New Social Intranet

The New Social Intranet

The social intranet is nothing new, but advances in social computing, and a supporting cultural shift, has advanced the social intranet beyond the tired suspicion of being merely a fad.

Social intranets, and collaboration tools (whatever the label), were never a fad, and are no more fading or disappearing than email or the ‘traditional’ intranet. Although a strong majority of intranets feature some form of social or collaboration tool (over 80%), most intranets are not truly social.

True social intranets feature multiple tools that support most or all content consumption and are integrated into the main platform and intranet home page. These truly social intranets feature user commenting, sharing and liking features on all content such as news, announcements, wikis, etc. (content exceptions would include policies, forms, and key HR messaging). True social intranets feature social employee profiles with multiple collaboration tools for ‘networking’ and sharing content and knowledge.

The newest, and hottest tools for the intranet are social ones. Tools such as Slack, Huddle, Asana, Facebook Workplace and Microsoft Teams. Though it’s not an intranet in a box, and not even an enterprise social network (ESN), Slack is a heavyweight instant messaging and collaboration platform, akin to Skype, used in tandem with Yammer. It’s not a standalone ESN, but its far better than the underwhelming Skype. HipChat is seen as a comparable competitor, but neither serve traditional business communications and project management requirements.  More robust tools, such as Asana, which is a robust, socialized project management tool, and Microsoft Teams are far more project oriented and suitable for typical business use cases.

national geographic intranet

The social intranet of National Geographic

SOCIAL INTRANET RESOURCES

There are a number of resources to catch-up on and learn more about these tools including the webinar presentation deck from The New Social: Latest & Greatest in Intranet & Digital Workplace Collaboration.

The next intranet webinar is a good one on January 9, 2018: How To Lead An Intranet Redesign
Also, the previous article, highlighting some of these new platform tools, is also worth reading:

 

What’s New with the Social Intranet?

SOCIAL INTRANET WEBINAR REPLAY

Watch the full webinar replay of The New Social Intranet from Prescient Digital Media (38 minutes):

Social intranet webinar

 

The next intranet webinar ON January 9, 2018: How To Lead An Intranet Redesign