Many organisations have started to understand the benefits of social media and are beginning to understand the new opportunities they present to engage employees, encourage conversation and promote collaboration.

Collaborative and conversational technologies are driving these changes both in the external market place and internal communications systems. Whilst many companies are starting to see the power of this trend, the value of its connections, and the wealth of information available through access to new ideas and perspectives. There are still some unique challenges involved in introducing social media tools for internal organisational communication.

From the outset, a different mindset and a new strategic approach should underpin any efforts to integrate social media with the existing communication infrastructure. From my experience many managers are still struggling with whether to allow or ban the use of social networks while at work. Many traditional companies have chosen to ban and block employees from accessing social networking sites, others have granted access and monitor the activity. The common fear is that employees will use that time unproductively or worse.

Here are a few tips on how to get a manager to consider using Social Media to build your organisation:

Make sure you understand the difference between traditional and social media.

Social media tools encourage a way of communicating that is fundamentally different to traditional methods of communication. Without a clear grasp of these differences, it’s unlikely organisations will ever really harness their potential.

The way social media works – placing all users on an equal footing – means reduced control for communicators and leaders. Employees become equal partners in the communication process and are invited to take part in a conversation and share information, rather than have information pushed at them. This tends to frighten middle management.

Find influencers from within both the formal and informal structures to be part of the initial trials.

These are the people who help form the organisational culture of decision making and are invaluable allies so take the time to explain to them what both they as individuals and the organisation as a whole can gain through social media and the positive change it can generate.

You can also encourage younger members of your organisation to get involved, managers will always see younger people as more in tune with technology so gaining the support of them will also help to give a fresh and exciting feel to your idea. A “reverse mentoring” program can be greatly beneficial here. Younger staff members mentor others in the new tools and at the same gain experience and insight in other areas of the business.

Lay down clear ground rules

Social media may be all about encouraging a more open, transparent and democratic way of communicating internally.

But this doesn’t mean that organisations shouldn’t lay down clear guidelines about the appropriate use of social media within the business.However informal, there’s no reason why communication taking place via a blog or a wiki should stray from the usual behaviors expected in any workplace interaction, such as professionalism or respect.

Best Practice and case studies

I could also say that you can get the attention of the organisation’s mangers by showing case studies about how other similar or competing peer organisations are using Social Media.

Encourage the sharing of case studies and give recognition rewards to those who present them. Being personally involved in the online informational flow will reinforce your approach. You can always use your own social media accounts to promote the organisation and encourage others to start to grow their own following online through your network. You can then use the progress some mangers as evidence of the sort of success that can be achieved. But remember to show case success stories without being judgmental about those less involved.

Use the Peer Recognition

Peer recognition is a very effective driving force. It’s that urge to want to connect with other people, to belong to the group, to have that strong sense of ownership and responsibility, to stand out and being recognized for what we do. We tend to talk more about the media aspect of social media, but it is the social aspect that is powerful, different and so effective. The human element is key when dealing with social media.

“There is great value in using a human voice when communicating and developing good relationships with the public,” Hyojung Park, a doctoral candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism, said.

Perceptions of relationships with an organisation seem to be significantly more favorable when the organization’s social networking page has a human presence rather than an organizational presence. Levels of trust, commitment, and satisfaction from users all appear to be positively affected by the use of the human voice in social media. Be a decent person first, that will then become the public’s perception of your organization.

Just keep in mind:

• That process will take time and people are often set in their ways so try to take this into consideration.
• Don’t enforce from above. Allow for organic growth. But help that growth along by support, both personal and technical.
• Be patient and open for all kinds of questions and make sure you have enough research to back up your points.

This article was published on mynewsdesk blog on 31 May 2011

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Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone

Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

While the Egyptian Revolution succeeded in ousting President Hosni Mubarak, a debate continues to rage as to the exact role played by social media.

By Jasmine Elnadeem

I was born in Egypt in 1984 in the era of President Hosni Mubarak. For 26 years, he was the only leader I had ever been exposed to in my country.

