The Bamboo Project Blog

5 Strategies for Supporting Bottom-Up Social Media Use

Jane Hart writes an interesting post on top-down vs. bottom-up approaches to nurturing social media in organizations, making the excellent point that bottom up support of existing social media activities will work better than imposing social media use from the top down. What I've been observing in my work with clients, though, is a tendency to use top-down strategies to support bottom-up initiatives, especially in organizations where they're just delving into social media use. 

For example, one organization with which I've been working identified a project where employees had expressed interest in using Facebook as a strategy for sharing information and connecting with stakeholders. Management rightly concluded that it made sense to experiment with social media by supporting this project. However, despite my best efforts, the "support" for the project quickly devolved into conversations about who was "allowed" to post and what they were allowed to say--classic control issues that characterize the top-down approach.

Reading Jane's post it occurred to me that we need to have a better understanding of the questions and strategies that will nurture bottom-up participation in social media. Nothing kills a grassroots initiative faster than "Big Brother" strategies. So, some thoughts. . .

• Ask  employees what they need from management to support the project. This is probably the most obvious question, but one that I think can get lost in the shuffle. If employees have shown the initiative to start using social media, then they probably have some good ideas about what would be helpful to them in keeping the initiative going. In particular, they are likely to have identified the institutional barriers that impede their ability to make full use of social media. Pay attention to what they say and use an open mind in evaluating their ideas. Do what you can to implement their strategies.

• Focus on removing barriers to social media use, rather than on erecting new ones. In my experience, employees who are trying to use social media for work have a wealth of ideas for moving things forward. Their major problems tend to be with the organizational barriers that stand in their way. Although it is tempting to management to want to control social media use, if they're serious about supporting bottom-up projects, they need to refrain from going down this road. They should work with the project team to remove barriers and make sure that they are not putting new ones in their place.

• Provide employees with resources and ideas that will help them implement their project. Keep an eye out for articles and examples you can share with the team. Share these as a way of indicating your understanding of and support for what they are doing.

• Highlight their successes. Recognition is always appreciated. Share the results of the social media work done by your teams with other members of the organization during meetings and through organizational newsletters and emails. Focus on what's working and share that with others.

• Treat mistakes as learning opportunities. Don't panic and clamp down on the team when the inevitable social media mistakes are made. Accept that someone is going to accidentally post something problematic and that this is part of the process. Use these situations as learning opportunities to determine how you can handle situations the next time they arise.

These are a few of my thoughts. What do you think are the best ways to support bottom-up social media initiatives. What has/hasn't worked in your organization?

So You Think You Can Control Social Media by Controlling Access? Think Again.

Several years ago I was going to fly with a friend who'd never been on a plane before. He told me what he hated most about the idea of flying was that he wasn't "in control." This was a person who never let anyone else drive the car because he only trusted himself to make the split-second decision to swerve or brake should trouble strike.

In helping him try to manage his anxiety, I joked that maybe I should set him up with one of those children's car seat things where they have a toy steering wheel and stick shift so they can pretend like they're driving. He said he thought it might make him feel better because then he'd at least have the illusion of controlling the plane.

I thought of this story as I contemplated Dick Carlson's recent post reflecting on the challenge of implementing social media in the enterprise, which seems to hinge in large part on the idea of "control" or, more specifically, the illusion of control. Those organizations most resistant to implementing social media also seem to be those most hung up on the idea that they must control everything that is being said and done, both in and out of the organization. 

The problem with organizations, social media and the idea of control is that organizations are focusing on controlling access to social media. They act as though their company-owned computers are the only way an employee can get online. I hate to break it to you, but that's not true.

• The majority of American households have Internet, so if they want to, your employees can access social media after hours and on weekends.

• Many of your employees also have their own laptops and WiFi connections that they can use to connect during lunch hours or even, unbelievably, during work.

• 40% of Americans are using their own smartphones to access the web. 

• Proxy servers are another way to get around your blocks, especially if your IT department isn't as sophisticated as you think.

Controlling access to social media is increasingly becoming a fool's game--a waste of time and effort. And it's not only a waste of YOUR time, but a waste for workers, too. If 22 years of parenting have taught me nothing else, it's that the greatest goad to human ingenuity is telling someone "you can't do that." Considerable time and creativity will be expended in proving you wrong. That's what happens when you try to control access, rather than creating an environment where people are encouraged to engage in the behaviors you want them to choose--also a lesson I learned from parenting.

