Inside Edge

Top Fears Executives Have When Implementing Employee Communities

Facing executive fears when implementing an employee community? You're not alone! Employee communities boost collaboration, engagement, and innovation. But executives often have valid concerns that need to be addressed for successful adoption. Here we tackle the top fears, from security risks to productivity, and offer insights on how to successfully overcome these challenges.

When Should I Start My Community Migration Project?

Considering a community migration, but unsure of the timing? There are many factors to take into account that will impact the timeline of your migration project. As you would expect, each company can be very different in terms of their speed in decision making, level of purchasing governance, overall process, number of decision making or influencing groups, etc. In general, larger companies will take longer to migrate their communities.

Can I use a Facebook Group instead of a Customer Community?

You and your employees likely already use Facebook in your personal lives, so it’s natural to assume it may be a good platform for your company to create a community with customers. While a Facebook group can be a useful tool for small businesses to engage with customers and build a sense of community, there are several reasons why it may not be the best solution for your company.

Key Factors to Consider When Picking a New Community Software

Choosing the right online community software for your business is crucial as it can have a significant impact on the success of your community. Having a deep understanding of your current and near-term needs is paramount before diving into the evaluation process of platform selection. We can assist you in finding the right software platform to meet your specific needs. 

New Products for SharePoint! Accordion, Content Quadrant, Image Gallery & Slider

We’re very excited to announce four new products for Microsoft SharePoint! Earlier this year, we launched our first product for Microsoft SharePoint, our dynamic Mosaic Web Part. Today, we’re pleased to share that we have added four new Web Parts to our growing list of products for Microsoft SharePoint: Accordion, Content Quadrant, Image Gallery, and Slider.

3 Tips for Building a Better Internal Community Within Your Organization

Internal communities are essential to modern businesses. A user-friendly platform that provides valuable content and focuses on employee engagement can make your internal community a vibrant and dynamic part of your organization. Here are our top 3 tips to creating a culture of innovation and productivity within your organization's internal community.

How Can You Ensure You Don't Lose Data During Your Community Migration?

Community migration can be a daunting process, especially when it comes to the potential loss of valuable data and content. However, with proper preparation, you can ensure a smooth and successful migration without losing any content. With our expertise in moving content and data between various software platforms, rest assured that your data will be preserved during your migration.

The Top 5 Reasons to Attend the Community Track at Verint Engage23

Hey Community Pros, feeling disconnected? Join the fun at Verint Engage23 and connect with fellow experts while staying on top of the latest trends and best practices in customer communities! During this four-day customer engagement conference - customers, partners and experts come together to share knowledge, and discover innovative ways to collaborate.

Why You Should Consider a Community as Part of Your Call Center Deflection Strategy

Call deflection strategies allow customers to choose how to resolve the questions or issues they have with a product or service. With a customer community, you can automate some of your customer service tasks, helping your customers find solutions more efficiently while reducing call center costs.

3 Key Considerations for a Successful Platform Migration

Just like moving to a new home, a successful community migration requires detailed planning and assistance from experts along the way. As expert "movers," we have the skills and experience to help you seamlessly transition your platform to its brand new digital home.

Introducing Mosaic for SharePoint: Enhance Your Landing Pages with Engaging Visual Content

A SharePoint landing page is often the first impression users have of your organization. It is a crucial opportunity to make a positive impact and engage your audience. That's where our Mosaic for SharePoint Web Part comes in.

Ten Ways Executives Can Support Their Company's Intranet

Executives can play a crucial role in their intranet's success by promoting its importance, providing resources for content creation, leading by example, and allocating resources to maintain and improve the intranet. Here are ten ways executives can support their company intranet and ensure that it is an effective tool for achieving organizational goals.

Reasons to Move Your Community

Looking to migrate your business community to a new platform? Here are some top reasons why businesses make the switch. From the need for a more mature platform with advanced features, to limitations with the current platform, to better alignment with the vendor's vision, to cost savings, and more. Read on to learn how a platform migration can provide a better user experience, improved scalability, better integration capabilities, and help your community grow.

How Zapier Scaled Up Internal Communications with LumApps

Following a decade of growth and innovation, Zapier sought a platform to scale its internal communication operations. Zapier relied on Social Edge, a LumApps partner, to implement and customize their internal online community. Check out the case study to learn more about their challenges, key use cases, and successful results.

External Communities: What They Are and How to Build One

Customers want to feel like they're part of something bigger. An external community allows them to do this in ways that can increase sales and loyalty. Online communities enable customers to engage with your brand and other customers, get support, find answers, and so much more.

What is an Online Community? Why Every Business Needs One

As the world becomes increasingly digital, businesses are realizing the value of online communities for both internal and external purposes. But if you're not familiar with the concept, you might be wondering: what exactly is an online community? Simply put, it's a digital platform where customers, clients, or employees can interact, share knowledge, and collaborate, making it a vital tool for organizations of all sizes.

Why haven't I heard of the Verint Community Platform?

A lot of our customers wonder why they haven’t heard of the Verint Community Platform when we take them through a platform evaluation. When we hear this, we seek to quickly fill in the gaps, because Verint is a fantastic option for many companies.

Why can't I just use Slack or MS Teams as my employee online community?

Slack and Microsoft Teams are popular platforms companies use to streamline internal communication and collaboration. While these tools can be effective for team communication, they're not a substitute for a dedicated community for employees.

