Introduction

Unless you’ve been living in a black hole for the past five years, you can’t help but have noticed the rise of Social Media and, if you’re in the SharePoint world, the inclusion of social features in SharePoint 2010. This article will put forward some simple steps that you can follow to make sure you’re getting the most out of this new feature set.

Before looking at the SharePoint features in detail, it’s worth digging a little deeper into what is meant by social media at this point. We can all reel off Facebook and Twitter as great examples, but what is the underlying definition of social media? Wikipedia, as usual, has a nicely detailed explanation of which I believe the key elements are

• Web-based technology
• User-generated content
• Value

Social Features in SharePoint 2010

Many resources detail the new functionality available in SharePoint 2010 (such as the official Microsoft SharePoint site), and for this article I don’t propose to walk-through the details of how they work. I will state, however, that I am looking specifically at the ability to add both tags and notes and also ratings. Supporting functionality such as the activity feed, blogging, and wikis-everywhere concept are outside the scope of my article.

Focusing on tags, notes, and ratings then, here are the steps that I believe can help you establish your strategy on successfully implementing social media within your SharePoint 2010 environment.

1. Less Is More

As I stated earlier, one of the key elements of social media is ensuring the interaction of a broad set of users. As such, it’s imperative to find the right balance between providing enough opportunities for social feedback and finding too many opportunities.

To illustrate, enabling rating as the only feature for users to interact with may limit the number of participants. Yet enabling rating, tagging, and notes could mean that the common consensus is diluted through too many channels.

It is a fine balancing act, and there is no one answer for organizations; however, I believe there are some generic principles that can be applied:

• Pitch the available options at the Joe Blogs user, not the IT department. Remember that for some people this may be their first introduction into social media.
• Allow for flexibility; that is, don’t feel that a consistent usage must apply across the whole solution. Given how well the features are integrated into the out-of-the-box experience, any impact on usability from this inconsistency will be minimal if at all.
• Keep the terminology simple; in other words, don’t talk about managed metadata, taxonomies, and folksonomies. Talk about tags.
• Consider limiting promotion of the options to one area at a time, even if they are available elsewhere or globally. For example, promote the option for users to now tag news articles.
• Define your end goal into tangible objectives. For example, 80% of users have added notes, 20% of users add notes weekly, and so on.
• Have a road map of where you want see social media fitting in with your solution in three, six, and twelve months and beyond.

2. Surface Those Ratings

Ratings are a feature that can be enabled at a library or list level, allowing users to give documents or items a specific rating. The ratings are then compiled at regular intervals, and the average rating is displayed to users. This can be of immense value for capturing feedback, and it can be applied to many, or even all, types of content.

It can be argued that rating functionality is traditionally more suitable for formal or structured content, such as articles; however, as user familiarity grows with the concept, then I see it becoming more commonplace for less structured content.

Given the potential value associated with ratings, I see it as hugely important that users of sites are made aware of the ratings that have been submitted to date and the current average. To do so, use list views and the out-of-the-box list view web part to show the ratings on items.

For example, creating a Top Rated Items web part is a simple step but enables both regular visitors and new users to see what the consensus is as to the most useful content at a glance, without having to navigate to a specific list or library.

3. Leave a Note

Adding notes to items is another of the newly added social features to SharePoint 2010. Notes are added via the  Tags & Notes button on the ribbon, and I believe they are a really useful way to add commentary on an item, despite a few potential hurdles.

Difficulty may arise (and I’ve had discussions with various people about whether this could even negate the value in adding notes at all!) in surfacing previously added notes to users. As an example, if David left a note on a document, the only way Jane would be able to see that note is if she were to make a conscious decision to view the tags and notes for the document. Worse, there would be no visual feedback when browsing a library that the document in question had a note added at all.

Is this overcome by the activity feed? Well, although notes that have been added do appear in the activity feed, they appear only for named colleagues and are very much ‘‘of the moment’’ and so perhaps are not the appropriate delivery channel for the commentary type content in the previous example.

Putting aside the previous example for the time being, I still believe it is possible to use notes without being concerned about how to surface them. Key to this use is to embrace the use of them as disposable messages… which may arguably be their intended purpose?

Returning to our previous example, David may add a note saying “just updated the proposal document with input from Jane.” Adding this note to the document itself would not overcome the previously discussed difficulties; however, adding this note to a wall on the home page of a team or project can work well.

This wall-type functionality can be created by adding the out-of-the-box Note Board web part to a page, which is in effect adding and displaying notes for the current page.

This simple use of notes is, in my opinion, an effective form of communication between members of a collaboration area such as a project site, who can be assumed to regularly visit the home page of a given site. When combined with the activity feed, which provides a different entry point into reading these notes, I see it as a great addition to any collaboration space.

4. Manage Your Metadata

Having looked at notes and ratings, it is now time to turn our attention to tags. Tags are added to documents and items similarly to how a note is added, via the Tags & Notes button on the ribbon. Perhaps even more than either notes or ratings, I see tags as truly adding value when they are used on a mass scale.

Diligent users may choose to categorize content through the use of tags and then, through the tag cloud in their My Sites, use them as a personal navigation aid. The value added here is limited to the one user and could be compared in function to bookmarks in a web browser, for example.

Once multiple users begin categorizing content, however, it raises the function of tags above simply an individual’s navigation aid to a solution-wide navigation tool and, more importantly, allows for the discovery of previously unseen content.

To assist with this ultimate goal, it is important to give the users a helping hand when it comes to tagging their content. First, it is important to identify areas either that you think will be a particular target for tagging or that you would wish to be. Once identified, create either an open or closed term set with predetermined tags that users can choose from.

In addition to creating tags before letting your users loose on the solution, it’s vital to keep an eye on the tags that users are adding. This may result, or in fact is likely to result, in completely unexpected tags. Use the managed metadata service tool to monitor the tags added at regular intervals, and where possible, start to identify synonyms and correct spelling, and so on.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Get It Wrong

My final piece of advice is one that should really transcend a subset of functionality such as social media and apply globally to any solution. Given the relatively recent introduction of the features, it is important to remember that it is probable you will not get it right first time. In fact, there is unlikely to ever be a right answer. There is, however, a right direction to head in, that is, increased user adoption and greater value.

If you take it as a given that opportunities will be missed and mistakes will be made, then it will immediately open up the solution horizon as to what can be attempted and reduce (a more traditional stance) what cannot be attempted.

For example, you may choose to disregard my first piece of advice of less is more and present every available option for social media interaction to the user from the outset. This may work well for you, but if it does not, have no fear. Yes, it is possible that some users may have had a negative experience and therefore be slower on the take-up of future elements of your solution, but it is also possible that you will benefit from some unexpected usage or request from the user base that will further enhance your solution.

Conclusion

I think it’s important to grasp the fact that our users are growing rapidly familiar with, in fact expectant of, the fast rate of change when it comes to technology and its usage.  We must take on aboard this increase level of maturity from the user and work with it.

It is up to us as solution implementers, site administrators, or even power users to free ourselves from the historical practice of get it right first time or don’t put it in front of the users if it’s not 100% right. A lot of the drivers behind these statements are valid, but our users are now much more mature when it comes to how they interact with technology, and the technology itself has evolved in accordance with this level of maturity.

I strongly urge that the social media features of SharePoint 2010 are embraced as part of any solution you get the privilege to work with or on. By recognizing that SharePoint gives us a raft of fantastic functionality out of the box and not thinking that our first step must be to customize this functionality but rather simply to put it into practice, our solutions will become much richer and our users will become much happier.