Virtual Career Fair Lessons Learned: Planning and Preparation

Virtual Career Fair and Job Shadowing Presentation

View more presentations from michelemmartin.

One of the projects I completed earlier this month for a client of mine was an online career fair. It was geared toward middle and high school students, their parents and educators.  Our goal was to expose them to career exploration information and some summer job search tips and techniques.

The event took place over a three-day period, with a "teaser" webinar the week before the career fair to help entice people to attend the sessions during the actual event. We used a wiki, a Ning network and a Twitter account for the bulk of our online outreach and interaction. We also set up a page describing how other individuals and groups could help us promote the career fair that included downloads of flyers and copy and paste info for them to include in emails and on their websites. 

The career fair included a series of live webinars that we then recorded and archived on our wiki for those who weren't able to attend the live events. We also had some pre-recorded webinars that were uploaded at different points throughout the three days.

The group I worked with on this project had worked together previously on other activities, but this was their first time doing something entirely online. They also had varying levels of expertise in using the technologies, so that impacted how they participated and what they contributed to the project.

The first part of the presentation above highlights some of what we learned and the outcomes of the event, but I wanted to highlight a few lessons and include some more here. I'm dividing this into a few posts because there are a lot of lessons. :-)

Lessons Learned in Planning and Preparation

• The planning time was less than it might have otherwise been because we worked with a team who has worked together before. I think we would have had to triple it if we were working with a group who had not developed the levels of trust we had.  I will say that the planning time was  equivalent to what it would have been if we were planning an in-person event, so doing an online event didn't necessarily save us any time in planning.

• It is possible to plan a big event without ever meeting in person. All of our meetings were conducted online and via conference call, which also helped us get comfortable with the technologies and tools for actually delivering the career fair. Since we were physically located in several different counties in the southeastern PA region, being able to do all of our planning without a physical meeting was a definite bonus.

• We used Google Docs for our meeting minutes, which was really helpful. We would log on to our webinar platform and I would type the notes as we talked. Team members who weren't able to attend a particular meeting could easily review what we'd discussed and it also made it easier for people to indicate when they'd completed a particular task or add information. We were also able to do a better job of documenting our process, which will be a big help the next time we do one of these.

• Practice sessions with the presenters were absolutely necessary and really helpful in making sure that everyone was comfortable with the technology. A few of the presenters had actually done webinars before, but most had not, so they very much appreciated the opportunity to try things out before their events. It also allowed me to make sure that the technology was working with each presenter's computer. I will say that for next time, I'm going to get more people to help with these practice sessions, as they took up quite a bit of time.

• Related to the practice sessions, it also worked out well to have a Presenter's Page with guidelines on how to participate in the webinars, suggestions for preparation and links to ideas on how to do effective online presentations. Not only was it helpful for those who had already agreed to participate, it was a useful presenter recruitment tool because it gave them a pretty good idea of what they would be doing.

• As I mentioned, the team I worked with to plan and implement this project had never done something entirely online. They also had varying levels of comfort with the different tools. What was probably the most interesting for them was seeing how we could actually do many of the things that they've traditionally done face-to-face in an online environment and how that actually expanded their reach. I think that next time, though, I would probably push them to actually use the tools themselves more. While a few of them, for example, added directly to the wiki, most would email me materials and information and then I would take care of the updating. It will be easier to do this next time because we all have a better idea of what we're doing, so I can focus more on helping them to use the technologies themselves.

In my next post, I'll talk about some of the lessons we learned during implementation of the actual event. I'd love to hear your ideas and feedback about experiences you've had in putting together online events.

What I've Been Up To: Some Social Media Training Resources

For the past few months, I've definitely been blogging less, in part because I've been doing training on social media for several clients. I thought it made sense to share some of what I've been working on, so here are some links. They owe much to the  WeAreMedia curriculum developed by the ever-wonderful Beth Kanter and the folks at NTEN.

• Introduction to Social Media--This webinar and wiki resource page gives an overview of key social media tools and how they are being used in workforce development and with young people, especially around school and careers.

• Creating a Social Media Listening Dashboard--Webinar and wiki page on the importance of social media listening and how to set up a listening dashboard with Netvibes  to monitor what's being said. Beth Kanter's listening literacy wiki was a great resource for this, too.