10 Things You Didn’t Know SharePoint Can Do Now

Microsoft SharePoint is one of the most widely used enterprise content management systems. SharePoint was used mainly for collaboration and knowledge management when it first came out. It gave users a centralized place to store documents, share them with colleagues, and keep track of versions. But over time, Microsoft added more features, making SharePoint even more powerful. Here are ten of the key enhancements over time.

2022 Year in Review

What a whirlwind of a year it has been! Social Edge President Andrew Kratz takes a moment to reflect on how Social Edge has grown and what we’ve accomplished this past year, as well as share what we’re looking forward to in 2023.

Let's Get Technical! Tech Jam Recap

Earlier this month Verint enthusiasts from 10 different companies joined Social Edge Consulting for a 24-hour “Tech Jam”. 15 Community Managers and Developers came together with one simple goal: put our heads together and see if we could innovate on the Verint Community Platform and create something usable in just one day!

We Finally Got Social! At Verint Engage22

Following a week in Orlando, Florida at Verint's Engage22, our team is refreshed and invigorated for all things community! Social Edge attended and helped facilitate the first ever Verint Community Track. For many of us it was our first in-person event since 2019, and let us tell you the power of being together again was not lost on us. 

The Unexpected Power of Community

During her first week as an Enterprise Community Manager, Dori introduced herself with a blog post called "My Work Uniform." In this blog, Dori talks about the impact a single post can make in an internal community, how it got the attention of the C-Suite, proving the power a community platform can have on employee engagement and company culture.

Change Management Best Practices when Migrating Platforms

You’ve spent months evaluating which platform is best for your organization. You're confident you have selected the right tool, and have a good plan for implementing it. But if you build it, will they come? Knowing your audience, tailoring the messaging, and timing your communications properly will help you have the best chance of success.

Tips for Training a New Community Manager

When welcoming a new community manager to the team, there are several ways to help prepare and give them the experience to better their career performance. As a new community manager herself, Sara Campbell shares helpful tips she has put together based on her experience recently joining the Social Edge team.

New Complimentary Platform Evaluation Service

If your organization is looking for your next-generation digital workplace or customer community, we can help you evaluate the available options that will best meet your unique business requirements. Download our latest resource to learn more about our complimentary platform evaluation and selection service!

The Community Manager Trap

We're excited to announce that Senior Community Manager extraordinaire Dori Gray has recently joined the Social Edge team! In honor of Community Manager Advancement Day, she’s sharing her tips on how to avoid the “community manager trap” and the key to being successful, even while juggling many roles and wearing many hats.

2020 - A Year in Review

There is little doubt that historians will be analyzing 2020 for decades to come due to the impact of COVID-19, the US election, and the social justice movement. We look with optimism toward 2021 and a return to a new normal. With input from the Social Edge team, here are President and Founder Andrew Kratz's reflections on a most unique year.

Working Remotely as a Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing UX/UI Designer

When Creative UX/UI designer Lakeishia Grant started her role at Social Edge, she knew things would need to be very different if she wanted to be successful, especially while working remotely. Here are tips she recommends for other deaf/heard-of-hearing designers - and their coworkers - to improve how to work together.

The Event Tile is now included in EdgePack for Jive!

We're excited to announce today that our Event Tile has now been added to EdgePack for Jive at no additional cost! This new addition brings the total number of tiles available in the EdgePack bundle to twelve. Check out the announcement to learn more about the Event Tile and how to get it set up in your community.

How We're Giving Back in 2020

On behalf of #GivingTuesday, Andrew Kratz announces two charitable contributions we're making on behalf of the Social Edge team. We're backing our commitment to freedom & fairness with an investment in minority small-owned businesses and communities, and making a donation to an organization that's meaningful to our clients and our employees.

I’m a Creative Director With 2 Kids Under 5: Here’s How I’m Handling #WFH

Social Edge Creative Director Allison Rouleau shares 5 tips on working from home with kids. To help you not only cope, but to excel and keep yourself and your kids happy during these challenging times. These are suggestions she has found that work for herself and her young family. Hopefully, they can inspire ideas for you and yours!‍

New Multi-Language Display Options & more EdgePack for Jive Enhancements

The Social Edge product team has been busy the last few months updating and innovating on some of our most popular products. If you are a current EdgePack for Jive customer or just want to learn more about what we are up to, check out the highlights of some of our latest releases in this post.

Innovation for Your Jive Community

Does your Jive community need a facelift? Are you looking for integrations to optimize the platform for your organization?‍ If the answer to either of the questions above is yes, we have good news for you! Check out our new innovation catalog to learn about the products and integrations we have developed to extend and enhance your Jive community.

Customer Success Story: Ounce of Prevention Fund / Early Childhood Connector

In March, Social Edge kicked off an implementation project for the Ounce of Prevention Fund - the Early Childhood Connector. Social Edge worked closely with the Ounce to get the ECC community up and running in about a week, with the primary focus of the initial launch being to provide resources specific to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Update on Adding the Event Tile to EdgePack for Jive

Recently we've seen several new sales of EdgePack for Jive, which may be driven in part by this unique business environment. Many clients have said the COVID-19 pandemic has created a renewed and deep interest in their communities. We’re now just 7 new clients away from adding the Event Tile to EdgePack at no additional cost! Learn more here.

Exciting news: the Event Tile is here!

We're excited to announce the launch of our newest product, the Event Tile! As you know, we polled our clients and the AureaWorks community and the Event Tile was our 12th Tile winner. Today we're happy to say that it is now available for individual purchase in our online store or via SOW. Check out this post to learn more about the Event Tile!

