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You have hundreds of friends on Facebook, are re-tweeted daily, and are the “Mayor” of your local coffee shop. You’ve mastered social networking in your personal life, but what about at work?

The success of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, has shown companies that enterprise-wide collaboration can be a pivotal growth driver. Instead of using email, employees have discovered that profiles, status updates, real-time feeds, filters and groups offer a better way to consume, share, and manage information.

I recently wrote a guest post for The Next Web’s Social Media blog about the best practices for implementing enterprise social networks. Here are 5 tips to help guide you to success:
  1. Ensure executive buy-in and enlist champions. Whether the decision to deploy this technology comes from the top or is driven by employee demand, it takes commitment from leadership to get everyone participating.
  2. Spell out etiquette. Develop guidelines for employees, such as keeping profile pictures professional and updates focused on work.
  3. Make it available to every employee, everywhere. Conversations and productivity will increase when everyone has access from any device, anywhere.
  4. Be selective. Be selective with who and what you follow at work. Focus on the information that will help you do your job better.
  5. Set goals from the start. The overarching benefit of workforce collaboration is to improve productivity, so determine how you will map this value to business objectives.
Enterprise social networking can revolutionize the way we work. For more guidance around these tips, check out the full post, “Best Practices for Enterprise Social Networking”, on The Next Web.

Kraig Swensrud is the SVP of Product Marketing for Salesforce.com and a proud UC Berkeley alum. Go Bears!