or industry to quickly estimate the savings that a ESN can bring to their organisation in just a few clicks.

Jean-Luc Valente believes that, “The next level of business performance will only be achieved by putting people at the centre, reconstructing information and process flow and leveraging the pool of knowledge that has so far been elusive to tap into. Beyond decisive cultural evolution, ESN is a necessary enabler”

The full White Paper can be downloaded free of charge from:

http://www.bluekiwi-software.com/en/resources/white-papers/

The Enterprise Social Software Calculator can be found at:

http://www.bluekiwi-software.com/en/bluekiwi-roi-calculator/

About blueKiwi
blueKiwi is the innovation leader in Enterprise Social Software. Our solutions enable hundreds of enterprises worldwide to engage and interact with their internal and external social networks in multiple business domains. Built from the ground up as a SaaS platform, blueKiwi is powering social business in many Global 2000 companies including Allianz, BNP Paribas, Cap Gemini, Dassault Systemes, Total and others. As a testament to its pioneering background and leadership – Gartner has consistently recognised blueKiwi as a visionary company since 2007.

Press Contacts Open2Europe – www.open2europe.com

Sarah Gilbert
Tel: +33 1 55 02 15 06
Email: s.glibert@open2europe.com

 Christina Green
Tel: +33 1 55 02 14 67
Email: c.green@open2europe.com

blueKiwi, European leader in Enterprise Social Software (ESS) today announces the signature of a new strategic distribution contract with invenio. This partnership demonstrates blueKiwi’s continued development and increasing global reach, allowing more and more companies to benefit from the best in Enterprise Social Networking platforms.

blueKiwi’s solution allows interaction with both internal and external audiences. Drawing on the benefits of public social networking sites, this one solution can be used by companies to create a private social network between their own staff as well as managing communities with their clients or partners. Available in 5 languages, English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, blueKiwi’s platform, which uses Saas (Software as a Service) can be deployed without any technical difficulty.

Ivan Meisel, Managing Director of Invenio commented: “In order to succeed, companies today are challenged to see communication from a fresh perspective. At Invenio we believe Enterprise Social Networking is the new perspective that has revolutionised the way we interact with employees, partners and customers; how we strengthen our brands and how we improve our corporate culture.
Thanks to Invenio’s strategic partnership with blueKiwi Software, users in Australia and New Zealand now have access to a mature world-class Enterprise Social Networking platform with local support and implementation service.
We are very excited with our new partnership and look forward to a long-lasting relationship helping our local market be the world leaders in innovative communication.”

Jean-Michel Vergne, VP European Operations from blueKiwi Software adds, “We are very happy to have initiated this strategic partnership with Invenio. Having expanded greatly in Europe, blueKiwi is delighted to be moving into the Australian market. Australia and New Zealand represents an exciting expansion for us and naturally we look forward to sharing our passion for new technologies. Invenio is a forward looking organisation which fosters a culture of innovation; we are sure that we will develop a long-lasting relationship with this dynamic company and be proud to share in the forthcoming successes.”

Created in 2007, blueKiwi is present in Europe, the USA and now Australia and New Zealand. blueKiwi is the only European company to have been recognised as a Visionary in the Enterprise Social Software category of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for three years running.

About blueKiwi
blueKiwi is the innovation leader in Enterprise Social Software. Our solutions enable hundreds of enterprises worldwide to engage and interact with their internal and external social networks in multiple business domains. Built from the ground up as a SaaS platform, blueKiwi is powering social business in many Global 2000 companies including Allianz, BNP Paribas, Cap Gemini, Carrefour, Dassault Systemes, Total and others. As a testament to its pioneering background and leadership – Gartner has consistently recognised blueKiwi as a visionary company since 2007.

About Invenio
Invenio works to develop innovative and trend-setting ideas and solutions. We focus on unconventional, ‘big picture’ thinking, while remaining firmly-grounded in practical reality – always delivering more than is expected.

blueKiwi Software Press Contacts

Christina Green
Tel: +33 1 55 02 14 67
Email: c.green@open2europe.com

Sarah Gilbert
Tel: +33 1 55 02 15 06
Email: s.glibert@open2europe.com

Christophe Routhieau, VP Products talks about the latest version of blueKiwi

1. Some changes to the user interface…

The first thing you will notice is the new look. We have streamlined the user interface. By reducing some of its visual clutter, it will be easier for you read and spot the things you need to see. We have also taken this opportunity to integrate the feedback we have gotten from our customers and users on interface terminology, navigation… We feel that this new interface will meet – or exceed – your expectations.

 2. The new menu bar…

Located on the top of the page, this menu bar was often ignored or rarely used. Along with the changes to user interface, we also have taken a look at what we could do to the menu bar.

On the menu bar, you will now find (from left to right):

• Search features
• Access to your Network, the Space directory (You will notice that we have put both communities and groups together in the same menu. From now on, we will refer to both of them as “spaces” – which can or cannot have external members) and for our customers of our Social Media Engagement module, the Channels menu.
• New publication menu
• Access to your account and profile. For the administrators, they will find access to the tools they need here.

