What do you call internal social media?

What do you call internal social media in your company? Do you use the word ‘social’ or something else instead? Why? What are you aiming to achieve, do you have a policy in place and is your social strategy aligned with your business one?

All of these questions form part of some internal communication research I launched today in partnership with simply-communicate.

From conversations with my clients and people in my network, I realised there is a gap in terms of information among IC pros into who is doing what, what works and particularly what name is given to ‘internal social media’ and the reasons for it.

So I have partnered with the smart people at simply-communicate including Marc WrightSilvia Cambie and Gloria Lombardi, and we are conducting the research from today until 13 September.

The study is called “What’s in a name? What do you call internal social media?” It is 20 questions long and takes around 10 minutes to complete.

I’d love you to please have your say. Whatever stage you’re at when it comes to this topic, you’re welcome to participate.

What do we want to achieve?

The aim is to explore what kind of terms companies and individuals use when referring to the adoption of social media inside their organisation. Are we talking about internal social media? Social collaboration tools? Enterprise social networking? Social business?…

What do we actually mean by using these terms? What are the key trends and uses of social media inside our organisations?

I’d like to equip internal communication professionals with information to be able to benchmark against each other. It will enable you to understand what social media adoption inside organisations looks like and get a glimpse into the experiences of other comms pros.

I’ve written about all of these areas numerous times over the years, and the intention of this research is to capture the views of IC pros and other people with an interest in the subject. The more the merrier. I’ve included links to previous articles of mine at the end of this article that you may find useful.

How do I access the survey and results?

The survey will be open for the next few weeks, so do grab a cuppa and take time to add your opinions into the mix.

The end result will be analysis and an infographic of the data, so you’re able to benchmark and read about what other IC pros are doing. I will be presenting the results at Social Media Inside the Large Enterprise  SMILE London,as part of Social Media Week, London @smwldn, on 23 September.

I’m thrilled that an internal communication event has been chosen to help launch Social Media Week. I spoke at Facebook last year during the September week (it happens in Feb and Sep each year), about how social media is changing internal communication and think we will increasingly see more IC events in years to come.

Take the survey
This is the link you need to participate in the research.

STTWant to know more about this topic? You’re in the right place.

I wrote about Corporate communication and social media in my chapter of the hot-off-the-press book Share This Too: More Social Media Solutions for PR Professionals (pictured). You can find information about it on Twitter @sharethistoo.

I will be sharing more details about the book with you over the next few weeks. It’s just been published by Wiley and is available on Amazon and via the publisher’s website.

It’s already been romping up the charts, hitting the number 5, 8 and 9 slots on the Public Relations chart on Amazon on pre-orders alone over the past few days (Kindle, hardcopy plus the prequel Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals, which I also contributed to). Plus it’s the number 1 “Hot PR” release.

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch with me to say they have ordered the book or have read my chapter. You’re welcome to share your thoughts on it via the reviews page of Amazon, tweet me @AllthingsIC or comment below.

If you order Share This Too from Wiley direct, I have a code to save you 20 per cent off. Result! The code you need is: VBE14 and you need to put it in the checkout page of the Wiley website.

Talking of book offers, I have some exciting news from Gower Publishing that I will be sharing very soon – watch this space.

As promised, below is some further reading on internal social media. If you fancy an alternative view, I recommend checking out this article from Ghassan Karian, who I heard speak at the CIPR surveys, sentiment and strategy summit the other week.

Thank you as ever for stopping by and I look forward to reading your thoughts via the survey.

Rachel

Further reading

Replay of webinar (free) on enterprise social networking, from CIPR Inside
By me: Why use enterprise social networks for internal communication?
On my blog: 300+ social media policies and videos
On my blog: Defining social business
On my blog: Social business and a free ebook from @sheldrake
My YouTube playlist of 
social media policies
Creating the conversation: strategies for internal communication (feat interview with me)
Everything I’ve published to date about Yammer
On my blog: Centres of excellence for social media?
On my blog: How many social media channels do you know?
On my YouTube channel: Internal Comms TV

Post author: Rachel Miller

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