Good reasons why corporations should embrace social networks in the workplace
By Mark Schmulen, CEO, NutshellMail
According to Robert Half Technology, a provider of IT professional services, 54% of U.S. corporations restrict employee access to social networks due to concerns about productivity, network security, and legal liabilities.
Sure these are serious concerns. But companies that block access to social networks are missing out on incredible opportunities to expand their marketing reach, and build customer and employee loyalty.
Social networks have changed the way we communicate, discover, collaborate and connect with friends and business contacts alike. However, for many companies the benefits of social networking are not so obvious.
Herewith are just a few reasons why companies may want to think twice before blocking employees from social networks:
Deeper insights into business contacts
Social networks can tell you a lot more about an individual than any business card or email signature. Anytime you plan to meet with a new business contact you should check out the person’s social networking profiles. A quick search on LinkedIn can provide you with a history of his or her professional experiences. Checking out the contact’s Twitter feed can tell you what she’s interested in, and a search on Facebook can highlight friends you share in common. At the end of the day, business relationships are still human relationships and the more information you know about someone can only help you forge more productive connections with people in and outside of your field.
Read the rest at Fortune Magazine
Many of you are all too aware that Microsoft’s Outlook is less than perfect. However, if you are like me and stuck in your old Outlook ways, I have two great recommendations that can significantly improve the speed and performance of Outlook. There are many new and not-so-new Outlook add-ins that you can download for free, however my two favorites are Outlook Attachment Remover and YouSendIt’s Outlook Plug-in.
The Outlook Attachment Remover is perhaps the quickest and easiest way to improve Outlook’s performance. This plug-in works by removing attachments from your Outlook files and saving them to your hard drive. What I love about this application is that you can still access your attachments in the same manner as before; however because the large files are removed from Outlook, the client’s speed and performance is greatly improved. In less than five minutes, I was able to automatically free up more than 500MB of storage space. EZDetach offers a low-cost application with additional features; however, I found the free version offered by www.kopf.com.br to be more than adequate.
YouSendIt’s Outlook Plug-in is another great tool for reducing the size of both your Outlook files and the storage space of your recipient’s email client. YouSendIt offers a free service for sending large files via email. The service works by uploading your attachment files and sending a link to your intended recipient so they can download your documents directly from the Web. (The service offers a subscription service with additional features as well). I have used this service in the past; however I was not sold on it until they released their Outlook add-in, which enables me to use the service directly through Outlook. The application is very easy to use; all you have to do is attach a document to an email by clicking on the YouSendIt toolbar within Outlook. The service will automatically upload your documents and directly insert the link in your email message. In addition to improving your Outlook’s performance, your recipients will appreciate the reduced file size of your email.
For more suggestions on how to get the most out of Outlook, I recommend you read Arrow Tips by Misty Khan of Advena Artemis.
If you manage or belong to a network hosted on Ning, you will find this post very relevant. If you are not on Ning, I highly recommend you check it out as it is one of the best platforms for creating and discovering social communities.
One of the most proven ways to re-engage your network’s members is to send them periodic emails highlighting recent activity on your site. Now you can add your own automated email newsletter to your Ning site with the free application from NutshellMail.
The NutshellMail application, recently named a winner of the 2009 Ning Appathon, gives your users the ability to sign up for a newsletter that highlights recent and featured content from your network. The app places an “Email Newsletter” tab on your network that your members can opt-in to receiving on a schedule of their choosing (as seldom as once a week or as often as three times a day). You can see an example of an email newsletter for the Creator’s Network below.
Benefits of the NutshellMail app:
- Increase readership and site visits
- Encourage more participation and comments
- No work for you – its fully automated
- It’s Free
By giving your members the ability to receive periodic updates from your network on their own schedule, the NutshellMail app keeps your members up to date on the latest activity from your network and helps to pull users back into your site. The key is in giving your users 100% of the control. Users choose to sign up and can select how often they want to be notified. In addition, users can choose to add notifications from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn so that they can monitor activity from all their social networks in single consolidated email digest and will, therefore, open their email newsletter more often.
