The term social collaboration was initially limited in its scope and looked upon as more of a social media that people use for inconsequential sharing of information, rather than business or work utility.
Evolution in Social Collaboration
Lately, social collaboration has turned a new leaf. Social collaboration has created a whole new perception for itself. It is now an accepted concept in a large number of organizations as well as in products. This is because social collaboration has recognized the need to adopt the latest developments in technology that will aid workers within an enterprise and between various enterprises, to share ideas and collate information. The focus, while partially still remains on content, now also envelopes the integration of the voices of employees and audiences, towards improving the development of such content. This is why, today, we can witness an outburst of new and innovative ways for people to work together. This is guaranteed to benefit the productivity and performance of enterprises in the near future.
Developers, administrators, entrepreneurs and businesses have started to consider the purpose and utility of social collaboration in a different light. Sharing of data and content, social networks within an enterprise and web content management are just a few in the long list of components that have amalgamated into a more integrated set of competent structures.
Hubs and Platforms
Social collaboration, for now, is basically seen under two main technologies – hubs and platforms.
Hubs are more of the focal point for the start and management of various tasks. Hubs will be considered either as an enterprise social network for enterprises whose goals circle around idea building, or as a product for sharing data and content within enterprises whose goals are more oriented with content.
Platforms, as the name suggests, will act as a base or foundation that will assist in creating a unity of social collaboration and other applications. Platforms will create an integration of social collaboration features into a system, where records and data are stored, so that sharing of information can be carried out with ease.
Integration of Social collaboration with Content strategy
Interaction and engagement are two sides of the same coin. Discussed below, are some interesting facts that will aid in a smooth integration of social collaboration and content creation:
- In order for an enterprise to build a healthy and efficient social collaboration, the social media teams within the organization need to proactively interact with the audience at all times and respond to comments, suggestions and posts.
- Content curation is another interesting factor in social collaboration. The systematic gathering, organizing and online presentation of data attracts audiences. People appreciate it when their blogs and tweets and re-posted or shared.
- There are various virtual groups who hold an abundance of concepts, ideas and innovations. Gaining access to conversations within such groups will give you an in-depth insight into the recent trends, the nagging complaints, the repeated questions and queries etc. This information can then be utilized to improve your product and services, thus giving you a head start as compared to your competitors.
- There is nothing that guarantees a better customer relationship than soliciting customer comments and feedback on your brand. Casting out a net to hook onto your audiences’ opinions and inviting them to preview your content and share feedback is a great way to intensify your content.
Analytics for Better Decision Making
It is imperative that the analytics of a process or product be considered when talking about collaboration. This is especially important when dealing with large organizations, where the data is vital and the appropriate people need to collaborate this data. For such purposes, search engines would not suffice. Enterprises will need to rely on something more tangible, like analytics. A smooth integration of social collaboration with web communication and analytics is likely to go a long way. CMSs now incorporate the analytics strategy through which an organization can manage the content on their website as well as study the analytics on the viewing and utility of the content. Analytics, through CMS, can also help you monitor the amount of traffic directed towards your website.
Speed, Flexibility and Scalability
Productivity in today’s world is fundamental. Every organization wants to be in a position where information, data and content can be communicated in a faster and more nimble way. The standard and more traditional concepts of Word, Excel and PowerPoint may still be a great way to share and display ideas, but they are also a very time consuming means of communication.
This desperately calls for a CMS that quickens the process of communication. Content creators, developers and engineers still go through the tardy process of sharing content via emails. Instead, taking onto cloud sharing has numerous benefits that most organizations are oblivious to. Social collaboration through cloud sharing will only speed up the process of idea sharing, but will also integrate huge volumes of content with ease. This creates the much required and awaited flexibility that organizations look for as part of social collaboration.
Sitefinity
Sitefinity is a web content management system that is used to create and manage websites. These websites can be viewed and accessed via desktops, laptops and mobile devices. The best part about Sitefinity is that it is much more flexible as compared to a lot of the other CMS systems used by various organizations today. This eases the tasks of developers, as they can easily integrate it with Association Management Systems, CRM systems and various other systems that they work with. One of the biggest advantages that Sitefinity provides is customer adoption. The user interface (UI) for administrators is so conveniently simple that they can literally just jump onto the web page and start using it right away.
With the onset of social collaboration, the future is not as predictable as it used to be. Social collaboration has created new avenues and gateways by accelerating technologies to enhance businesses. It is no longer just a mindset, but a means to achieving excellent outcomes.
Image Credit: Jennifer Leonard on Flickr