• Social Media Training for Centers for Independent Living--Back in August, I did a 2.5 day in-person training session with staff from Centers for Independent Living who work with individuals with disabilities. This is the wiki I set up with my co-trainer, Jared Smith of WebAIM from whom I learned a LOT about web accessibility. We used MediaWiki for this project because it's actually the most accessible wiki platform. It was my first experience using wiki markup, which gave me an even greater appreciation for the ease of use of Wikispaces.

In addition to this training, I've also been doing a lot of social media set-up and blogging for clients, which is really wreaking havoc on my own social media practices--hence, less blogging here.

There's a certain irony in the fact that the more social media work I do with clients, the less time I have for my own projects and blogging. I'm also finding that social media for learning has less traction than social media for marketing, creating buzz, etc. I'm always sneaking in the professional development applications of these tools--including modeling using social media as part of my training-- but not really getting people to grab hold of the idea. A certain irony in that, I suppose, too.

An "Admirable Use" Policy

Will Richardson has an excellent post, Don't, Don't, Don't vs. Do, Do, Do, in which he muses on "acceptable use" policies of social media in schools and how restrictive and anti-learning they can be. Having spent the past several months working with clients on integrating social media into their organizations, this post really resonated with me. I'm finding that while a few places embrace social media as an exciting opportunity, many more are worried about defining and restricting every possible misuse of social media they can imagine. And I have to say that I'm consistently amazed at how imaginative people are in identifying potential problems. Where's that creativity when they're thinking about using this stuff?

Anyway, Will suggests that instead of a 10-page list of "dont's," we need an "Admirable Use" policy that positively describes the ways in which we'd like to see people using social media for learning. The items he would include are:

“Do use our network to connect to other students and adults who share your passions with whom you can learn.”

“Do use our network to help your teachers find experts and other teachers from around the world.”

“Do use our network to publish your best work in text and multimedia for a global audience.”

“Do use our network to explore your own creativity and passions, to ask questions and seek answers from other teachers online.”

“Do use our network to download resources that you can use to remix and republish your own learning online.”

“Do use our network to collaborate with others to change the world in meaningful, positive ways.”

For companies and organizations, I'd modify this list and add a few other items, as follows:

• Do use our network to connect to colleagues and peers with whom you can share your passions and learn together.

• Do use our network to find experts both within and outside of our organization to gain knowledge, information and perspectives from around the world. Use our network to reach outside of your normal geographic and interest groups to connect with people in a variety of disciplines and from a range of cultures. 

• Do use our network to publish and share your best thinking and ideas. Seek out feedback and opportunities to refine your thinking. Use multimedia (visualizations, video, audio) to further explore and process your thinking.

• Do use our network to explore your own creativity and passions, to ask questions and seek answers from other peers and colleagues online. We know that creativity at work results from exploring a variety of questions and answers across disciplines and we support your ability to do this.

• Do use our network to download resources that you can re-use and remix or that will improve your productivity and ability to collaborate with others.

• Do use our network to track trends and to listen to what people are saying about our industry, your profession, our customers and key problems and issues facing the people with whom we work.

• Do use our network to identify problems and to respond to customer issues and complaints using the same standards of professionalism and courtesy you bring to your daily work. We trust you to use phones and email and to conduct yourself professionally in face-to-face meetings, so we know you will do the same in your social networking contacts.

• Do use our network to collaborate with others--both within and outside of our organization--to change the world in meaningful and positive ways.

What do you think? Would you add others to the list?

Flickr photo via Luc Legay

Some Links for Creating and Managing Your Own LinkedIn Group

I had to pull together some resources on using LinkedIn's Groups feature for a client, so thought it might be helpful to post the links here. These are more geared toward starting and running your own group, as opposed to finding and joining an existing group.

Features of LinkedIn Groups include:

• Group home page: A private space for your members on LinkedIn.
• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for you and your members. (You can turn discussions off in your management control panel if you like)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics, which your members may choose to receive. 
• RSS News Feeds--Managers can  create customs news feeds by adding an RSS feed, an Atom feed, or just a Web site URL.

Anyone can start a LinkedIn Group. You just need to have a free LinkedIn account. Check out the LinkedIn Superguide if you're new to LinkedIn and need to get yourself set up.

