Social Publishing : An Introduction
Over the better part of the past decade, enterprises have created and maintained the content available to users on their websites. This had meant a one-way flow of information from "experts" to their target audiences, and there are very many such examples :
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Enterprise System
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"The Content Experts"
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The Audience
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Mode of Communication
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Information Exchanged
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Websites
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Marketing Teams
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One-way broadcast
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Company News, Culture, Products and Careers
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Intranets
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Marketing & HR Teams
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One-way broadcast
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Developments within the company. Documents and Sharing.
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B2B Vendor Portals
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Purchasing Teams
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One-way broadcast
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Purchase Orders, Inventory
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B2B Sales Portals
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Marketing & Sales Teams
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One-way broadcast
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New Products, Promotions, Marketing Collateral
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B2B Support Portals
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Sales Support Teams
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One-way broadcast
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Service Plans, Spare Parts, Inventory
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The content was created solely by the "experts" and it was mostly only viewable by the end users. The extent of such content was limited and it was updated only infrequently. And to achieve this, enterprises have used relatively cumbersome content Management systems also to perform basic functions such as content creation, versioning and approvals. In general, creating and managing web content had been a slow, controlled, limited and cumbersome process that was available only to experts with access to content management systems.
That scenario has changed with the rise of Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. While this process started in the unregulated world of the internet, it has steadily seeped into the enterprises and the concepts have begun to demonstrate significant value to core business functions. According to Jeff Whatcott(2), VP of Marketing at Acquia and one of the pioneers in this field, “Social Publishing is a blend of web content management, social software and web application frameworks. A Social Publishing System combines the above into a cohesive set of technology for assembling a web site that provides structure for people to express ideas and engage each other in proven patterns.”
The enabling components of a Social Publishing System are Blogs, Wikis, Forums, RSS, Polls, Comments, User Profiles and Social Communities. We will look in depth at these components and how they create value in the context of communications inside an enterprise and also with its partners.
Social Publishing : Value
Enterprises have begun to realize that they need more online collaboration between their employees, partners, vendors, customers and experts. Intelligently leveraging the online collaboration between teams and networks can lead to tangible ROI : Innovate faster, introduce relevant products and sell more.
Social Networking helps Enterprises present better content to their customers. This, in turn, helps them give a better view of the services and products offered. In the present age, when speed of the essence, with especial relevance to the Internet, Social Networking helps organizations reduce the lead time to update information about what they have to offer.
Social Publishing, as a medium for customer interaction, both internal and external, helps Enterprises get feedback on their products and services quickly, and thereby, deliver improved products and services. Enterprises have realized that Social Publishing is the simplest, the best, and the most scalable way to get customer feedback. The popularity of Social Networking sites is on the rise by the minute. With the availability of Social Networking standards like OpenSocial, Organizations will soon be able to leverage the benefits of other Social Networking sites also, thereby, improving their visibility and reach many-fold.
(Courtesy : Awareness Netyworks)
Social Publishing Involves structuring the website/portal with well established communication patterns for people to engage in exchange of knowledge, ideas and thoughts.
Few of the established patterns age listed below:
Wikis
This is a tool for knowledge collaboration where several people maintain the content of the document through a well established process of versioning and workflows.
Forums
This is used for discussion on any topic or ideas by the members of a particular community.
Blogs
Blog is a personal publishing tool where anybody can freely publish their ideas, opinions and thoughts for others. Publisher can also invite comments from the readers to discuss his article.
Articles
Generally when a website publishes an article, it goes through a series of editing and approvals before it is published to the general audience. This can be achieved through the article pattern.
Social networking
Social Networking is one of the most common forms of Social Publishing. Social Networking, most often, includes a set of users forming Social Communities. Users are generally required to be authenticated with Social Communities, thereby, forming closed groups. The Social Communities are commonly available in the form of sub-sites or user workspaces. Enterprises those are expanding their web presence are beginning to recognize the relevance and importance of Social Communities within their existing web spaces. Closed groups are gaining importance in the context of B2B interaction also. More and more enterprises are, these days, finding it advantageous to make Social Communities within their web presence available to various classes of users like vendors, dealers and buyer. Social Publishing solutions have, as a result, enabled enterprises realize the potential of the internet more than ever before.
