A presentation by Susan Bulloch from THE VIEW's Admin2013. This is a tip from Susan's presentation, focusing on how to engage your IBM Connections users.

1. I’ve Installed
Connections, Now
What?
Susan Bulloch
IBM
© 2013 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.

2. What We’ll Cover …
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Why are you here?
Setting the ground rules
Engaging your users
Lead from any chair
Making it fun
Wrap-up
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3. Engaging Your Users
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Now we are talking adoption
How do you get users to USE the product?
Embed the product into the company
If your management wants to be social, do it
Example: IBM uses BluePages
It lists business and contact information about employees
It has been in use for decades
All searches for people now default to Connections – Profiles
Data was migrated
That’s walking the talk!
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4. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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Customize the look and feel
Add your corporate logos
Add familiar and useful items from your existing intranet
Then expose the new parts
Make the components easy to find
If you customized earlier versions of Connections:
You’ll be re-creating the customizations
We’re assuming you haven’t done this before
Best practices recommendations are provided
Link provided at the end
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5. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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The easiest and fastest way to engage users
Have your executives go first
This only works if it is authentic
Executives are busy; they don’t have time to blog
Use video blogs
Easy, fast, and popular
Use podcasts
Make it easy for employees to know your executives
You will get participation
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6. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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Executives need to take time to blog
Employees will respond to executive blog postings
It may take a while
Make sure responses aren’t planted
This has to be real!
Try it
Again, walk the talk
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7. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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IBM Example
CEO Ginny Rometty posts videos frequently
They gets thousands of views
She gets her message out
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8. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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Engage social leaders
Communities is a great place to build – communities
What do users get?
Access to other people who do similar work
Ideas for working better
Files or References that provide better customer service
Hire or assign Social roles
Consider community managers
They manage the human side of communities
Enable everyone to use the system
That’s what you want, isn’t it?
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9. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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Evangelize
The term sounds dated, but you need internal cheerleaders
IBM calls it your Brand Army
How does this work?
You find the people who want to use the social networks
Preferably ones who are good at it
And you reward them
Employees notice this
And more of them participate
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Before IBM had Connections, a few of us were out there blogging
We all got extra points at review time
No matter what our real job was
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10. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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Mobilize
The more devices you have your system on, the more it will be
used
Connections offers apps on every mobile platform
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11. Engaging Your Users (cont.)
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Recapping
Your users have to trust your system
Or it will never work
The executives who sponsor the “Social” campaign have
to play
Large
You need cheerleaders
You can be one of them
Other people in your company are ready to help
Make it open, fair, and with rules everyone understands
And rules that everyone follows
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