Great article from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2008/07/17/social-media-for-business/
It provides some examples of "social media" for the business. I've summarized them below. Please feel free to add what you've done.
Introducing new employees via internal blog or rich profile (At Jive we encourage new employees to create an introduction blog post a week after they start)
Employee Newsletters
Training
Learning 2.0 (employees uploading short videos or podcasts to help colleagues learn something)
Sharing of recruiting "Best Practices" across global team
Sales collateral - via wiki, or central file store with comments
Lead generation - by creating a presence on LinkedIn or Facebook
management communications
PR - external corporate blog
Interactive newsroom
Better Customer Engagement
Competitive Intelligence Library (both published & "heard on the street")
Thought Leadership - like Clearstep ![]()
Customer Support
Product Prototypes - collaborate in real time with 3D models in virutal worlds
Innovation - internal or external platform for ideation.
SME "email relief" - create a space that holds pages, discussion forums, blog posts and more to communicate expertise proactively, and to answer questions
Requirements/Capabilities
Functional Design Documents
Hi Barry - hope I get to work with you in Atlanta or Austin. Anyhow, I wanted to point you to this post which talks about the incredible success that Clearspace has has helped me unleash within FG SQUARED
http://www.fg2.com/clearspace/blogs/squared_root/2008/09/17/are-you-in-the-zone
I'd add Enterprise Architecture (or Central DevTech) cases to this list. From my own experience:
1. Shared code initiatives across a large pool of developers working on different projects, using an internal wiki to collect requirements and then post reusable software libraries for other development groups to use (once they pass though a central fitness review by a board of architects for performance, security, testability, etc.).
2. Technology Policies: using an internal wiki to collect the expertise around technology policy and governance questions -- like figuring out when will be ready to upgrade an IT infrastructure item to the next version. A wiki collects the issues by the many stakeholders to create a plan that works for everyone.
3. Technology How-Tos: using a topical discussion forum to allow developers to ask and answer questions about development issues, installation procedures, and best practices.
Plenty more like these -- all have the underlying features that:
1. You don't mind if the information is shared and that people you don't know might see it. It's not private to your work team.
2. Adding multiple perspectives make the content better suited for more people.
3. The information is not static or definitive by nature, rather it changes over time.
4. The information is intended to be consumed by people in different groups anyway.