Some scenarios of Social Publishing articulated below :
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Enterprise Function
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Current Enterprise System
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Value of Social Publishing
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Social Publishing Components Used
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Some Examples of Companies doing this
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For B2B Portals
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Enterprise Function
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Current Enterprise System
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Value of Social Publishing
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Social Publishing Component Used
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Some Examples of Companies doing this
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For Intranet
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Enterprise Function
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Current Enterprise System
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Value of Social Publishing
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Social Publishing Component Used
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Some Examples of Companies doing this
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Sharepoint and Social Publishing
Sharepoint Capabilities
Content Management System
Sharepoint provides a programming entity called webpart, which can be used to perform the same functionality at various places on a web page or in different web pages. Website users can view/edit a webpart based on the permissions they have. One of the webparts that comes with Sharepoint 2007 is the content webpart. This webpart comes with a user interface that allows users to enter content in HTML format. The CMS webpart includes modifiable workflows to manage the lifecycle of content also. For instance, if a user creates content using the CMS webpart, another user with appropriate permissions can view, edit and approve the content. Sharepoint also provides a facility to specify rules, using workflows, to manage content lifecycle. The administrator can provide or restrict publishing or editing rights to users. He can also delegete his work to other users.
Custom webparts can also be created depending on special requirements of the website. For instance a customized calendar webpart can be created which can be used at several places within the website.
Wiki
Shatepoint allows quick creation of wikis, enabling users to edit, link, add and easily maintain the pages. It providers users with enhanced capabilities and tools for editing, tracking changes, maintaining visioning and history, reviewing, committing, and rolling back changes. The wiki community together manages change and ensures accuracy and relevance of a particular topic. A contributor can also start a public discussion on each page for a quicker and closer involvement in the collaboration. Usually when a new topic has to be brought within an existing page, it is usually branched of to a new page and introduced there instead of introducing it in the same page. Sharepoint wiki supports this branching by allowing creation of new pages.
Blog
Like wikis, blogs can also be used as a tool for collective intelligence. A blog in sharepoint allows users to post informative articles on the web and allows users to interact with the author and the other readers through comments. Issues of content appropiateness can be managed using the Sharepoint Workflow which allows moderated publishing in blogs.
A rapidly changing publishing environment requires a real-time notification method. Sharepoint Blogs can be copuled with Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to broadcast change announcements whenever the information on a site is updated.
Sub-site
Sharepoint allows the creation of sub-sites on a site. Site administrators can do this easily, with just a few mouse-clicks. The sub-sites inherit the look-and-feel and the content of its parent site, by default. The inherited content on a sub-site can be edited easily, and the inherited look-and-feel of a sub-site can be overridden using a different theme.
Social Networking
Office SharePoint Server exposes social networking to organization members through the use of colleagues. Colleagues are a list of friends, team members, and co-workers who are related to a specific person through the establishment of a user profile. Colleagues are presented to users through a user's personal site (My Site) and are built using foundational elements that are established when Office SharePoint Portal Server is implemented within the organization.
Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server's inbuilt feaures such as My Sites, Colleagues Web Part, Colleague Tracker Web Part, Membership Web Parts and People Search, Social Networking can be easily customized in the websites.
Collaboration
Sharepoint comes with a facility to create and manage online resources like documents and media files, category-wise. It also allows multiple users to work on the same online resource simultaneously without affecting the sanity of the resource. Sharepoint does this by maintaining versions for each thread of work on the files it manages. This ensures better communication within an organization and efficient flow of up-to-date information and ideas across all the users in an orginization. The rich information pool that is created using these collabration tools can be used for mutual benifit of the organization and the employees. Sharepoint is strongly coupled with microsoft office products like MS Word, MS Excel and Powerpoint which are being used in majority of the organizations.
In this ever growing and ever changing knowedge envoronment, which also includes organization/group/team specific knowledge, it sometimes becomes difficult to manage the flood of information. Collabaration tools empower users to maintain an organized ever changing repository of knowledge.