Click here to learn more about the free NutshellMail app
Click here to install the free NutshellMail app on your network
We would love your feedback! Please respond to this post or email us at support(at)nutshellmail.com
Note: This app is only available for public Ning networks
Sample of an Email Newsletter from the Creator’s Network
As alumni of the FacebookFund incubator program, we are often asked by other entrepreneurs what we found most valuable about the three month program. While there were many lessons and takeaways that transformed us as a company, learning how to factually and accurately measure user behavior and use the findings to drive development ended up being the most transformative takeaway. We wrote this piece to elucidate the reasons why metrics matter and more importantly share with aspiring entrepreneurs what tools we found most valuable for collecting this data.
You can read the entire piece on the fbFund Blog.
While the growth in social networking has been explosive, many networks are experiencing difficulties engaging and retaining users. Even Facebook, the clear-cut winner in terms of users and engagement, only retains 60% of registered users, and just 50% of “active” users regularly visit the site. For Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and others the numbers are more alarming. According to Nielsen, Twitter has a 40% retention rate, and only 20% of those users are active. It should come as no surprise, but increasing user engagement is one of the most important factors of success for any destination website. If Twitter could reengage just 25% of their inactive users, they could double their active user base.
So how do networks re-engage inactive users? Recognizing that email is still the killer app, most social networks focus their re-engagement strategies on sending email notifications in an effort to pull users back into their sites. However, as users receive a constant flow of email alerts across a growing number of services, they have become desensitized and frustrated with the interruptions and additional email clutter. As a consequence, many users simply ignore these emails, filter them or opt-out of receiving them. Open rates for email notifications that used to be near 40% in 2004 have fallen between 10% and 20% today. It is clear that while users still depend on email, they have become more discriminating with what they open. The strategy of sending one-off email notifications is now much less effective than it once was.
What to do next? Take a lesson from food courts.
The Solution: “Coopetition”
A food court, a collection of restaurants in a single location (usually a shopping mall), may seem counter-intuitive from a business perspective. Why would retailers want to congregate in the same place when they are competing against each other for a larger piece of the market share pie? Wouldn’t it be better to open shop in an area with minimal competition?
In reality, food courts offer a tremendous value to participating retailers due to their ability to attract a larger number of potential customers with high intent to purchase a meal. In short, these smart business owners have figured out how to work together to expand the total pie of potential customers who know where to go when looking for a bite to eat. This strategy of “coopetition” enables the merchants to increase their total available market compared to the limited potential for those who operate separately in far-flung reaches of the mall. Examples of “coopetition” are everywhere, such as the gold & jewelry district in New York, clothing stores in shopping centers and car dealerships lined up along the same freeway. But what does this have to do with social networks?
Social networks continue to send one-off email alerts despite the fact that more and more users are ignoring them. Why do they ignore them? For starters, they get too many. More importantly, these alerts usually interrupt users who have little intent to log into their network at that time. However, by taking a page from retailers in a food court, social networks could improve the effectiveness of their email campaigns by working together.
This notion of “coopetition” is also one of the driving forces behind NutshellMail.com, which has proven to be a more effective way for social networks to engage users through email. By consolidating activity from multiple providers into a single email digest and empowering its users to determine exact times when their digests are delivered, NutshellMail matches users’ expectations and intent. Because each digest is full of personal and relevant information and is delivered exactly when the user expects it, NutshellMail users are far more likely to read their notifications and click back into their social networks.
By harnessing the power of “coopetition”, social networks can more effectively increase their retention and engagement rates. It may be difficult for some Web-content providers to acknowledge that teaming up with their largest competitors can be mutually beneficial, but that lesson is being learned; look no further than both MySpace and Twitter, who are now pushing their users’ updates directly into Facebook. Who knew that food courts could provide best practices for the social networking world?
