Well this has nothing to do with social media whatsoever, but I got a good laugh this morning when I checked in on the Detroit Tigers. I know newspapers aren’t doing well these days, but this is getting a bit personal (see below).

Here is the article in case you want to check in on the original.

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One of the more interesting parts of the analyst gig is that clients have the opportunity to ask pretty much any question they like through the inquiry process. Sometimes the results in aggregate are pretty fascinating, but by and large I find myself answering the same general questions over and over again.

This was not the case a few weeks ago when I took what I expected to be a typical inquiry asking about how to kick-start an Enterprise 2.0 initiative. Instead of run-of-the-mill questions about staffing, content management, governance, and employee participation the client asked a very pointed question: how do we keep employees from unionizing with our Enterprise 2.0 platform.

All things considered I’m surprised I don’t get this question more often. The popular perception is that Enterprise 2.0 software is about revolution, and flinging open the gates to creative chaos. Possible, but not necessary. And for many companies, unproductive. So what should you do to make sure that the conversation in your Enterprise 2.0 system is to your liking? Here are few simple steps:

1. Do not allow anonymous posting: The simplest way to ensure the conversation is on-topic and constructive is to associate each and every artifact with an individual. If an employee knows their boss, CEO, etc. may see the comments they will be a lot more careful about what they say. This is, however, a double edged sword; in many cases employees will resist saying anything at all for just the same reason.
2. Publish your rules of the road: If you expect employees to comport themselves in one way or another you have to make sure they know what is expected. You should already have rules developed so make sure they are in an obvious place on the site and remind people from time to time of what you expect.
3. Use the keyword flagging features aggressively: Since most Enterprise 2.0 platforms were developed out of customer facing community software they generally have robust keyword flagging and moderation features built right in. If you are based in Chicago you may decide to flag “Bears” and “Packers” to discourage discussion of the NFL. But be careful, posts that contain these keywords should be moderated, not outright banned, especially if you sell bear skin rugs, or work for a meat packing firm.
4. Work with your HR, Legal, and Labor Relations departments at the very onset: Be sure to have a plan in place to deal with inappropriate content and behavior before you get rolling — your existing communications policy will likely suffice. The last thing you want is to put the company in legal jeopardy by reacting too vigorously to an incident. Plus you’ll want to have any legal or union “peculiarities” in mind before you start sourcing technology.

Now, I should say that I wholeheartedly believe that an oversight strategy that treats employees like adults and takes an open stance to employee communications is the better approach. But many firms still restrict access to websites like ESPN, Hotmail, YouTube, and Facebook and for those firms the above steps should get you well on the way to an Enterprise 2.0 strategy that allows for more dynamic employee collaboration and productivity without flinging the gates wide open.

Note: The above picture comes from the “battle of the overpass,” one of the most infamous union clashes of Henry Ford’s rocky relationship with the UAW in my hometown of Detroit. It should in no way imply the inquiry came from Ford. For a fascinating look at the circumstances of the photos themselves check out the Iconic Photos blog.

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The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a series of case studies looking at social media marketing. Specifically I’ve been interviewing small to medium-sized tech firms about how they have made the transition from a static, traditional website to one that is more interactive and community oriented. We went with smaller firms because, while Dell and Google have highly engaging Web presences, we wanted to find out how firms with limited budgets are making the transition.

I wrapped up interviewing this week and found some great case examples to work with (thanks to everyone who participated!) though so far no one has felt like they really nailed the strategy, as we expected. All told I got to speak with 10 firms, all in different stages of deployment and with different strategies. There was great diversity, except for one little thing. When I asked how the traffic on the community parts of their websites compared to the corporate site overall we got a relatively tight range:  15%-30% of the corporate traffic is now coming from the site’s community features.

Now, longtime readers of this blog know that I pride myself on my stats chops, so there should be no mistake that this is not a statistically significant finding. But I do find it curious that such a tight range would emerge from just 10 interview, and I have a sneaking suspicion that further research would reveal a finding that is not far off from what we have seen so far. For those readers that have the numbers to weigh in, what have you seen on your own sites?

Not surprisingly the firms with strong discussion forums were up in the 30% range, while those with young blogging efforts were down in the 15% range, though across the board the interviewees reported growing traffic. In addition much of that traffic has been coming from organic search, bringing new visitors to the site, associating the firm’s content with valuable keywords  like “steel pricing”, and generally raising the SEO of the site at large. In fact, the one value of social media marketing that nearly everyone pointed too was search-engine optimization. So, if you’re trying to get a social media project off the ground I highly recommend keeping that nugget in your back pocket. Client engagement may still be a bit soft, but SEO is something most CMOs and even CEOs are willing to get behind.

A 10% boost in traffic (there has to be some overlap) and dramatically improved SEO sounds like a win to me.

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