Benefits of using Social Squared Forums for SharePoint
Create a Community at Work
If people feel they belong within an organization they will do their upmost to help it grow and achieve its goals. By providing a discussion tool you can help foster communities of interest and help people feel that their opinion matters.
Social Squared helps build a community on a SharePoint site by providing a tool that people are familiar with using from their general Internet usage. There is no learning curve, they can get started in the community straight away.
Increase SharePoint Adoption
By providing a discussion forum that has a user interface which people are familiar with they will be coming back to the SharePoint site on a regular basis to get involved in topics and posts. With this increase in visits to SharePoint users will get familiar with the SharePoint UI and start to explore other areas such as document libraries, wikis and blogs.
By alerting users to new topics and posts they will be interested in, Social Squared gets people back to your SharePoint site and involved in conversations.
Encourage communication and collaboration
It is difficult within a large organization to know exactly who should be involved in the decision making for certain tasks. Often people get invited to meetings just in case, rather than because they have an interest or can add value. By encouraging discussions to take place in an open environment people can get involved in the matters that are important to them rather than the ones they feel compelled to.
Social Squared helps encourage communication by the usage of email alerts and RSS feeds. Users can reply directly to email alerts and Social Squared can add those replies to the correct topics - allowing participation to take place from within Outlook, or on your iPhone or BlackBerry.
Reduce email overload
Inboxes are silos of knowledge and information that are locked away, and even deleted when people leave a company. By getting people posting in forums the information is being shared amongst everyone rather than locked away. It can be searched from within SharePoint and referred to by others on a later date.
Social Squared can assist with this with 'Reply via Email' functionality. Users can post to the forums from within the comfort of Outlook, but as the posts are going on a forum the information is stored and shared on a platform where it can return value over many years.
Get new ideas and honest feedback
In tough economic times it is employee innovation that can help sustain a company and help it grow to the next level. It is important to provide a platform for ideas to be suggested and discussed in a place where people feel comfortable.
Social Squared can assist with the honest feedback process that companies need to implement. You can turn on settings to allow anonymous feedback to be left in the forums.