During Mubarak’s rule, Egypt was divided into two groups: the first benefited from the regime and was complicit in its crimes; the other opposed the regime’s policies and everything they stood for.

Social media gradually became a substitute for traditional media, which is state-controlled.

For millions of Egyptian youths like myself, social media became a powerful way to communicate because for once, we could control the messages.

As an Egyptian working in the communication department at the European Training Foundation, and for many of those who live outside of Egypt, social media enabled us to gather, curate and distribute information as news of the Revolution unfolded. Thanks to these networks, all of us – from geographically dispersed locations – were brought together to share our personal connections to those demonstrating in Tahrir Square.

Social tools are changing the way we engage with each other on a personal, national and global scale. It is much easier to collate information about the current situation in Egypt through a Twitter search than it would be by trying to find the same information in traditional media sources.

If you want to get real-time information on events going on around the corner or across the world, Twitter is the place to be. I used the curation tool, Storify, to collect Tweets (and other social media information) using the #Jan25 hashtag – a reference to both the date the protests officially began in Egypt, and the official way tweets pertaining to the revolution were labeled on Twitter. The hashtag allowed me to present a chronological timeline of the flow of conversation, organisation and activities leading up to the fall of Mubarak on February 11th.

Internet shut-downs

As a result of the protests and the role that social media sites played in organising and executing the protests, the government placed blocks on Facebook, Twitter and some Google services, including Gmail and Google Talk. Egyptian authorities ordered the country’s major Internet service providers to shut down on January 27th. They turned them back on Febuary 2nd, after leaving the country in the information dark for six days. This Internet blackout has, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, cost the Egyptian economy $90 million. The eventual cost may be much higher.

Whilst megaphones don’t cause revolutions they make your voice louder and the blackout was a clear sign that the regime feared the people self-organising and the truth of what was happening in Egypt getting out.

Working around the blockage

Though the Egyptian government attempted to block Twitter, many reported using proxies to access the site. Tor, a free program that prevents “network surveillance”, was reportedly used to operate around the restriction. Protesters also used Hotspot Shield for iPhone to escape the censorship of Twitter, and they used qik instead of bambuser to share their live video streaming from their mobile phones. This points to the importance of understanding the underlying communication structures rather than relying on a specific program.

Journalists from the BBC, Al Jazeera and other Arab and domestic news organisations who were covering the confrontations between pro- and anti-regime protesters in Cairo rapidly and systematically became the target of violent attacks from pro-government thugs.

Authorities in Cairo had also blocked Al Jazeera’s satellite broadcast through Nilesat, interrupting its programs across the region.

Al Jazeera had been working round the clock to make sure that they were broadcasting on alternative frequencies and it enhanced its visibility via Twitter - @AJEnglish – to promote their content. Because sound is social, Al Jazeera also used audioboo to distribute voice reports from Tahir Square in Cairo.

On the other side of the pond, Google launced Speak To Tweet to help get Egyptians back online and allow them to tweet by simply using a voice connection.

People were enabled to tweet by leaving a voice mail on an international phone number and the service instantly tweeted the message using the hashtag #Egypt. No Internet connection was required. People were able to listen to the messages by dialing the same phone number or simply going to @speak2tweet.

From the boardroom to the streets

The birth of Egypt’s Revolution actually dates back to June 6, 2010 when Khaled Saeed died from injuries sustained during an alleged attack by two state-security officials in Alexandria.

Those responsible claimed that Khaled died from swallowing a cannabis joint; in face of a public outcry they were sentenced to four days in prison.

This lead to Wael Ghonim, a Google executive in the region, creating a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Saeed”which became a focal point for organising protests and reporting on them.

Ghonim wound up being kidnapped by the Egyptian regime amid the protests but was ultimately released.

In a CNN interview, Ghonim said:

“I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him. I’m talking on behalf of Egypt. This revolution started online. This revolution started on Facebook. This revolution started in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians started collaborating content. We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I’ve always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet.”