An Offer for Khoros JX Clients

In early February, Khoros announced that they would be sunsetting the JX platform by December 31, 2020. We recognize that many organizations didn’t budget for this situation and end-of-year deadline, and we want to help. Social Edge is offering to defer payment of 75% of migration and implementation fees to 2021. Learn more about our offer here.

4 Steps to Better Video Conferencing Now That You're #SuddenlyRemote

With millions of commuters now working from home, the transition from face-to-face in-person interaction to face-to-face screen interaction is a big change. In this article, John Reynolds, Social Edge VP of Technology, shares ways to optimize your home office setup and improve the quality of face-to-face screen time with your colleagues.

Working from home? Effective ways to work remotely

Suddenly working from home? Struggling with the transition? After 8 years of primarily working remotely, the Social Edge team shares their tips and tricks to create an environment that enables you to successfully work remotely.

5 ways Community Managers can practice self-care in 2020

Community Managers are the heart of any online community. As CMGRs, we love our jobs and are used to wearing many hats - from fostering engagement to facilitating member training sessions. In keeping with the theme of #CMAD2020, self-care, we wanted to share a few ideas from our team on how you can set your self up for success and prevent burn out.

New E-book! Everything You Need to Know About Platform Migrations

Considering a platform migration but unsure where to start? Moving all of your content and users to a new platform can seem daunting, but doesn't have to be. In this e-book, you'll learn the key reasons to consider a migration, a breakdown of the migration process, and project preparation, including insights on timing, budgeting and overall costs.

Building a New Community: Where to Start?

Our team is often asked by new clients to help them apply social business to their organization. The client leadership team recognizes that social media and collaboration are more than just a trend. Learn more about where you should start if you're considering an internal community to meet your organization's digital transformation goals.

Coming soon! Slack Integration for Jive

Do your community members work in both Jive and Slack? If so, we have great news for you!‍ We're excited to announce that we have been working on a new product, our Slack Integration for Jive, which will enable you to now have the ability to connect any Jive space or group to a Slack channel in a workplace!

Tips for Implementing Common Use Cases in External Communities

What are the most common scenarios or use cases for an external-facing community? At Social Edge, we often work with external communities that are focused on customer support. While the nuances may vary from community to community, here’s what popular communities focus on.‍

A Recap of The CR Connect 2019

Last month, Social Edge was proud to be part of The Community Roundtable's CR Connect conference in Boston. The CR Connect is a three-day learning conference exclusively for online community practitioners - those engaged in the development, implementation, management, and measurement of community initiatives. Learn more in our conference recap!

The #1 Thing to do Before a Migration

Are you considering migrating from one platform to another, but unsure where to start? The concept of moving all of your content and users from one environment to another can seem daunting, but our experts work with you to simplify the process and ensure everything runs smoothly. The most important thing to do to get started? Audit your content.

The results are in! And the 12th Tile winner is...

Thank you for your feedback on what our 12th tile should be! We really appreciate all of the input we've received from our clients and the AureaWorks community.‍‍ The insight we've received is important to us as we continue to grow and expand our portfolio of products. We are very excited to announce that Tile #12 will be... the Event Tile!

Stop spamming your colleagues

When you start your day, how many emails do you delete after just a quick skim or without even opening them? How many emails were you not cc'ed on but should have been? (A question you often don't know the answer to until it is too late). Learn more about how an internal collaboration platform can help ensure you get the communications you need.

Introducing Social Edge Products for Telligent

We are very excited to announce that we have recently launched a line of Social Edge products exclusively for the Telligent platform! These products are designed to enhance the user experience and visual aesthetic of your Telligent community. Learn more about the new products available for Telligent.

What should our 12th Tile be?

Earlier this year we added tiles #10 (Activity) and #11 (Video) to the Tile Pack. The big question from our clients is when will we add more new products! We are very excited to announce we are gearing up to launch a new tile - and we want your input on what it should be! Check out the blog to learn more and vote on our 12th Tile Survey.

15 Frequently Asked Questions on Platform Migrations

Migrating from one platform to another can seem daunting, but if you go into it with a clear strategy and organized content, it doesn't have to be. I interviewed Robert Hanson, Social Edge's collaboration technology architect and migration wiz, to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about migrating from one platform to another.

ICE Tour 2019

This June, we were fortunate to join our partner Igloo Software and our customers at the ICE Tour two-day regional user events held in Toronto and Los Angeles. It was a fantastic opportunity for Igloo customers to share their digital workplaces, lessons learned, and creative solutions for shared problems. Check out our event recaps to learn more.

Customer Panel Recap: Building Better Use Cases

On June 19th Social Edge hosted our first Customer Panel: Building Better Use Cases, featuring panelists Dina Vekaria and Dori Gray, Community Managers at Pearson and Medidata. They shared their use case best practices and presented live demos of their internal communities, Pearson Neo and Medidata Express. Check out the recap to learn more!

Social Edge Customer Panel: Building Better Use Cases

Are you looking for best practices on how to curate content and create meaningful places that enable community members to find what they need in a more efficient way? Join us on Wednesday, June 19th at 11 AM Eastern for our first Social Edge Customer Panel to get insights on these topics and more!

A Week with Verint at the Engage19 Conference

During the week of May 20th, Social Edge attended and sponsored the Verint Engage19 Conference in Orlando, Florida. Verint owns the Telligent community software platform. Telligent is a community platform that Social Edge began to partner with in 2017 as a solution for our community customers. Check out Andrew Kratz's recap of the conference here.

