I’ve been spending last few days at JiveWorld 2009 in San Francisco, and wanted to share some of the recurring themes that have been emerging throughout the conference (Full Disclosure: FG SQUARED is a Jive partner).  Although much of the conference addresses Jive SBS features and case studies, I’ve been pretty impressed with the number of real insights being shared by presenters and panelists.  Here’s what stood out to me:

Online communities let employees bring their ‘whole selves’ to work.

Typical corporate culture, especially in larger enterprises, doesn’t encourage employees to ‘be themselves’.  People often feel like they need to conform to the corporate culture for obvious reasons, and are frequently unwilling to step outside the lines of conventional thinking and doing.  But the unique dynamics of online interactions can help reduce social anxiety and allow one to be more authentic.  Remember the age old saying, “no risk, no reward”?  Well, if people feel more comfortable in their ‘corporate skin’, they are more likely to take chances that can lead to otherwise unrealized innovations or ideas.  This is one way to tap underutilized social capital.  Note to executives:  if you want to take advantage of this, you MUST create and abide by policies and procedures that support authentic behavior.  People will not open up if they fear retribution for being different or outspoken.

Pilot projects are the key to developing a successful online community

Creating a pilot project is nothing new where innovation is concerned, but it’s especially important with regards to communities and social media.  In many respects, social business applications are perpetual pilots because they evolve so quickly.  Ever wonder why Google’s products seem to spend an eternity in beta?  

Here’s a little hint:   if you want to launch an online community, try positioning it as a pilot.  If it’s successful, you won’t even have to sell the next phase because the community will already be up and running.  And if it’s not, well…it was just a pilot, right?

The future is integration

If you look at the new Jive SBS 4.0, you’ll notice that many of the features center on the idea of integration.  Online communities, like most social business applications, seldom reach full potential in isolation.  They need to interoperate with other social networks and tools that users have adopted as part of their digital ecosystem.   In the case of Jive, they’ve focused on items such as Microsoft office and Sharepoint integration, social network integration (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube,  etc), and mobile device integration.  Good call, guys.

The future is mobile

174 million people will be using mobile devices to access social networks by 2011.  Just for perspective, that’s roughly the equivalent of half the population of the United States.  So if you are doing something with online communities, it would be wise to start thinking about your mobile strategy.  Jive rolled out new mobile functionality, including some nifty iPhone and Blackberry options.

According to one of the presenters, the first generation of mobile Jive is focused more on internal communities.  I thought this was interesting because it mirrors what I believe to be a best practice for companies dipping their feet into the community pool for the first time…starting internally, learning the ins and outs, and then moving to external communities once they have a feel for how it all works.

The nature of online metrics are evolving

EVERY conference that deals with social media has at least one presentation or panel dealing with measurement.  I’ve even participated as a member of such panels.  Experts consistently struggle to answer questions about ROI where social media is concerned…this is in part because every business case is so different, but it’s also because the measurement emphasis is shifting. 

Qualitative KPI’s are increasing in value, and quantitative metrics are decreasing in value.  This makes bean counters understandably uneasy, but the reality is that social media spans across functional lines.  It’s not just about generating leads and closing deals. It’s also about improving brand perceptions, feeding customer insights into the product development lifecycle, increasing customer engagement, improving company culture…the list goes on. 

That being said, if you are looking to find some hard numbers to justify your efforts, you may have better luck tying your metrics to cost reduction rather than an increase in sales.   This often comes down to correlation vs. causality.  For example: because of the complexity of certain sales, it can be prohibitively difficult and/or expensive to demonstrate that the activities of the online community directly lead to a sale.  However, it is much more feasible to show a correlation between the two by looking at trends and aggregate data. 

So there you have it…a few nuggets from Jiveworld.  Does this Jive with your experiences?!  (I couldn’t resist)