3. Profile and Spaces now have their own activity stream…

Due to popular demand, we have added the real-time interactive activity stream introduced in the previous version to your profiles and spaces. The positive reaction and quick adoption by our customers made using this stream the natural choice for showing activity and reacting to the things going on in your network. You will now find it on:

• The Home tab of the space to show the activity of members in the space itself.
• The Profile to see all of the activity of the person and creating a personal activity stream (frequently referred to as a “wall”). It can easily be filtered to show all of their interactions with the network or the private ones between the person and the user visiting the profile page.

The quick post section has also been added to make sharing even easier. You can use this feature to share and post things quickly wherever you are. On the home tab of a space, use this feature to post something and share it with the members of the space. What to share something with somebody? Just go to their profile and use this feature to start a private conversation.

4. Your own stream as well…

Your activity stream on your home page now has a new filter you might notice but you will soon become very familiar with. It is called Subscriptions. You use this feature to see a stream that is built with the activity of spaces and people you want to follow.

• By default, this activity stream shows your private messages (and replaces the Messages filter).
• On each space and profile, you will find a subscribe button you can use to add their activity to this stream.
• You can manage the spaces and people you follow in your account settings

This stream allows you to concentrate on the activity that is important to you. You will also find your private message in this stream as well. It goes without saying that private messages are, by definition, important and should be included here.

5. Settings pages…

The way you set up your profile, manage your account settings, and personalize spaces has been redesigned. Like for the user interface, we did this in order to improve its use and ensure coherence with the rest of the application. A great example what we have done can be illustrated in the configuration of your email digests. In this version, they are now listed according to how often they are sent (hourly, daily…) and you can also choose to have the digests to be grouped together in a single email for each frequency.

 6. And we have also remembered your smart phone…

You can now take your network with you wherever you go! To take advantage of the new features in this version, we have redesigned user interface when you connect via your smart phone. And even better, we will be releasing dedicated mobile apps for your iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry very shortly. So stay tuned.

A lot has been written about how to make communities successful. We all know what one looks like. They have active members and a real sense of shared interest or purpose. There is a core of key members and contributors who encourage conversation, participate in debates and lead by example. There are lots of “surfers” or members who just read what is being said. Over time some ”surfers” become active members because as they tend to visit regularly, they more than likely have something to share. This often happens when they start to see the ‘value’ that the community interaction brings to their work area.

We also know what unsuccessful communities look like. No contributors, no discussions, nothing of interest being shared - and not surprisingly visits die down pretty quickly.

So how can we measure the success of a community in a quantitative way? Is the number of posts a good indicator of the level of participation? Is the number of page views really relevant to the message being shared? How much impact should the size of the community have in determining success of the community overall? While these are all important metrics what do they mean to the person at the center of the community – the individual member? What we need is a way of measuring the member’s Return on Engagement (ROE). If visitors get something out of a community, they will come back, they may participate, and they might even become an active member. To measure the ROE, therefore, we need to look at the “value” that the member derives from the community.

But the question is – how can we measure value from conversations and human interactions? Well, the first step to measuring the ROE is to link it to member-relevant metrics like satisfaction, loyalty, interaction, and feedback. The second step to measuring the ROE is to use these metrics to see if the community is meeting its business goal. The assumption in the latter approach is that the business goal is already well aligned with the community objective.

For example, your community’s business goal may be to reduce the number of manufacturing issues when designing and manufacturing machine parts.  Your community is made up of a small number of employees heavily involved in the product development and manufacturing engineering.  Now, does this community actually help these people in their day-to-day activity? Do they actually use the community to reach this goal? Are they sharing and talking about different things that happen in their workshops? Do members spontaneously share things in the community? The answers to these questions determine the success of your community.

To measure the engagement of community members, focus on:

• Page views:  Yes, no matter what, you need to know if the members of your community are actually visiting and reading things. If the page views per member go up over time it would indicate that your members like what they are getting.
• New contributions: Who is starting conversations? Who is sharing things? The goal of any community is to get its members to contribute whenever they have something to share. Now, if there are only a few contributors of new material, it doesn’t mean your community is not a success. It all depends on what members get out of the new contributions. It is better to have original and pertinent conversations followed by a lot of the members than to have lots of conversations which are nothing but “noise.”
• Reactions:  Do your community members feel inclined to express their opinion? Do they vote in polls? Do they comment on posts?
• Sharing: Are people sharing interesting content and links they find with others? For example, are members sending other members messages about content they find in the network? Do they repost things?
• Value:  Are the members of the community bookmarking content? Are they rating it for others or creating links to it for future reference? This is a sure sign that they find the content of use.

Here you can can see a community where everybody reads the posts, quite a few members engage in conversations and they also react to what has been posted.

And as you focus on these metrics, you will discover the strengths and weaknesses of your online community. Maybe the members are visiting but are not really participating. Why not? How can you successfully engage them? Is it necessary to better market the community or clarify the objectives? Are the key members playing an active role, or not at all?

By keeping a member’s Return on the Engagement (AKA What’s in it for me?) in mind, you will have a better idea of what is working in your community and what you need to work on.