Discover the Magic of Top-down and Bottom-up Communications with a Social Intranet

Andrew Kratz talks about top-down and bottom-up communication and the magic they create inside a community-based intranet.

Ready, set, launch! Expert Insights for Launching and Managing a New Community

Daniel Mudgett is an online community and systems expert who has led the implementation of multiple social collaboration and learning platforms. In this interview, Daniel talks about his experience implementing and managing a successful collaborative social intranet.

How Social Interactions Can Lead to Better Business Outcomes

Some business leaders have expressed the concern that social interactions in an employee community will result in a loss of productivity. In this blog post, Andrew Kratz shares a story on how an interaction he had in such a social group ended up benefitting his organization and led to improved company outcomes.

Transparency Opens Doors: My First Community Story

Social Edge president Andrew Kratz shares a story about one of the first "aha" moments he had with his company's internal community. With a simple update he posted, he was able to form connections with employees he may not have had the opportunity to connect with otherwise. Learn more about the benefits of transparency in the workplace in his post.

Community Migrations: An Interview with Kate Weaver

Andrew Kratz recently sat down with Kate Weaver, a community veteran and former Director of Extranet Communities at Health Catalyst. The purpose of their conversation was to discuss her experience migrating from one community platform to another. Kate’s story and insights will prove helpful to other community owners considering a similar path.

The wait is over: the Activity & Video Tiles are here!

We are thrilled to announce that our Activity and Video Tiles are here! Back in August we asked the AureaWorks community what new tiles they would like to see us add to our collection of Tiles by Social Edge. When we got the results back, there were two clear winners: Activity & Video. Instead of building one, we decided to build both. Learn more!

Is a Community Right for Your Organization?

Andrew Kratz, president and founder of Social Edge Consulting, shares his thoughts on the business value of communities in the first of a series of blog posts. In this post, Andrew talks about how his social journey began, his background working with collaboration platforms, and two challenges the community platform industry faces.

Celebrate #CMAD in style... with a free tile!

Happy Community Management Appreciation Day! On this day of appreciation, we would like all Jive and Lithium JX clients to experience the benefits of a premium Tile by Social Edge. ‍‍Beginning today, you can purchase the Accordion Tile for zero dollars if you act by March 1, 2019. Don't wait - take advantage of this special offer today!

Social Network Analysis to Visualise the Jive Social Graph

Over recent years we’ve seen a focus on metrics showing more direct top and bottom line impacts and ROI for online communities. Jive's upcoming “PeopleGraph” promises to “re-establish people as the center of enterprise social networks." In this post, strategist Simon Scullion shows us how Jive's REST API can be used for Social Network Analysis.

GDPR is coming. Is your community ready?

We have developed GDPR Apps that enable you to manage and respond quickly to any data requests and provide a user with the ability to provide or withdraw consent to the use of their personal data. These apps make it easy to ensure your Jive instance is GDPR compliant, allowing you to fulfill your obligations as a data controller.

A New Year's Resolution all Community Managers can stick to in 2018

At the start of a new year, people tend to create resolutions for themselves, generally focused on things they want to do more, or less, of going forward. From new exercise regimens to kicking bad habits, these resolutions are typically focused on accomplishing new goals and overall self-improvement, providing a clean state to kick start their year. But why stop there?

Introducing the Ideas Tile - just in time for the holidays!

We're excited to announce a new addition to our growing collection of Tiles by Social Edge: the Ideas Tile! Our Ideas Tile lets you display your community's ideas in a dynamic and colorful way. Highlight your member's great ideas on any landing page to promote voting and display the status of each idea. You can add visual tabs to the tile to organize ideas by stage, place, activity or creation date.

Inside Out - Driving Adoption through Gamification

External communities are a curious thing. Why does a user repeatedly return to a community that they aren't being paid to or required to participate in? If it's not an obligation, why do they choose to invest their own personal time in the community? What motivates them to be there?

New Tile Alert: Say Hello to the Place Grid

We're thrilled to present another addition in our growing Tiles by Social Edge store: The Place Grid. Our Place Grid gives you the power to display a more visually-striking presentation of the places most important to your users. Not only that - but it's a significantly easier and code-free alternative to the out of the box tiles.

How the Blog Tile Transformed the Neo Community at Pearson

Are you a community manager looking for an easy and visual way to display blog posts in your community? Our Blog Tile might be for you! With the Blog Tile, you can bring your community's blog posts to life with previews of the entire post as well as accompanying images -- all without having to update any HTML.

Alfresco Community: A Jive-x Customer Success Story

Alfresco is an enterprise open source company focused on making business flow quickly, seamlessly and intelligently. Their software powers the daily work of more than 11 million people at industry-leading organizations in 195 countries worldwide. Alfresco customers rely on their open, modern platform to digitize critical business processes and connect people with the information they need, quickly and effortlessly.

Defining Community Governance and Its Importance in an Online Environment

Community governance consists of a set of policies established by enterprise community managers and system administrators that are continuously monitored and enforced by the policy owners and members of the community. Simply stated, governance policies are developed in order to define and clarify what members can and cannot do within the online community.

New Tile Alert: The Blog Tile is Here

Blogs are a great way to share and promote news, updates, and announcements in your Jive community. Our new Blog Tile gives you an easy way to display blogs on any landing page, including the homepage. Not only does the Blog Tile dynamically surface blog titles, but it can display images and a text preview - all from an easy-to-use configuration panel.