Displaying their freedom of expression

Egyptians also used jokes, poetry, songs and the Internet to criticize and satirize the uprising. One joked mocked the impossibility of removing Mubarak from power:

“A person found the lamp of Aladdin, so he rubbed the lamp and the genie said, ‘Ask what you want, it shall be done.’ The person replied, ‘I want a private highway from Cairo to Aswan.’ When the genie said this was too difficult, the person retorted, ‘What about removing Mubarak from power?’ The genie replied, ‘So how many lanes do you want on your highway?’

Kharabeesh, a creative Jordanian cartoon studio, has produced a series of cartoons on YouTube about Mubarak’s reactions to the demonstrations that swept across Egypt. The first video, ‘Mubarak is high’ got over 409,274 views.

Carlos Latuff, the world-renowned cartoonist, has also drawn numerous illustrations to support the Egyptian revolution.

Spreading the fight

The revolution in Egypt has now triggered anti-government protests in other countries including Tunisia, Algeria, Iran and Libya.

China has blocked the word ‘Egypt’ from micro-blog searches – a sign of the Chinese government’s concerns that protests calling for political reform in Egypt could spill into China’s Internet space.

While China says the Internet is free and open to its 450 million users, the government blocks numerous social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube – all used to mobilize protests around the world.

Lessons learned from Egypt

The revolution showed us that people have become content producers instead of content consumers because of social media.

Social media tools in themselves are not useful unless people use them. All too often we prefer to talk of the tools. It is easier than trying to understand what was behind these tools. People need to understand that behind the social media are the Egyptian people themselves.

This reminds me of a quote by social media expert Mark Comerford in which he said, “As communication shift from personal conversations to digital transferring of messages, the interactions of groups and individuals change and help create a more efficient sociological community by connecting individuals who have common interests.”

Comerford pointed out that this shift in our approach will create conflicts and cause problems to people in power who are not comfortable with it. Online censorship, surveillance, repression are reactions to this shift.

With the Egyptian Revolution, we witnessed those in power trying to stop the revolt but they couldn’t because of the sheer will of the people. Networks were the most powerful weapons in this revolution.

• This article was published on Sipmly-Communicate

Twitter: @simplygroup

Chocolates which enhanced by a piquant twist of chilli to spice the passion and a touch of the love fruit, lychee, to romance the taste. By: Anthon Berg

It seems we’ve witnessed the rarest of phenomena, a popular revolt toppling an Arab dictator and what’s clear is that the actions taken by Tunisians are reverberating around the region.

I’m aware of the fact that people make revolutions, but it looks like social media did have an important role to play here and we can’t deny that the online world is part of the world. It has a role.

Social media played a significant role in the events that have unfolded in the past month in Tunisia, and that the revolution appears far more likely to lead to lasting political change.

Online media did play a role in helping Tunisians learn about the actions their fellow citizens were taking and in making the decision to mobilize. How powerful and significant this influence was will be something that academics will study and argue over for years to come. Scholars aren’t the only ones who want to know whether social media played a role in the end of Ben Ali’s reign – it’s likely to be a hot topic of conversation in Amman, Algiers, and Cairo, as other autocratic leaders wonder whether the bubbling cauldron of unemployment, street protests, and digital media could burn them next.

They called it the #jasminrevolt, #sidibouzid revolt, #tunisia revolt, but there is only one name to what we are witnessing which is: Social media revolution.

Social media tools (Facebook, twitter, Youtube, blogs, etc.) are an information-distribution network, not that different from the telephone or email or text messaging, except that it is real-time and massively distributed – in the sense that a message posted by a blogger can be re-published thousands of times and transmitted halfway around the world in the blink of an eye. That is a very powerful thing, in part because the more rapidly the news is distributed, the more it can create a sense of momentum, helping a revolution to “Go Viral,” as marketing types like to say.

The reality of modern media is that social-media tools can be incredibly useful for spreading the news about revolutions because it gives everyone a voice.

Jasmine Elnadeem

We all have duty to care.

And there is ONE person who can make a difference.

It’s YOU!