Refresh San Diego

Last night I attended Refresh San Diego for the first time. Several presenters gave an overview of how their companies are leveraging social network tools within the enterprise to encourage collaboration. Many companies are grappling with the issue of how to encourage enterprise collaboration and at the same time, maintain security and employee policies, although the price for ignoring the issue was clear; one major technology firm found that employees were using del.icio.us to post links to internal classified documents. I predict that this will be an issue which more companies will be forced to deal with, as employees increasingly blur the line between their online life and their work life.

I posed the question to a few of the attendees, “For a company in the technology field, how do you simultaneously encourage this type of collaboration, and at the same time, maintain control over the communications?”. As some of you know, I originally came from a retail and merchandising background, so my follow up to this question was, “how do you move from using social tools for internal communications to using these tools for communications with customers and vendors?” I know, huge can of worms here. But several companies have felt the pain of ignoring the issue, resulting in data leaks, customer alienation, or worse, industrial espionage. On top of all that, engaging with your customers using social media can mean closing more sales, and companies that lead in this area are already benefiting from increased customer evangelism (Zappos is a great example of a company that has used social media to encourage customer evangelism).

I don’t know what the answer is; what I do know is that that benefits to the successful execution of a social media strategy far outweigh the potential side effects. The key to successful execution is to have clear policies which embrace collaboration, establish a clear delineation between internal and public communications, and more importantly, provide an avenue for each.

How is your company encouraging social collaboration among employees? What about with external partners and customers?