So much has been made of the potential business uses of Twitter for marketing and advertising that the internal communication benefits of social sharing and messaging services often get overlooked. For instance, this week, Microsoft announced that it has been internally testing a feature called “OfficeTalk” for its Office business suite of products.
OfficeTalk allows users to share updates and links privately within their Office applications on the company server. Microsoft said thousands of its employees currently use the application to collaborate on projects and increase connectivity between remote locations.
While internal microblogging probably won’t increase productivity much in smaller companies, once teams get to a certain size, the quick messages and character limit can help foster efficient sharing of information. The ability to easily send updates to multiple members of the team makes microblogging more efficient than enterprise instant messaging systems. These messaging services also have a clear use case for teams that have members working remotely. Microblogging communication functions more like a conversation than email, so brainstorming and product development are great examples of the type of activity that microblogging can be particularly useful for.
In addition to the OfficeTalk prototype and private direct messages on Twitter, enterprises can use services likeYammer, which is colloquially referred to as “Twitter for Business.” The service allows users to create profiles and share messages, much like on Twitter, except the contents of messages are all protected behind the company firewall.
If your business is having frequent communication breakdowns, or you feel too much employee time is spent replying to emails, perhaps a microblogging platform could streamline your communication and make your operation more efficient. When considering implementing such a solution, make sure there is a solid need for the utility of the service. If there is not a clear communication issue that a microblogging service will address, the expense to implement the platform and train employees will be wasted. Make sure employees have a clear sense of what the potential benefits of the solution are to encourage productive uses.
