Social Collaboration by David F. Carr Social Collaboration For Dummies® Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit- ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permis- sion of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. 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Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Control Number: 2013948026 ISBN 978-1-118-65854-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-65853-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-65855-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-865856-7 (ebk) Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents at a Glance Introduction ................................................................ 1 Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration ............ 5 Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking ....................7 Chapter 2: Getting Familiar with Social Collaboration Tools .....................................41 Chapter 3: Putting Social Collaboration to Work ........................................................69 Part II: Organizing Work with Social Collaboration....... 85 Chapter 4: Everyday Sharing on a Social Network ......................................................87 Chapter 5: Working Your Network ..............................................................................105 Chapter 6: Managing Projects and Tasks....................................................................115 Chapter 7: Collaborating on Content ..........................................................................133 Part III: Exploring the Social Collaboration Software Market ...................................................... 147 Chapter 8: Beginning Your Search for a Social Collaboration Platform .................149 Chapter 9: Charting the Products and Vendors ........................................................171 Chapter 10: Social Collaboration in the Cloud ...........................................................193 Chapter 11: Standards for Social Networking and Integration ................................213 Part IV: Managing Social Collaboration ..................... 227 Chapter 12: Succeeding with Social Collaboration ....................................................229 Chapter 13: Managing Successful Collaboration Communities ...............................249 Chapter 14: Engaging External Collaborators ............................................................269 Part V: Playing Your Part in a Social Business ........... 277 Chapter 15: The CEO and Executive Management Guide to Social Collaboration ...279 Chapter 16: The CIO Guide to Social Collaboration ..................................................293 Chapter 17: The Workplace Leader’s Guide to Social Collaboration ......................301 Chapter 18: Social Collaboration for the Sales Team ................................................311 Chapter 19: Social Collaboration for the Worker Bee ...............................................323 Part VI: The Part of Tens .......................................... 331 Chapter 20: Ten Common Themes in Social Collaboration Success Stories .........333 Chapter 21: Ten Obstacles to Social Collaboration Success ....................................341 Chapter 22: Ten Ways to Make Social Collaboration Pay Off ..................................349 Appendix: Case Studies: Learn from Others ................ 361 Index ...................................................................... 375 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................. 1 About This Book ..............................................................................................1 Foolish Assumptions .......................................................................................2 Icons Used in This Book .................................................................................3 Beyond the Book .............................................................................................3 Where to Go from Here ...................................................................................4 Part I: Getting Started with Social Collaboration ............ 5 Chapter 1: Connecting Business Collaboration with Social Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Defining Social Collaboration .........................................................................8 Seeing how social collaboration can help your business .................9 Social collaboration: not about cloning Facebook ..........................12 Socializing software .............................................................................13 Making social networking serve business purposes .......................16 Distinguishing between Collaboration and Social Networking ................19 Accelerating teamwork with collaboration ......................................20 Reaching across the organization with social networking .............21 Bringing Collaboration and Social Networking Together .........................24 Sharing expertise within the organization ........................................24 Introducing new collaborations .........................................................25 Finding new connections through existing connections ................26 Linking knowledge, documents, and projects to people ................27 Competing and Coexisting with E-Mail .......................................................28 Providing social discussions as an alternative to Reply to All ......30 Linking to documents rather than attaching them..........................31 Encouraging sharing beyond the personal inbox ............................32 Bridging the gap between social collaboration and e-mail habits ....33 Exploring Practical Applications of Social Collaboration ........................35 Helping sales teams close more deals with social collaboration ....35 Finding answers to questions.............................................................37 Coordinating projects from the social activity stream ...................38 Generating ideas for products and business improvements .........39 vi Social Collaboration For Dummies Chapter 2: Getting Familiar with Social Collaboration Tools . . . . . . . 41 Introducing Social Collaboration Tools ......................................................42 Taking a look at corporate activity streams.....................................43 Sharing links, media, and documents ...............................................47 Determining what to post to an activity stream ..............................48 Monitoring an activity stream ............................................................49 Connecting external applications to an activity stream .................50 Addressing your post to a specific person or group.......................52 Moving Beyond Social Media .......................................................................55 Introducing Facebook and Twitter users to social collaboration ....55 Keeping social collaboration productive with policies and community management .........................................................58 Navigating the Enterprise Social Graph ......................................................59 Defining the social graph ....................................................................60 Making friends with reciprocal links .................................................61 Following people and subscribing to their feeds.............................61 Subscribing to feeds about documents, events, projects, or customer records ........................................................................62 Searching for expertise .......................................................................62 Searching the social graph .................................................................63 Forming Groups .............................................................................................64 Making room for projects ...................................................................65 Configuring levels of privacy in a group ...........................................65 Working Together on Content .....................................................................66 Creating, editing, and linking documents wiki-style ........................66 Incorporating file sharing ...................................................................66 