Sharepoint allows integrating any kind of web-based social publishing using webparts. There are a number of free and open-source webparts available that can be used for Wiki, Blog, Polls and other functionalities.
Success stories of Social Publishing
A number of enterprises have implemented the Social Publishing aspects with great success. The following are some of the enterprises those have leveraged Social Publishing.
PennsyLocal (3)
PennsyLocal is a Pennsylvania-based company that helps local businesses market their services to their customers, by leveraging new web channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and eBay. The site serves as an interactive online community where hundreds of local businesses and thousands of consumers can create and publish Blogs, ads and news, giving them global, on-line reach in a cost-effective manner.
Amazon (4)
E-retailers that generate product recommendations for customers do so based on customers’ past purchases and web site behavior, such as the types of products they view. But how to predict products that customers’ friends and family would like to receive as gifts since the tastes of others differ from the gift giver, and since it’s not the gift recipients shopping an e-retailer’s site?
Amazon.com Inc. has figured a way around this, finding out precisely what is of interest to a customer’s friends and family by going straight to the horse’s mouth. It checks out the profiles in gift recipients’ Facebook pages and their wish lists on Amazon.com to see what they like.
Amazon Giver allows Facebook users to share their Amazon.com wish lists. Based on birthdays provided in the demographic information in Facebook profiles, the social networking application lists Facebook friends based on whose birthday is next in line. It also looks to the Interests area of Facebook users’ profiles to generate product recommendations for each friend.
Starbucks
Starbucks redesigned its store portal in Mocrosoft Sharepoint Server to allow its partners and employees to operate more effectively. Starbucks deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a separate and stable store portal environment that would help reduce inefficiencies at peak site traffic times by streamlining business processes and incorporating effective monitoring and reporting.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server's out-of-the-box capabilities make it easy for Starbucks to redesign its sales portal with a more intuitive interface. The Business Document Workflow functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007 will help Starbucks establish processes for enhancement requests and event cycles. Store partners will have centralized access to the manifests, third-party vendor ordering Web sites, and other resources necessary to efficiently manage inventory and maximize sales.
Viacom (8)
Viacom is a leading global entertainment company reaches more than 508 million households in 161 countries through television. MTV Networks, the company’s largest division, includes brands such as MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, COMEDY CENTRAL, Spike TV, and TV Land.
The company’s previous portal infrastructure wasn’t helping people share information and ideas. End users could not publish their own content, collaborate effectively, nor find the information they needed. Demand for a solution that empowered end users led to a proliferation of smaller, departmental portal solutions, which, having been implemented using a mix of different technologies, resulted in increased IT costs, reliability issues, and an excessive support burden for IT personnel.
MTV Networks addressed those issues by standardizing on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, on which the company deployed a new intranet portal, a Viacom corporate portal, and multiple Internet sites. Self-service content publishing is helping groups across the company communicate better, while rich collaboration and search features enable people to find and share information. From an IT perspective, the company’s new standardized portal platform integrates well with existing IT infrastructure and delivers new capabilities in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective manner.
The company’s intranet portal currently hosts more than 110 sites for various groups, all of which are empowered to manage their own content.
Brandsource
References
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 Server
- Jeff Whatcott is VP, Marketing at Acquia
- Ref: http://www.sys-con.com/read/415819.htm
- Ref: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=26157
- http://jeffwhatcott.com/drupal/content/social-publishing-is-not-social-networking
- http://www.frontpages-web-hosting.net/forums/windows-sharepoint-services-version-3-wss-v-3-administration-topics/406-what-site-templates-available-under-wss-3-0-a.html?highlight=wiki
- http://www.slideshare.net/edbrill/business-aspects-of-social-software-and-collaboration/
- http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/showArticle.jhtml?articleID...
- http://www.communitelligence.com/blps/blg_viewart.cfm?bid=59&artID=323
- http://www.viacom.com/ourbrands/medianetworks/mtvnetworks/Pages/mtv.aspx
