Social networking tools – why your business should be using them [part 2]
Part 1 of this article I covered five different tools that can help solve some common business problems, such as:
- recruiting talented individuals;
- poor communications between functional areas of the company; and
- knowledge management and/or transfer of knowledge.
Here are five more worth looking at to help solve some of your other business problems:
6. Problems: storing and e-mailing presentations to staff and/or clients is painful and time-consuming; I’m having trouble tracking the impact of presentations; I need to generally increase my business’ perceived ‘authority’ on specific topics.
Solution: Using SlideShare you can upload presentations for anyone to have access to [apparently you can also protect them and allow specific users only]. By publishing important content you make it readily available to staff for general knowledge; or to clients and other interested parties to improve your professional image and ‘authority’ in a specific field. By incorporating audio, you can also create an easy-to-access webinar to educate or inform. [want to know more? read: SlideShare - It's working for me]
7. Problems: I’m struggling to with knowledge management throughout the company; I need to circulate important/relevant website links amongst staff/clients.
Solution: Slinkset provides a way for users to share relevant links, as well as to vote them up and down according to their relevance as well – making it easier for your target user group to get access to what is important to them. [want to know more? read: What's this Slinkset all about?]
8. Problem: I need a way to easily share information with stakeholders [eg. company literature and product pamphlets, communication to employees, shareholders, etc].
Solution: Scribd offers an online document repository. It’s similar to Slideshare but more suitable for the storage and release of e-books, newsletters, communications to stakeholders and other similar static documents [versus the interactive nature of items on Slideshare]. [want to know more? read: Distribute business documents at Scribd]
9. Problem: I need to know what others are saying about my business; we have a poor understanding of perceptions about our business in the market.
Solution: Brandseye is an online reputation monitoring tool that gives you insight into what is being said about you and your business on the internet. This should allow you to understand perceptions better and adjust your strategy accordingly. They also offer a free Brand Recovery Checklist for those who need it. [want to know more? read: Online reputation management]
10. Problem: we need a way for people to collaborate on ideas quickly and easily, whether they are together in one room or miles apart.
Solution: Dabbleboard is effectively an online whiteboard – it allows the wonderful and fun functionality of scribbling and free-hand drawing along with the ability to include pictures, shapes and to distribute the resulting sketches easily by e-mail. It can be used in meetings on a big screen where everyone contributes together, or people can work on them seperately, e-mailing the pictures back and forth as they develop. [want to know more? read: Online drawing and collaboration wih Dabbleboard]
If you have used these or other tools successfully, please leave a comment below to share with us.
If you know of other tools that we should highlight here, or have a specific business problem and you want to know if there is an online tool that could help, please also leave the details here and we’ll see what comes out of it.
As I said, this list is nowhere near exhaustive, but the one thing that these tools have in common is the facilitation of communication – and we all know how important communication is in running a successful business!
The point is that technology and the social networking revolution has created some powerful tools that we should be using to leverage the value of communication within our business. So go find some, try them, and have fun!
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