5 Tips to Drive Engagement in External Communities

Engagement is key to a community's success - both internal or external. Some common external community goals include awareness, information sharing, trust, loyalty, feedback, happy customers, and informed internal stakeholders, to name a few. All of these goals are achieved through different levels of engagement. So how does one engage members?

Driving Adoption and Engagement: A Fortune 50 Healthcare Company Success Story

Consultant and community manager Meghan Connor has been working as an interim community manager at a Fortune 50 healthcare company for the last nine months. In her role, Meghan works directly with the organization's enterprise communications team to provide daily support on all community initiatives while driving employee engagement and new member adoption.

Introducing Tiles by Social Edge

As a Jive customer, you have a diverse library of tiles available to you right in the platform. These out-of-the-box tiles allow you to present content to your audience in a number of compelling ways. But, it's also possible, as you likely know, to build new tiles that give you even greater control over how Jive looks and behaves.

The Power of Community Management: A Financial Services Success Story

Senior consultant and community manager Kaitlin Connor was involved in the rollout of a Fortune 100 investment bank's enterprise collaboration platform powered by Jive. From 2013 to 2016, she worked as an embedded community manager onsite at their offices in New York City.

Social Edge Consulting - Our Fifth Year In Business

This month, the Social Edge Consulting team is marking our fifth year in business. A leader I worked for earlier in my career would often conclude his remarks with, “work hard every day, but don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.” It is good advice for a team at a small business where every day is a whirlwind, with team members wearing multiple hats in order to effectively support our clients, partners, and each other. This five-year milestone is a great opportunity to reflect on our journey as a company as well as look toward the future.

Social Edge CMGRs Celebrate CMAD 2017

Community Managers are awesome! At Social Edge not only do we have a great team of dedicated and passionate community managers, and we are lucky to get to work with other community managers every day in our client work. To celebrate #cmad2017 we asked our team to share what they love about being a Community Manager.

Knowledge Management Best Practices For Internal and External Communities

Unlike your typical Jive collaboration scenarios, best practices for knowledge management dictate a tighter, observed process. This usually involves content templates, guidelines and an editorial process. Here are a few examples of how we handled this in internal and external communities.

Community Use Cases: What You Really Need to Know (in Under 500 Words)

At Social Edge we know that thoughtful and well-executed use cases are the foundation of a successful community, so important that we’ve blogged about it here. A simple search of “use case” in JiveWorks also yields dozens of informative results. While information on use cases and their importance is plentiful, here is what you really need to know.

Spam 101: How to Prevent and Manage it in Your Community

An externally facing Jive Community is a huge opportunity for a company to interact in a more meaningful way with its customers and partners. As you share knowledge and ideas in a public forum, you will be deepening the relationships you already have, and building new ones. Unfortunately, your community at some point may get some unwanted attention from unfriendly bots. Fortunately, Jive is on top of that and has a strong spam prevention service built into the product to protect your community.

Welcome to the Social Edge Community!

We're sure you may have noticed that our website has changed just a bit. You can see we've done a complete overhaul - new navigation, redesign, more content - the works! The best part about all of this, is that our website is actually our very own Jive Community. We're very excited at how this turned out and what we were able to accomplish using the out-of-the-box features and functionality of Jive.

Happy Holidays from Social Edge (2016)

Wishing you and your team a happy and healthy holiday season.

Social Edge Customer Success Story: Starwood Hotels & Resorts Intranet

When Starwood Hotels and Resorts embarked on a digital transformation initiative to change how they communicate and collaborate internally, they prioritized upgrading their intranet. Social Edge answered the call to partner with Starwood in vetting Jive. We first started with a pilot for their Information Technology Town Hall. From there, we moved on to plan a full scale migration of their existing static intranet over to a social Jive-n cloud community.

Climbing Mount Everest: 5 Steps to a Successful Community Launch

Planning for the launch of a community can be overwhelming, to say the least. There are many moving parts from technology to design to strategy and community management. All are important in their own right, because each contribute to a successful launch. It's easy to look at the big picture and feel like you're being asked to climb Mt. Everest (and if you have, kudos to you...this should be much easier ). In over a decade of community management, I've learned a few tips that will make the climb seem more like Mt. Hood. It's still intimidating, but much more do-able.

Will Facebook Workplace Work for Your Organization?

Last week Facebook launched their much anticipated new enterprise social network offering, Workplace, formerly known as Facebook at Work. The service is designed to transform business communications by improving internal communication and collaboration. Workplace is a separate product from personal Facebook. Users have unique accounts within Workplace where they can create and join groups to collaborate virtually with their coworkers, although the option to link accounts is available in a user's settings.

Our Path Toward Self-Organization

In the fall of 2015, I found myself reaching a breaking point with a typical organizational problem. The Social Edge team had grown to forty-five members, most of whom reported to me directly, the founder of this four year old professional services company.

Do You Trust Your Employees to Choose Their Peers' Job Titles? We Did - Here's What Happened

When we first launched Social Edge, we imagined a flat organization with minimal hierarchies. Individual input and contributions were encouraged, no matter the level of experience. Our team is comprised of thoughtful and intelligent individuals, all of whom provide value to our clients. However, it's now time to consider the career progression of our team, as well as the opportunities available within our company.