New to enterprise social networking? Watch our new video and see just how easy it is to use blueKiwi to communicate and collaborate with a group.

When rolling out an enterprise social network, the first thing that should come to mind is, “What exactly is the business goal behind all this?” The answer to this question is central to creating an engaging and captivating internal social network.

“Increase collaboration” and “improve communication” are not business goals. They are too broad and diffused to be considered as the driver behind the launch of any enterprise-grade social network. By being broad they also project immediate conflict with generic systems and established work processes using email and Intranet without explaining how they can make things better.  Users are at a loss and without seeing whats in it for them – resistant to change. The lack of user adoption in turn is the surest path to project failure.

Another problem with poorly-defined networks is that there is no perceived value nor a compelling reason to participate. Typically a social network rollout needs a lot of planning and pre-launch work in creating interesting and useful content to cater to users’ interests that can keep them coming back. When the value is unclear it becomes that much harder to get champions and contributors to provide this seeding content. And without that - initial users have no sense of how they need to engage on the network.  The result: even if users create a login because they received an invite - this quickly becomes just another “tool” on their desktop that they do not use.

There are some simple approaches to starting your enterprise social network in the initial months of a rollout:

• Think small Inviting everybody into one huge network and expecting them to immediately adopt it and begin collaborating is a recipe for failure.  Remember, the size of the community does not reflect its success. Would you rather have a small but highly active community of 50 people collaborating, sharing notes, and working on a project or a community of 500 that gets a few visitors a day but nobody really does anything? Starting a number of smaller communities at the outset helps keep everybody engaged.

• Make the goals clear If users ask themselves why they have been invited to join a community, alarms should be ringing! Every online community in your enterprise social network should have a clear purpose and business goal that is easily communicated so that first time users know what to expect. Imagine a community for a product launch. It is quite clear what they are for and members can then use the inherent power of the network to ensure its success.

• Find your Champions When working in the smaller, “pilot” communities, users begin to see how they can use the different tools in your social network to become more productive. They will become your power users in other communities as your enterprise social network grows.

By starting with smaller online communities, you can ensure people know why they are there, what is expected from them, and capture their interest. Building on a number of focused successes in the early months provides a more controlled way to long term enterprise social network adoption and sustenance .

The effect of Generation Y workers (defined as people born after 1980) on the social workplace has been debated by business executives, management thought leaders and the media over the last decade. Most of these discussions focused on the cultural and technological differences between the existing workforce and the incoming crop of new hires as in this snippet below from a 2005 article in USA today.

“Generation Y is much less likely to respond to the traditional command-and-control type of management still popular in much of today’s workforce,” says Jordan Kaplan, an associate managerial science professor at Long Island University-Brooklyn in New York. “They’ve grown up questioning their parents, and now they’re questioning their employers. They don’t know how to shut up, which is great, but that’s aggravating to the 50-year-old manager who says, ‘Do it and do it now.’ “

Moreover, Generation Y’ers are also “digital natives.” For example, they have grown up with music downloaded as MP3s and listened to on the go on their iPods, high definition movies and streamed video, and cameras that have a memory card instead of a roll of 24 exposure film. Over 90% of them are online with 75% having accounts on social networking web sites.

As this younger generation began to enter the workforce, management and organizations have been on the lookout for signs of generational conflict. As the quote above shows, the fear was that Gen Y’ers would not adapt well to the social workplace. Not only would they question their bosses, this generation also believes in sharing information in all directions and getting help from literally anybody who has the knowledge. Information silos and rigid organizational hierarchies is something that is almost foreign to them. And being comfortable with technology, they are open to using whatever tools they have available to get their job done – no matter if it was officially sanctioned or not. A perfect example of this is using personal email accounts for business purposes. And they are all online and sharing on personal social networks – yes even at work, and if that is not allowed, on their smart phones.

No surprise that the advent of the Gen Y workforce has also been accompanied by the rise of Enterprise 2.0. By introducing familiar social networking capabilities throughout the organization companies are reshaping the way work is done for their entire workforce. This is also helping them successfully capture the interest and loyalty of the younger generation. But how do older employees and management view Enterprise 2.0? Are they falling behind because they are not as technology savvy?

Interestingly, that is not the case because the simplicity and value of social technologies creates a level playing field. Did you know, for example, that the average age of US users on Facebook is over 38? Pew Research Center published an eye-opening survey showing that older adults are embracing social networking en masse.

And if you look at the overall numbers, a study by Pingdom has shown that social networking really isn’t dominated by the tech-savvy Generation Y. It is the age group their bosses belong to who are the majority users of online social networking sites. Of course, while this ratio may vary greatly from one social site to another – the overall data is quite telling.

The fact is that even if these online social services are newer to the older generation, they are using them in greater numbers. So are generational conflicts a thing of the past? Not quite, and and here is a good resume of what some of the underlying causes are.

Yet, management and companies need to worry less about social technologies increasing the generational divide. They should in contrast, focus on how to adopt these social tools to accelerate collaboration, innovation and growth.