Top Three Weekend Reads: AuthorRank, Documentum's Past, Social Media and Crisis

Have you started managing your Author Authority yet? Read our top articles of the week to find out why you should start today.

Top Picks

1. In this, his first article for CMSWire, Tommy Landry called attention to something that anyone who is concerned with SEO (and that means all of us, no?) can ignore: Google's AuthorRank: The Future of SEO and Content Marketing: Author Authority 

Google has been talking about Author Authority as a potential ranking factor for close to seven years. With that many years to figure it out and Google+ now in their corner, Google is likely mere months away from pushing it live.

The sooner you start establishing yourself as an author, the better. Anyone can join Google’s Authorship Program, including your competitors. With awareness of this still fairly low, you have a chance to get involved first. Go forth and get a head start on it." Read more.

2. Virginia Backaitis gave us the inside scoop on all things EMC IIG and Documentum this week, and kicked off her Vienna Momentum 2012 coverage with this look back at Documentum's roots: A Look at Documentum's Early Days; Will EMC Disrupt Content Management Industry Again? #MMTM12 

EMC’s Information Intelligence Group (IIG) (formerly known as Documentum) promises to make “the largest product launch in IIG’s History” at its Momentum Europe Conference on Tuesday. Content Management enthusiasts, CM industry analysts, and the Documentum Community at large, are all waiting, eyes and ears open, to see and hear what it (they) will be. Read more.

3. Contributor Rich Blank took a step back from the traditional methods of establishing ROI to see the return that social media offered during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in his article ROI of Social in a Crisis: 

As someone born and raised in NJ with a wife from Long Island, we have many friends and family in the affected areas hit by Hurricane Sandy. I’d like to share a few real life examples on how social technologycan be used in a crisis to connect with people, share knowledge, crowd source problems and provide feedback." Read more. 

Best of the Rest

• Collaboration and Communications on the Intranet from Rebecca Rodgers (@rebeccarodgers)
• Marketing Automation: From Lead Generation to Sales Management from Steve Youngblood (@salestrakr)
• The Hybrid Cloud Helps Companies Confront Rich Enterprise Content from Dan Carmel
• Six Ways to Improve the Content Contributor Experience in SharePoint from Rob Wagner (@millersys_rob)
• How Adaptive Case Management Can Help in the Battle for Same Day Delivery from Deb Miller (@debsg360)
• Software Pricing Has Changed - But Not All Vendors Know It Just Yet from Tom Petrocelli (@tompetrocelli)
• Customer Experience: Hi-Tech Hi-Touch Society from Gerry McGovern (@gerrymcgovern)
• Social Media is Not an Island: 5 Ways to Move From Awareness to Conversion from Mark Simpson (@markj_simpson)
• Improve Employee Engagement to Maintain Loyal Customers from Frank Palermo
• Maintain Loyal Customers by Improving End-User Engagement from Frank Palermo
• 4 Personalization Techniques for Improving Average Order Values and Conversions from Dan Darnell
• Five Tips for Successful Multi-Channel Conversion from Lee Duddell (@whatusersdo)

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint: Empowering Your User Base

In previous articles, we have covered the different solutions that can be built using SharePoint. But even the best of features are no good if they aren’t being fully utilized by the organization. 

As I spend time talking to various organizations I continually come back to a few clear points that seem to cause issues with adoption in the organization. Most of these issues are associated with how SharePoint has been implemented and really have very little to do with the actually toolset itself.

In this article we are going to cover one of the key issues that I have seen over and over again and then discuss some various techniques and methods that you can implement to avoid it within your organization. 

Empowering Your User Base

One of the best features of SharePoint is that with the right expectations, training and guidance your internal Information Workers can be empowered to build solutions without having to work with IT or have IT build it for them. There are endless possibilities for the potential solutions that can be implemented.

Using the tools available within SharePoint, within your organization you can build different types of composite solutions, including things like:

• Help Desk Ticket Tracking
• Training Registration
• Blogging
• Project Management

The best part of these solutions is that they access a collection of toolsets that are already familiar to your end users. A great example of this is when you are able to combine content from Visio, Excel and SharePoint and build it together in a single dashboard type solution. Since the users are already working with familiar toolsets they are able to quickly and easily build solutions.

Where Training Comes In

The key to really being able to take advantage of these things, however, is having a good game plan in place. Being able to look at where you are, where you want to go and then building a plan that helps you get there. One of the most important pieces to this plan is the training and guidance that you will provide to your users.

Will you offer a quick training course and send them on their way? Will you teach them how to translate business needs into technical solutions? Will you teach them all about the different options they have or just offer small classes focused on their specific needs?