JiveWorld 101: Tips to Optimize Your #JW16 Experience

If this is if your first time to Jive World, you're in for a treat. This conference is for customers and features customers sharing what they've learned about the Jive platform and implementing it. There's so much goodness packed into 2-3 short days that it can be a bit overwhelming. Here are some tips to help make the most of the conference this year.

The Vital Need for Use Cases in a Jive Community

At Social Edge when we kick off a new implementation project, the first question we often ask our clients is "What are the use cases?" For some, this is a great starting point. For others, this can be as clear as mud. So, we've asked two members of our team to describe use cases, and explain why they are so important to a successful community launch.

How My Collaboration Journey Led Me to Social Edge

Advocacy for people has been the center of both my personal and professional life for over 15 years. I have worked for many companies in collaboration where I partnered with organizations in the midst of change to encourage leadership teams to communicate with the "boots on the ground,"and vice versa. I saw firsthand that we are facilitators in helping companies evolve their business, communications, relationships and access to information.

Three Things I Learned About Social Intranets During My First Month at Social Edge

Before entering the world of Social Edge and Jive I worked as a Public Relations Assistant Account Executive at a communications agency. Despite their modern culture, I found some of their daily processes to be mundane and after a month of working at Social Edge I realize they were outdated.

Engage Your Customers: The Power of Digital Communities

Like-minded Austinites kicked off 2016 at the Capital Factory with a conversation about the emerging trend of digital communities. Lead by Jive and Social Edge Strategists, the intimate group discussed online communities and how they related to them.Everyone in the room agreed that a positive customer experience was extremely important for a company. They are not alone. According to Parature's 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report, data shows that 97% of consumers worldwide say customer service is a major consideration in choosing their favorite brand.

The Social Edge Mission

Originally, I posted this in our Social Edge Jive Community, because we’ve been talking internally about the direction of our company as we continue to grow. I wanted to start the conversation with employees, first. But I also wanted to share my thoughts and beliefs on the purpose and mission of Social Edge to those who may be interested in our services.

12 Weeks to a New Intranet

With many organizations using their intranets as a lifeline for sharing knowledge, there is a push to ensure that it meets current and future needs. Many Jive customers are either upgrading their current community, or implementing Jive for the first time to further support their internal communication efforts. Recently I worked with a client on a project to pull off a full intranet replacement with Jive.

No More Naysayers: A Rebuttal to Why I Don't Jive

...title caught your attention? Introducing social collaboration to a business isn't always an easy undertaking. We are asking people within all levels of an organization, including executives and senior leaders, to change the way they work. As with any change management process we are bound to hear negative feedback from tentative users. As community managers engage employees in the change process it is important to address any hesitation and uncertainty.

Ten Do's and Don'ts for a Zombie-Free Community

No one wants to work with a zombie. But it seems that zombies are prevalent in the corridors of many companies around the world. Well, not actual zombies, but employees who are disengaged and dispassionate about the missions of their companies. And the results for can be devastating. In our current knowledge economy, ignoring employee engagement is extremely costly.

Northwestern's MSLOC Program: Mastering Higher Ed Communities with Jive

Northwestern University's Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change (MSLOC) program trains business leaders in strategic change management. Much of the training takes place outside the classroom, in an online community called The Hive, powered by Jive-n. It's a place where students, faculty, staff and alumni connect for ongoing learning, career and student services, and professional networking. The Hive greatly enhances the value of the MSLOC program, allowing rapid on boarding, informal learning and ongoing engagement.

The Importance of Ongoing Education in Jive Communities

During the launch of a community, every aspect of making the community successful is considered, from system settings to design. A major aspect of launch is also training everyone involved, from system administrators to community members. While plans are laid out to provide education during launch, one aspect of management of the community that is often overlooked is designing an ongoing education program.

Jive Takes Business Communications to the Next Level with Circle and Chime

How many platforms do you normally sift through to procure the right contact information and quickly get in touch with someone in your organization? When you finally designate the right contact, how long does it take to put a message, email, or call into action? Many of us are caught in the tangled enterprise web of collaboration platforms, employee directories, and communication mechanisms, unaware of how to painlessly unravel ourselves from this weave of anti-collaboration.

Jive CMR Updates: Digging into the Data

While numerous new features were announced in Jive's 2015.2 release, we dug deeper into a few of the enhancements behind the curtain, focusing on the new reports added to the Jive CMGR's best friend - the Community Manager Reports (CMR). The recent updates to the CMR have allowed community managers to dig deeper into the data to see not only how the community is being adopted and used, but how engaged the members are.

Support Gets Social in Jive's Latest Cloud Release

In the 2015.2 release, both internal and external cloud customers will be able to utilize a Support Center feature to gather all your help and support information in one place. Unlike a spotlight search that searches the entire community, you can select which places and will be filtered into this feature. So, instead of your community members guessing the information they might need to find an answer to their question, you can select and prioritize their results, which will lead to greater success in quickly getting them the support they need.

Hot Tips From Successful Community Managers: Recruiting Advocates

As community managers (CMs), we wear several hats in our Jive communities. Whether it's training new members, driving engagement, implementing governance standards, or gathering metrics to measure success - CMs have a lot on their plates. As one of the many Jive community managers here at Social Edge, I feel that building a strong advocacy program goes a long way to creating and growing an active, thriving community. What are advocates? Glad you asked!