Forecasting the Future of Social Collaboration .........................................67 Chapter 3: Putting Social Collaboration to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Harnessing the Energy of Social Networks for Business ..........................69 Gearing Up for Implementation ...................................................................71 Forming the team .................................................................................71 Organizing advocates ..........................................................................73 Borrowing freely from consumer innovations .................................74 Branding the network ..........................................................................75 Publicizing the launch .........................................................................75 Addressing Enterprise Requirements for Social Collaboration ...............76 Ensuring security and balancing trade-offs ......................................77 Archiving content for backup and legal discovery..........................78 Integrating with existing portal and document management infrastructure ....................................................................................78 Linking to corporate directories and HR systems ..........................79 Layering social connections onto existing applications .................79 Connecting multiple social applications ...........................................80 Putting Social Collaboration in Context .....................................................81 vii Table of Contents Part II: Organizing Work with Social Collaboration ....... 85 Chapter 4: Everyday Sharing on a Social Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Sharing and Targeting Posts ........................................................................88 Posting a simple status message .......................................................88 Knowing your audience ......................................................................89 Sharing with the entire organization .................................................90 Sharing with a group ...........................................................................91 Tagging other users to get their attention........................................93 Classifying posts with hashtags or formal taxonomy .....................94 Choosing Types of Posts Useful for Social Collaboration ........................96 Asking a question .................................................................................96 Polling the organization ......................................................................97 Thanking people and recognizing employees for achievement ....98 Sharing Files and Media ................................................................................99 Sharing files and documents ............................................................100 Working with collaborators on a business record ........................100 Sharing images and video .................................................................101 Responding to Another User’s Post ..........................................................102 Chapter 5: Working Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Making and Cultivating Connections ........................................................105 Returning the favor ............................................................................107 Cultivating connections ....................................................................109 Looking Professional Online ......................................................................110 Fleshing out your profile ...................................................................110 Answering questions .........................................................................111 Sharing useful information ...............................................................112 Joining the right groups ....................................................................112 Having fun while showing respect for the workplace ...................113 Chapter 6: Managing Projects and Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Sharing Progress Reports as Simple Social Posts ...................................116 Using More Sophisticated Social Task Management ..............................117 Creating a task as a social object .....................................................119 Assigning tasks to other users .........................................................119 Setting deadlines ................................................................................120 Exploring additional social task management options .................121 Structuring Work in Podio ..........................................................................121 Introducing Podio apps and tasks ...................................................121 Building a Podio app .........................................................................124 Creating a task ....................................................................................125 Creating related tasks .......................................................................126 Managing Activities in IBM Connections ..................................................128 viii Social Collaboration For Dummies Comparing Approaches to Social Task Management .............................130 Building social features into project management tools ..............131 Adding tasks to a social platform as a social object type ............131 Coordinating activities through informal social sharing ..............132 Chapter 7: Collaborating on Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Sharing Document Files ..............................................................................133 Uploading and downloading .............................................................134 Previewing in the browser ................................................................135 Checking in and checking out ..........................................................136 Sharing documents as social objects ..............................................136 Writing and Editing Documents Together ................................................138 Collaborating on content, wiki-style ................................................138 Editing simultaneously, à la Google Docs .......................................142 Keeping Content under Control .................................................................144 Part III: Exploring the Social Collaboration Software Market ....................................................... 147 Chapter 8: Beginning Your Search for a Social Collaboration Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Developing a Plan for Choosing a Social Collaboration System ............150 Identifying Key Distinguishing Features ...................................................152 Mobilizing for results ........................................................................152 Searching for the best social search engine ...................................153 Managing content beyond the status post .....................................156 File sharing and the cloud ................................................................157 Motivating behavior with gamification ...........................................157 Supporting innovation and ideation ................................................159 Choosing Software to Organize Ideas .......................................................160 Understanding the Different Types of Vendors and Products ..............162 Comparing established system vendors versus startups ............162 Seeking simplicity ..............................................................................164 Going lightweight ...............................................................................165 Insisting on sophistication ...............................................................166 When you need it all ..........................................................................167 Weighing Trade-Offs ....................................................................................167 Getting started trumps perfection ...................................................168 Trusting future features ....................................................................168