The best part about all of this, is that any option is a good option. Your training plan should be as unique as your organization! You should be able to build a solution that is perfect for just what you need. The key to really doing that is to first get a high level understanding of all that you can do within SharePoint and then review where you are going as an organization and build a path that will get you there.

Getting up to speed on the product can be quite the task, but here is a resource to help you understand what can be done with SharePoint:

• Thoughts for a Newbie

Once you are up to speed on all the product has to offer, then it’s time for you to start mapping out your own internal training plan. Here are some quick ideas on different things you could try. Remember though, it should be customized based on your organization’s needs:

• Internal User Group: Have a regular meeting where you cover various training topics. The meeting would be open to all Site Admins and you could use it as a time to show off internal wins.
• Required Classroom Training: Require that site admins attend classroom training. This can be training you develop or training that you work with a partner to access.
• Open Office Hours: Develop a collection of open hours that you make experts available to answer questions from your users or site admins.
• Create Solution Design Workshops: Develop a set workshops that can be conducted with users to help them identify ways to accurately gather requirements and how to map them out to functionality within SharePoint.

Remember, no matter how you choose to approach it, the most important thing is that you account for training and plan for it! The only bad plan is no plan!
 

Editor's Note: Jennifer writes frequently about SharePoint. To read more:

— Customizing SharePoint: Start with the Solution or the Business Problem?

About the Author

Jennifer Mason is a SharePoint Server MVP that has spent the last several years providing consulting services around SharePoint Technologies. She is currently working with the team at SharePoint911. Her focus has been on strategy, planning, governance and best practices for implementing business solutions using SharePoint Technologies. She is the author of “Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real World Projects,” a resource for no-code solutions for SharePoint.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint and Yammer May Eventually Make a Good Pair; Too Bad Google is Going For a Straight Flush

About this time last year many of my articles focused on the weak competitive position of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendors. The rapidly shifting marketplace was predicted to force some to evolve and some to die through the introduction of strong products of cloud based offerings of Jive, Drupal, Salesforce, Google+ and eventually Facebook. When the cards fell, this introduction would eventually raise the stakes of the employee-experience/intranet space to spur a reinvention of the intranet from the ground up.

Since then…

Since the Prediction…

Drupal has developed more momentum around predictable cost models without proprietary license fees. A mix of professional services and PaaS offerings from the newly formed Wunderkraut and Drupal Gardens/Acquia combined with a strong pipeline of development staff make a good pair and an Ace kicker.

Salesforce has significantly increased its mobile capabilities this year. Combined with a strong marketing foothold into sales and IT and a high level of brand awareness, Salesforce looks very well positioned with an above average three of kind and is showing signs of going all-in as it tries to be the prime driver for the most relevant player in defining the future of cloud services for businesses.

Microsoft recently released SharePoint 2013 and is in the process of integrating its not-too surprising acquisition of Yammer.  Microsoft is busy preparing its long term strategic offering roadmap that integrates the social, search, messaging and collaboration offerings from Yammer, Bing, Outlook.com and its crown jewels SharePoint and Office. Microsoft's oft cited atomistic approach through agglomeration will help them go forward with a flush. One of the most interesting messages out of Microsoft is its recent positioning from the SharePoint team. The articulation that SharePoint 2013 has been designed to not need customizations to its interface is a ridiculously clever product strategy message. From a product differentiation perspective what this means is:

• Microsoft has decided that the PaaS/SaaS model is not only acceptable, it is desirable.
• The argument that SharePoint is highly difficult to customize visually and behaviorally is moot.
• Microsoft believes there is limited to no value in marketing its product as "fully configurable".

It remains to be seen if Microsoft has created an experience that can transcend individual corporate nuances. What is clear, is that Microsoft believes that there are other competitors who have potentially bigger hands than they are holding.

In late 2011 Jive made the ultimate statement in the confidence of their hand and went public. JiveWorld12 is rapidly approaching and we will begin to see how they frame their value proposition and advance their product set.

Facebook seems to be holding pat with a full-house combining its elite social network status with what has been a demographic defying and highly successful drive for consumer adoption. While the house may be full, the cards are not that valuable (let's say 7s over queens), at least not to stockholders given their recent stumblings. 

Google's Bold Play

Google has upped the ante and the stakes significantly with its opening up the Google+ product to enterprises. Google now has rounded out a serious suite of enterprise products and can continue to leverage its ace of spades in the hole. No matter how many research engagements for intranet users I lead, see or participate in, the number one request is to "make search work like Google". A powerful and simple search engine would magnify and capitalize on the over-reliance on governance that has encumbered every other product. Whether Google can capitalize on this within a closed intranet environment is unclear, but given that the experience searching in Outlook is both slower and more painful than Gmail, I'm not going to be the one who expresses doubt in their cards.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com