Once you have your account, here are some resources for creating and managing your Group(s)

• LinkedIn Learning Center on Groups
• Dummies.com Guide to Creating a LinkedIn Group
• Create a Custom News Feed for Your Linked In Group
• How to Create a Successful LinkedIn Group
• 5 Tips for Creating, Promoting and Managing a LinkedIn Group
• Top 10 Tips on How to Manage a LinkedIn Group
• Best Practices for LinkedIn Group Management
• 6 Ways to Improve LinkedIn Groups
• LinkedIn Subgroups and How You Can Use Them

Your Guide to Job Search and Personal Branding on Twitter

Twitter--the 140 character social networking site--is becoming increasingly useful for job seekers. It doesn't work for everyone, of course, but it can certainly turbo-charge your networking, a key strategy for successful job hunting. It can also be an effective part of your personal branding campaign.

Here, then, is a (somewhat) definitive link guide to getting a new job (or losing your current one) through Tweeting. (I put this together for a client, so thought it would be nice to share).

Getting Started on Twitter--If you're new to Twitter. . .

• Newbie's Guide to Twitter
• Getting Started on Twitter in Plain English
• Surviving the Twitter Learning Curve
• An Illustrated Guide to Using Twitter
• 13 Twitter Tips and Tutorials for Beginners

Twitter Skills & Culture--You'd think it would be easy to type 140 characters and go, but like all social networks, Twitter has a culture that requires some skill to navigate. Ignore this section at your own risk.

• Twitter Vocab--note that using "tw" in a word (as in "tweeps" instead of "peeps" or "twirting" for "flirting") is a fundamental Twittering skill.Or at least it shows you're one of the cool kids.
• 10 Twitter Etiquette Rules
• Top 7 Twitter Commands Everyone Should Know
• How to Use @Replies
• How to Retweet
• To Follow or Not to Follow: That is the Question
• 9 Useful Sites for Finding People to Follow on Twitter
• Find the Right People to Follow on Twitter
• How to Unfollow with Class
• The Twitter Hashtag: What is it and How Do You Use It? 
• The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags

Pimp Your Profile--Think of your Twitter profile as your "digital interview suit." First impressions count.

• Pimp my Twitter Page
• Twitter Avatars as Personal Branding
• How to Give a Personalized Touch to Your Twitter Page
• Develop a Twitter Landing Page
• Brand Your Twitter Profile Page
• TwitPaper: Free Twitter Themes, Backgrounds and Layouts

Twitter for Job Search--The nitty gritty of job searching on Twitter.

People and Sites to Follow

• Twitter Users Every Job Seeker Should Follow
• 50 People Every Job Seeker Should Follow on Twitter
• 50 Twitter Users to Follow for Your Job Search
• The Job Search "Twibe" (Twitter users interested in job search)
• Twitter Job Search Resources--job boards to follow, many for specific career areas.
• 375 Twitter Feeds of Job Openings from Around the World (NEW--6/16/-09)

Job Search Tips and Tools

• How to Find a Job on Twitter
• TwitterJobSearch.com
• 15 Twitter Applications for Your Job Search
• Leverage Twitter for Your Job Search
• 5 Twitter Applications to Find Out Who is Hiring
• 50 Terrific Twitter Tips for Job Seekers
• The Beginner's Guide to Finding a Job with Twitter
• Use Twitter for Your Job Search
• The Twitter Job Search: Does it Live Up to the Hype?

Case Studies

• Tweeting for a New Job: A Case Study
• How David Murray Found a New Job on Twitter

Twitter Brand Building--The Twitter job search is also about building your online brand.

• Twitter for Personal Branding: Getting Started
• 30 Minute Brand-Building for Twitter
• 10 Ways to be Useful on Twitter
• 7 Ways to Be Worth Following on Twitter
• 30 Personal Branding Experts on Twitter
• Personal Brand: How to Build Yours on Twitter
• Leveraging Twitter to Market Your Personal Brand
• Using Twitter Hashtags to Boost Your Credibility and Visibility

Twitter Fails--Twitter isn't rocket science. These mistakes can be avoided with a little forethought.

• The Top 10 Tweets to Get You Fired
• 13 Fatal Twitter Mistakes
• Top 7 Mistakes Twitter New Twitter Users Make
• 30 Ways to Lose a Job on Twitter

Evaluating Contributions to a Social Network

As we incorporate social networking tools into learning, I know that some of us are thinking about how to encourage and evaluate meaningful contributions to and participation in those networks.  Dave Duarte's list of 20 Ways to Evaluate Contributions to a Social Network seems like a good start. Many of these items are open to further discussion (i.e., what's a "well-structured argument" look like?), but in those conversations, you can arrive at additional insights and ideas for thinking about how people are contributing.