Three Myths (Busted!) of Jive-x Communities

When organizations contemplate creating a new customer community, multiple factors must be taken into consideration. Defining the target audience, developing the community goals and objectives, and building an environment that aligns to the organization's business values are all essential for a successful Jive-x community implementation. But there are myths and misinformation about customer communities that we can definitely bust. We recently hosted a webinar on this topic with Jeanie Kedia, Director of Communities at Birst, who shared insights from her experience working with ThinkTank, Birst's Jive-X community.

10 New Features That Make Jive 8 Great

Earlier this month, Jive rolled out a variety of new features and functionality now available in internal, Jive-n, and external, Jive-x, communities. Community managers and system administrators can manually update their cloud instances to include these new features directly from the admin console with one click: System > Settings > News and select Enable.

Maximizing the Jive News Feature in Your Community

If you're like us, you get excited when Jive announces its Cloud upgrades. Sometimes they're technical enhancements that community members don't notice (but we do!), and are game changers. Sometimes, it's a game changer for us and for end users; and that's how we feel about the News feature. When Jive announced the News feature, which included an auto-follow option, we knew that would make a lot of our customers (and us, too!) very happy. So after testing this out in our own Jive Community (known as Edgeville, in case you were wondering) we spoke with clients and came up with a few best practice/use case scenarios to help get you started.

Social Business Moving to the Cloud - Myth or Trend?

We're seeing growing adoption of cloud-based platforms for communities and social intranets, but can we call it a trend? Are we seeing companies switching from on-premise and hosted installations to Software as a Service (SaaS).

TemboSocial and Social Edge Consulting Announce Partnership To Help Jive Customers Work Better Together

TemboSocial, a leading provider of social software solutions for businesses today announced a partnership with Social Edge Consulting, an award winning professional services firm specializing in implementing and innovating with Jive Software. The partnership will help Jive customers leverage their investment by driving sustained platform adoption & employee engagement.

Why Social Edge Wants to #MakeMagicHappen At JiveWorld14

As you arrive @jiveworld, you may have noticed that some of our tweets and blogposts featured #makemagichappen. When you visit the Social Edge JiveWorld booth (#G1), you will also see that #makemagichappen is a big part of our design theme, headlined by our magic playing cards featuring Jive community tips. So what's the story here?

The "X" Factor Behind Implementing a Successful Jive-x Community

JiveWorld14 is just around the corner, and Social Edge is busy planning which sessions to attend, what we want to learn about and who we want to meet. With the Jive-x external community platform release this year, there's even more to learn. As Social Edge president Andrew Kratz Kratz mentioned in a recent blog post, Three Trends to Watch at JiveWorld14, a topic we look forward to hearing more about at JW14 is Jive-x. This year Social Edge has worked with a number of clients that successfully leveraged the features of the Jive-x platform to connect in meaningful ways with their clients, partners and customers.

Social Edge/Jive Software Whitepaper Identifies Cost Savings to Healthcare Industry via Social Collaboration

The time for participatory and collaborative health care is here and Jive is the platform of choice to bring social collaboration to patients, physicians, health systems and clinics. Jive brings the value of immediacy and transparency to patients and health providers. Take a look at our new Jive-sponsored whitepaper, Reducing Costs and Increasing Value: Social Collaboration Opportunities in Healthcare.

Three Trends to Watch at JiveWorld14

With only 63 days left until JiveWorld 2014, all of us at Social Edge are looking forward to reconnecting with colleagues and learning the latest and greatest about JiveX, Cloud and everyone's #workstyle. As a Jive partner, we've noticed there are three ways that businesses embrace Jive and social business: those expanding their original installation of Jive into other areas of their enterprise; those who are replacing previous incarnations of a social collaboration platform; and those who are developing an external community (JiveX). These varying paths to social collaboration through Jive, show just how far the business community has come from five years ago when #social meant Facebook.

Gamification as a Social Business Strategy - What Do You Think?

Is gamification good for Social Business? Is it bad? This is the debate that I faced with my new colleagues at Social Edge Consulting in my first week at the company. We get together weekly and discuss and debate the finer points of implementing social business strategies and solutions.

Enterprise Collaboration Luncheon - 3/20, Philadelphia

On Thursday, March 20th, Jive customer Philadelphia Insurance Companies will join us for a luncheon event. They will discuss how social technology has enhanced collaboration and employee engagement within their organization, and the benefits it can bring to your company.

End Those HTML Code Blues With a Free 30-Day Trial of MOSAIC

We know editing HTML code isn't easy. Painfully searching for that one line of broken code is frustrating ? and we know, because we've been there! We're always searching for ways to enhance our clients' experiences with Jive. That?s why we developed MOSAIC, a cloud-compatible widget that displays visual content and text in a responsive masonry layout. Document-based configuration makes it easy for community managers or administrators to customize the look and functionality of the widget without editing overview pages.

Social Business Lives Under the Radar But That Will Change

I always tell people that I have the best job in the world. When I explain to them what it is ??? helping businesses go social inside and outside their company??? they usually have no idea what I'm talking about. But social business, as it's called, is an unstoppable trend that will help change the way we live, and work, on this planet.

A Year in the Life of a Community Manager

This is my second time celebrating Community Manager Appreciation Day (#CMAD), but my appreciation for the role and my company has grown exponentially since last year. When I accepted the community manager position at Social Edge, I knew I'd see a side of social collaboration and Jive Software that I'd never experienced as an end user. I looked forward to learning new skills and facing new challenges. But this year, I learned one of the best parts about being a community manager in Jive is the continued support you receive from your colleagues.

