Anthony Bradley

If you are reading this then you know that Gartner has launched a new analyst blogger network. Gartner has research related blogs and has for a long time. These blogs are mostly around topics and events. What’s new about this is it is a network of individual analyst blogs. These are real blogs. Analysts can voice their individual opinions without peer review and the editing process. The posts are not official Gartner vetted positions but the ideas, musings, ponderings, insights, etc. of the individual analysts.

Although analyst bloggin may seem like a “no brainer” to some, getting to this point was not trivial. And it should not have been. Gartner, like most organizations, has very legitimate reasons for caution. Gartner is a content organization with significant concerns over protecting intellectual capital, integrity of the research process, guarding content quality, building brand recognition, growing revenue, etc. We learned a great deal on this journey to the analyst blogging network. Not surprisingly, our clients are asking me (since I am one of our analysts covering social software) about the experience. We actually ate our own dog food, so to speak. Here are a few of the things we did and some related research (this research is only available to Gartner clients).

We formed a multi-discipline task force including research, IT, marketing, PR and the ombudsman to address concerns and challenges. See “Five Major Challenges Organizations Face Regarding Social Software” and “Social Interaction Is Important to Many, but Few Realize How IT Can Help.”

We defined a clear purpose with expected analyst behaviors and few key and measurable goals. See “Seven Key Characteristics of a Good Purpose for Social Software” and “The Business Impact of Social Computing on Company Governance.”

We built a case, a strategy, and an execution plan which we “sold” to leadership. See “Case Study: Dow’s Formula for Social Software” and “How to Justify Knowledge Management and Collaboration Projects.”

We researched and carefully defined a set of guidelines that apply to all Web participation as well as blogs. See “Why Your Enterprise Needs a Corporate Blogging Policy” and “Establishing Policies for Social Application Participation.”

We built a community for sharing experiences and enhancing our blogging acumen. See “Seven Ways to Succeed With Wikis and Social Software”

To succeed with many social application efforts you need to be an Indiana Jones who can jump into a situation and deal with what comes at you. I is an adventure. Truly valuable efforts always are. Look out Indie, here we go!

I would love to get your ideas on this Gartner pursuit and any experiences you have had in identifying obstacles and in moving social applications forward in your organization.

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Category: social applications     Tags: blogging, Lessons Learned, social applications

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