You could also easily set up a Social Network Challenge (along the lines of the Comment Challenge), using some of these ideas. I could see, for example, doing a week-long challenge that involved the following tasks.

• Pose a question to the group
• Build on the ideas of another in the network.
• Tell a story
• Make a recommendation
• Post a "Top 10" list
• Offer help or answer a question for another person in the network
• Use a graphic to illustrate an idea

This would encourage the most valuable social networking behaviors in a way that's more fun than simply posting a list of "Guidelines for Participation." It also makes more sense to teach and encourage these behaviors before plunging into evaluating them.

What do you think of this list? Have you been evaluating contributions to social networks? How have you been doing it? What have the results been?

But Do They Work?

One of the big questions I'm frequently asked about using social media is whether or not the tools "work."  Depending on the questioner, this can mean a variety of things, but underlying everything is one issue--will my department or organization improve if we use social media?

Via Shel Holtz and Workplace Learning Today comes yet another "yes," to that question. Shel cites a brief published by the Aberdeen Group, titled Web 2.0, Talent Management, and Employee Engagement (a PDF file) that finds:

• 52% of organizations that adopt blogs, wikis, and social networking tools (among others) achieved best-in-class performance levels compared to 5% for those that didn’t.

• The same tools were used within organizations that achieved an 18% year-over-year improvement in employee engagement. Companies that didn’t use these tools grew engagement by a mere 1%. (An aside--not sure how "employee engagement" was measured).

• A 45% increase in spending on “software that links to networking site (e.g. Facebook or LinkedIn) or other communities of practice” as part of the recruiting process will increase internal recruiters’ ability to connect with potential recruits. These tools also let employees post messages to “lend a voice to the market on the work culture at a particular company.”

• Social networking is being used to connect newly-hired employees with mentors and coaches as well as build relationships with other employees. “In addition,” the brief notes, “blogs and wikis are also used as a means for a new employee to provide content/commentary on a topic at which he/she is an expert where others within the organization are struggling.” (Note--see my post last week on Lisa Johnson's keynote and the need to engage Millenials at work. This is what we're talking about here. I heard the same thing from the Gen Y folks at my Social Media Game workshop)

• 38% of organizations surveyed for an upcoming study from Aberdeen said the biggest growth in learning and development over the next year will come from “informal learning.” The investment these companies will make in blogs, social networks, and communities will “stimulate peer-to-peer learning and ideation, as well as facilitate communities of practice in which organizations can leverage the collective knowledge of their employees."

These findings echo what we saw in the eLearning Guild's 360 Report on eLearning 2.0 (webinar today, by the way). Those organizations that were making the greatest use of Web 2.0 technologies reported the strongest benefits, particularly in accommodating learner needs, increasing access to information and improving dissemination of information. As a result these organizations were increasing their investments in these technologies more than those organizations that had less experience with social media.

Pretty quickly the question isn't going to be "will the tools work?" but "how can we make them work for us?" Throwing up a wiki or a blog and hoping for the best isn't going to cut it. But doing it right can make some significant improvements to organizational effectiveness.

Web 2.0 Wednesday: Find an Expert

Over on the Work Literacy: Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals Ning where we're on day three of the course, one of the more active forum discussions has been on getting value out of LinkedIn.

Fortunately for us, Tony Karrer is a whiz at using LinkedIn to find expertise and he's recorded a couple of excellent screencasts to show the rest of us how it's done.

For this week's Web 2.0 Wednesday activity, we're going to use what Tony's been showing us to search for expertise. All of us have something we need or want to learn more about and Tony's strategies offer some great ways to do this.

• Think of a topic or area you want to know more about. Maybe it's expertise in using a specific tool or more knowledge about a particular process or theory. It could be that you have a particular problem you need help solving--whatever.

• Think of some associated keywords.Start broad, but also consider words that can help you refine your search. In Tony's screencast example (below), "Moodle" and "WizIQ" are the two search terms he's using. Obviously Moodle alone would return one set of options, while adding WiZIQ considerably narrows the search. For more on search, try this page.

• Watch Tony's screencast and then follow his advice to see if you can find a subject matter expert in the area(s) that interest you.

• Make contact--Tony also has some suggestions on that, based on how closely you may be linked to the person.

If you do the exercise, please let me know, either in comments or by blogging about it and tagging it with "web2.0wednesday" and "workliteracy." This is one of those knowledge worker skills we all need to develop, so I'll be curious to see how it goes.