How do you use social networking at work?

We've had some success getting people to tweet weather observations to @necnweather - creating a network of reports that can be seen in our embedded tweetstream on weathernewengland.com. We hope that as severe weather season heats up, it's a good way for people to send in feedback and information to the community, and if they want to follow the developments on the blog, it wouldn't hurt our feelings one bit.

Easy part - all free technology. And even I could set it up - which tells you it's pretty easy. Not loaded in terms of direct ROI to be measured, but like so many of these social networking technologies, you're building a more committed network of active followers.

At the Greater Boston Chamber, we have 1,600 member companies and are always looking for new ways to keep out core constituencies informed. We use new media applications, including blogs and Twitter, to complement our communications strategy.

Our blog traffic has significantly grown over the past 18 months and Twitter has proven itself to be an especially useful business tool.

In just the past few weeks, we have had several companies join the Chamber after learning more about our value proposition through our tweets.

Chamber members live tweet from Chamber events, and our messages about upcoming programs and policy initiatives have driven traffic to our website and are being re-tweeted at an impressive rate. Our new media strategy is producing measurable business results.

I work over at Comcast SportsNet and we recently launched a new weekend show called The Baseball Show. One of the segments in the show is called "Web Sox Nation" a play on "Red Sox Nation" where we talk with 3 Red Sox bloggers each week about what's driving interest on their site(s).

We aren't using Twitter or Facebook so much as I am networking one on one with these blogs to recruit them to register their blog on our Baseball Show landing page http://www.csnne.com/programs/the-baseball-show/ and to line them up for the show.

So far very successful. We've featured six blogs and each one has blogged in advance about their appearance.

At Comcast SportsNet we recently launched a new show - The Baseball Show - and we have been actively using social networks to build interest.

We are using Facebook and Twitter, but the key component to our effort has been to include Red Sox bloggers in our show during a feature we are calling "Web Sox Nation".

We have been working one-on-one with roughly 30 sites to recruit them to register for our Baseball Show landing page http://www.csnne.com/programs/the-baseball-show/ and to line up their appearances on the show.

Thru two shows, we have featured six bloggers, each of whom have pre-promoted and blogged about their appearance.

Hi Adam,

At IBM, our corporate culture encourages our 400,000 employees to participate in social media by following guidelines we established in 2005. Our estimates show 40,000 IBMers use Facebook, and 1,000 use Twitter.

Usage by IBM of these channels varies, but internally a large portion of our population uses social media technologies behind our firewall to collaborate, find and tap into experts across our company. We like to think of IBM as a “living lab” that transfers its social media knowledge and experience into developing commercial social networking tools such as Lotus Connections, Quickr and LotusLive Engage, which are used extensively throughout IBM.

At IBM we are also using crowdsourcing to identify business direction and fund new "smarter" units. Our crowdsourcing initiatives have given us headlights into some of the fastest growing trends and market opportunities which IBM characterizes as “smarter planet” initiatives (ie Integrated Mass Transit Information System, "Big Green" Innovations, Intelligent Utility Networks, Smart Healthcare Payment Systems and Electronic Health Record System, etc.)

In 2008, IBM host InnovationJam -- arguably the world's largest enterprise 2.0 event, tapping people from more than 1,000 companies across 20 industries. The event produced industry-tailored roadmaps for companies to chart their own path to become an 'Enterprise of the Future'.

I could go on and on with examples of how we are doing crowdsourcing internally....let me know if you want to hear more.

Karen Lilla
IBM
617-693-8115
[email protected]

I use Facebook....and Linked In.

I'm not a huge fan of Twitter -- some people are just "collectors" and there's no strong interaction that's easy to follow like Facebook has.

My main use for social networking is gathering and sharing information. I love twitter and the people who share interesting and useful links on there. It's a great way to track trends and learn something new.

But, I also use it to communicate with people in my industry, make new contacts, find new clients, and help people, but I see all of that falling under the umbrella of finding and sharing information.

My pet peeve about social media/networking is that it fails to grasp that the whole web is social. It was built with the intent of sharing of information from the start. Hyperlinks are just a way to connect sites and share information you find with your readers. I look at UniversalHub as a social site. You've got discussions on here and connect your readers with information and resources elsewhere on the web.

So that extent I use social media much the same way I use the internet in general, to find information and learn. Sometimes that information is in the form of a contact, sometimes it's a tutorial, sometimes it's a complaint, compliment or request from a client and other times it's a news article. But it's all information that serves to improve you and connect you with new resources.

Wanted to add that my main takeaway point from my 15 year online experience is that success online (and in life) is all about community. Building a group of people who appreciate your brand and your product is crucial. Empowering them to share how your product helps them via social media is a great way to show social proof of your expertise and benefits. It also gives you moral support and allows you to help others and build connections that will last beyond your latest venture.

That's where the latest social networking tools (specifically, blogs, twitter, linkedin, facebook) come in handy. They allow you to connect with your fans, friends, business partners, competitors and clients easily and quickly. I find that online competition is not quite how it is in the "real world". Online, people are much more apt to link to you and recommend you even if it takes away business from them because they know that if they end up helping their visitors and clients it's a WIN for everyone.

So, I use the social networks to connect with like minded people and companies to build a base of operations and for sharing of knowledge. I also use it to check out what my competitors are doing and even connect with them to see if we can work together rather than waste time competing against each other.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center launched a new interactive web site last September that includes blogs where people talk about issues from cancer and heart disease to nutrition and the challenges of being a new mom. We have a Facebook fan page “Healthy Living with BIDMC: Presented by Heather Kahn” and a corresponding Twitter service.

We also have a couple of efforts more focused toward media than consumers, using my personal Facebook and Twitter pages. A “News and Notes” blog within the BIDMC web site forms the foundation for that social media outreach.

And of course we have a CEO who is active on Facebook and Twitter as well as his personal blog.