introNetworks

Social Networking Platform for Private Online Communities

How Much are Sales and Marketing Organizations Spending on Big Data – INFOGRAPHIC

by

According to Lattice’s latest infographic, which comes to us via business2community.com, there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day.
“The business world is being transformed by Big Data as more and more companies seek actionable insights from the mountains of raw data that are all around us.”
One of the more obvious benefits of implementing an introNetworks business community environment is that you own and control your own user data, and can benefit from it in a direct and immediate way, and we’ve found over the years that customers do not always have a ready action plan for getting the most out of their community data.  Upon meeting with a prospect, we ask this vital question:
“How will you use the business intelligence received from the introNetworks implementation?  What do you want to know about your audiences you don’t know today — and what do they want to know about each other?  How will this knowledge unleash your organization’s potential?”
It’s long been said in the business community that a tool is only as good as its user, and we don’t believe that for a second.  We do believe, however, that your Smart Connections are only as smart as your data strategy, which is why we work to help each of our customers develop a data strategy to meet their long and short term business goals, and our introNetworks Business Community systems are built to deliver on those goals.  Our systems enable our customers to quickly sift through their data in a visual and empowering manner. [Read more…]

Your Data is only as good as what you do with it

by

Data aging is an issue that we see quite frequently inside of our business communities.  When you’re capturing data from your Professional Community system, how quickly are you able to analyze and act on that data?  Do you have a process in place for reviewing and learning from your data?  It is your data after all, and that’s why you have your own Community system in place instead of using public platforms. Too often, the analysis comes back from the data team a week or two after being pulled, and your insights are longer actionable, or if they are actionable, their potency is dramatically reduced. Read more about it in this article on Big Data by Amanda Reinhart, published on Business2Community.com.  The article leans heavily on information pulled from SAP HANA. Enjoy!
Anymore, we’ve come to take for granted the lifecycle of business data. One system captures the particulars of a sales order, a trouble ticket or countless other information that business professionals need to do their job – only to have to wait while separate analytics systems on separate platforms make sense of the data. It’s just how it’s worked for as long as anyone can remember. Dining on Old Data A recent survey by IDC, in fact, found that over 40% of IT advisers required more than two days to prepare financial data for reporting.[1] Amazingly, the same survey found that “the majority of business users found the slow and fragmented nature of their data systems to be perfectly OK.” [Read more…]

The Private Social Network: It May Be Just What Your Company Needs

by

There are many reasons for businesses to utilize private social network systems, rather than trying to fit their efforts into one of the rather limited boxes provided by services such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+, not to mention LinkedIn.  A private, internally-managed social network system allows for better security, better control of user options and behavior, to say nothing of the obvious, though often misunderstood necessity of owning and controlling one’s own data assets! private social network introNetworks knows a thing or two about private social networks, as that’s been our core business for the better part of a decade.  We came across this excellent article on Forbes.com a few days ago.  It was published in October of 2012, but the principals remain true in 2013. Enjoy!
Most of the buzz about social media concerns Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like, and how they can drive traffic and revenue for consumer brands. That social marketing hubbub is exciting, but it drowns out the quieter but much larger impact private online communities can have on business-to-business firms and their customers. In these intimate online venues, customers and companies can convene to plan and build for the future, collaborating in ways that will never happen in the public eye. [Read more…]

First Time Community Managers

by

memberNet So you are going to be a Community Manager? Now what? Where do you start? How do you maximize the excitement and energy you have when beginning any new journey? I have been in several sessions the past few weeks with people that know that they need a Community and I’m there to help with the strategy, design, roll-out and what they should expect to invest in time and effort. Of course the question is always asked,
“How much time should we expect to spend managing the Community?” The answer is, “It depends.”
I often use the analogy of designing and planting a new garden. You would not expect it to do well if you never watered or weeded it. You may choose to spend 15 minutes a week, or an hour a day. It depends on how much the garden and it’s beauty means to you. You can think about your online Community in much the same way, you will get out of it what you put in to it. That being said, it’s always good to see what other gardeners are doing, check out the yards in your neighborhood to see what’s working, what’s not, and mirror the best for yourself. So, when I think about where would I go looking for information on best Community Manager practices, of course I go to @TheCR and @RHappe for answers. And within 5 minutes of me tweeting today, I was pointed to several links that I want to share. These are fantastic for first timers and for those that think maybe they could be doing a better job with their existing Community. This was the first link they sent. This is a great deck that Rachel prepared and thankfully, Slideshare makes it easy for me to post it here for you to read:
There were several other links that @TheCR sent in a flurry of tweets after I posted my initial question. You can find more materials about Building Community Strategy here. I love this post called Your Journey as running a robust online Community truly is a journey.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about how you are managing your Community, please leave a comment below. If you’d like help in formulating a Community Strategy and think you are ready to have a conversation, let us know. We’re here to help you as sherpas along your journey.
Thanks again to @RHappe and @TheCR for all of the work they do to help organizations craft and manage their Communities, it really helps all of us.
   

Avoiding Community Manager Burn-out

by

memberNetOne of the most important people involved in the success of one of our networks is the Community Manager. We pay a lot of attention to them and work closely to make sure the platform helps them be successful. In any profession it is great to have a support community to lean on and to learn from. Community Managers are very fortunate to have the Community Roundtable as a resource. They have recently relaunched their website and it’s even better than ever. You can sign up for their materials and learn a lot. We suggest to all of our clients that they take advantage of this vibrant community. The founders (@JimStorer and @RHappe) are fantastic and passionate about delivering tremendous value, which extends beyond the Community Managers and to the executives who make decisions about implementing social strategies. They are also agnostic about internal or external communities and there’s plenty to learn from commingling the people responsibile for the different types of networks. They just published this great deck for Community Managers that we thought we’d share here. This gets into a lot of the real issues that come up after time and are only now really getting visibility now that many organizations have a few years of experience running communities. We appreciate your comments and encourage you to let us know your thoughts about this fascinating topic.