Social Edge Consulting Awarded Jive Software's Consulting Partner MVP of the Year

We're thrilled to announce that Jive Software awarded us their Consulting Partner MVP of the Year Award (2013). We were chosen because of our close collaboration with Jive to drive customer success and help organizations achieve real business value from their Jive communities.

Applying six questions from Peter Drucker to social business initiatives

Peter Drucker. I'll hazard a guess that (knowingly or unknowingly) we've all come across examples or quotes from the works of Peter Drucker. The recent 5th Global Peter Drucker Forum which focused on "managing complexity," brought him front and center again for me recently. During the event @dpontefract noted how the Return on Assets on public companies has collapsed since 1961 by 75%, with no signs of it turning around.

Going External: Social Business and Customer Service

Have you been thinking about using an online external community to reach your customers in a truly helpful and "sticky" way? It's a fast-growing trend with which many large companies are exploring and experimenting. It makes sense when companies like McAfee, Wells Fargo, and Verizon Wireless are experiencing measurable successes with their external communities. McAfee, for example, reduced call volume by 26% and increased customer satisfaction by a whopping 25% (Source).

Getting to Know Gamification in Jive: Bunchball's Nitro Console

With gamification and user engagement strategies becoming more prevalent, it can be challenging to navigate the options available. We've become very familiar with Nitro, Jive's Bunchball Gamification Console. For those who have just started exploring Nitro, with a bit of practice you'll be an expert before you know it!

Real Shots of Social: A Reflection Of JiveWorld13

When you are as serious about enterprise social business as we are at Social Edge, JiveWorld is the place to learn about the latest trends, successful use cases, and to connect with thousands of customers, partners and Jivers themselves.

Get Real! Social Edge at Jive World '13

In just 10 days, the SE team will be heading to Las Vegas to participate in Jive Software's annual social business conference: Jive World. There are many of us attending, so we'll be a tough crew to miss!

EdgePack Plugin Coming Soon

Social Edge is excited to announce that we are developing new products designed to work with, and enhance, any Jive community. Our first release is the EdgePack™ plugin with two user-friendly widgets, EZ Slide and EZAd. EdgePack™ allows community administrators to present visually engaging content through a colorful slider that rotates images as desired. Community managers can quickly configure EdgePack™ for Space/Group overview or home pages without any HTML or coding.

Our Philosophy: Social Business Strategist Mike Fraietta on The Social Edge Approach

Tech Talk: Watch Director of Technology John Reynolds Talk About Social Edge's Deep Bench of IT Pros

How can Social Edge help your firm develop a successful Jive community? Whether embarking on a full scale Jive implementation or building upon a more mature social ecosystem, Social Edge has a deep bench of IT experts available to meet your technical needs.

Turning Lurkers Into Contributors - The 5Cs of Social Business Communities

You may have heard about the 1% Rule of the Internet. Also known as the "90–9–1" rule, it states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing. This rule is pretty spot-on throughout most of the Internet but using collaborative and social technologies, like Jive, gives us the opportunity to turn lurkers into contributors, creators, connectors and collaborators. On one community, we were able to raise the contribution rate from 12% to 22% in a three-month period.

Measuring the Value of Social Technology

It's been a short seven years since Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, wrote an article titled Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration in the MIT Sloan Management Review (Spring 2006) that asked the question, do we finally have the collaborative technologies that reflect the way work gets done?

Illumination is Near: Balancing Transparency and Privacy in the Social Space

I was fortunate to attend Jive World 2012 in October, and sat in on a number of sessions regarding community management, and internal and external communities. One of the presentations, “Breaking Down Walls: Work in Private with Anyone, Anywhere,” resonated with me. The idea that privacy is possible no matter how public your space, is good news to many businesses.

Surfacing Ideas: Bringing the Needs of 'the Street' Up to the Boardroom

So, you’ve made the decision to bring social collaboration to your enterprise. It’s a great choice that will net many gains for your team in global team engagement, communication, and managing content. As a leader you have objectives and targets in mind with your rollout. You will find lots of experts on social collaboration, both internal and external, in your endeavor.

JiveWorld 2012

As summer ends and fall approaches, we are looking forward to the social collaboration event of the season, Jive World 2012 in October. As a Silver sponsor, the Social Edge Consulting team and I are eager to hear the latest developments from Jive, as well as the benefit from the unlimited opportunities to network with clients and leaders in the field. We have a number of success stories to share at Jive World, where I was selected to be a "ringside expert" for a panel discussion on October 11.

Selling Social Collaboration to the Front Line

Some of the more challenging conversations you will have regarding your new social collaboration platform are with your front line business teams. These are the job functions that are at the heart of your organization. They have no time to waste and many will be skeptical of “hot trends” that might be long on promises and short on delivering. It is worth the time to spend with them as they have the most to gain from social tools.

Why You Need a Social Intranet

Let's have a frank discussion about your current Intranet. It's terrible! You know it. Your employees know it. Your management team knows it. If you are like most companies, there are probably only four features that are used on your Intranet...

Company Wisdom

How many people do you know at your company? 100, 500, 750, 1000? If you were fortunate enough to be employed by a large company for a long period of time maybe you do know 500 people. Maybe you moved around and held various positions in a number of locations and you know 750. Let’s say that you are a natural “networker” as well and you know 1,000 people. Wow! That would be pretty amazing. When a challenge confronts you or when you need to bounce around some ideas around you have this incredible internal network to leverage. Lucky for you.