The fewer followers the better on internal micro-blogs

Do social media tenets apply within your company’s firewall? Different purposes call for different approaches.

Internal social media tools such as Yammer and Status.Net are bringing a familiar flavor of communication into the enterprise. However, the same strategies that work outside the firewall might not translate well for conversations taking place within. Those who try to apply what they have learned from the outside drag a laundry list of unnecessary assumptions that can create noise and hamper productivity.

Out in the wild of Facebook and Twitter, the only thing you can claim in common with others you encounter is some degree of connectivity. You are “there,” and so are they; that’s the only guaranteed commonality. Think for a moment about all of the relevant strategies you’ve acquired either through your own experience or from the popular mythology of social media. They are predicated upon finding relevance in a global open structure. Within your business, there are several commonalities operating:

Depending upon the nature of the business, some of those may apply more than others; yet they are assuredly guaranteed to be composed of stronger ties than Twitter’s public timeline. So what changes?

Don’t follow me.

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