Building Widespread Trust because of Digital Reputation

Photo by Eric Ziegler

In the enterprise, reputation is traditionally built by analog interactions. Even when there are digital interactions,(email, esn, documents, papers, white papers, etc.) a large part of reputation still comes from 1:1, meetings, presentations, , etc. That means that reputation in the enterprise is not just based on a digital interaction. It also means that trust, which is based on reputation, is something that is built on both digital and analog interactions.

What I find interesting is that digital interactions can be so much more dramatically important than the analog interactions in building widespread trust. Why? The power of digital interactions in the enterprise is the reach it provides, allowing employees to build a reputation with employees they never work with and hence gain a level of trust with another employee that would have never been able to occur before that (series of ) digital interaction(s).

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1842

The Enterprise Knowledge Graph Grows from the Employee Profile

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This blog post has a little more conceptual thought that will probably require time to read David Amerland's book, Google Semantic Search (see the reference below to get an idea of what I was reading to understand the thoughts in this blog post)

The knowledge graph is a semantic search concept that is all about interpreting what is seen in the internet. The same concepts can be applied to the enterprise, and to be honest is probably a lot easier to do. If I understand how the knowledge graph works, the knowledge graph is built by manually and automatically. The automatic part is completed by the level of trust sites are given and the level of trust of information the search engines find. The knowledge graph is grown over time as it determine what is most trustworthy.

One of the many thoughts I had on the concept of the knowledge graph in the enterprise is that it can be grown systematically based on employee profiles. The links to project sites, links to primary contacts, links to topics that are related are often found in employee profiles. So Building out an enterprise profile is key to creating a social network of connections. The profile is a key piece of information that can help the knowledge graph grow - growing through the connections of topics to employees and employees to employees and then back from employees to topics.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1727

Measuring the Flow of Information in the Enterprise

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In my previous post I talked about the idea of trust enabling the flow of information in a closed system like the enterprise. Continuing these thoughts, I conjecture that if there is trust which enables the flow of information, that these two items will make the workforce of an organization more effective. Assuming each of these things are true, how can you tell that an organization is becoming more effective? One way of determining this is to poll or survey the organization to see what people are saying related to trust. Gallup has a survey that is related engagement. a similar poll/survey could be used to determine the level of trust within the organization.

There are most likely other ways to measure effectiveness of an organization. For example, if you know that the flow of information is also correlated to trust and effectiveness, you might be able to measure the flow of information to gain insights into the effectiveness of the employees in an organization. And the great thing is, that by measuring it through this measure, you can obtain a second and different perspective on the level of trust and effectiveness in the organization.

So by measuring the participation between employees, where participation is not just the one way push of information, but the interactions between employees and the amount of collaboration between employees, you can start to get a picture of how much trust there is between employees in a company and you can measure the effectiveness of the organization. Going back to the big picture, if employees trust each other, they will start listening to each other, and the work force of an organization will become more effective. And going back to Ramanathan's statements, a closed system like the enterprise needs trust to occur to enable the flow of information.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1678.

Trust in the Enterprise Enables the Flow of Information

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In David Amerland's book, Google Semantic Search, he references a research paper, Propagation of Trust and Distrust, by Ramanathan Guha. In the research paper, Ramanathan notes in his summary of results that "Typical webs of trust tend to be relatively 'sparse': virtually every user has expressed trust values for only a handful of other users." In closed environments there is a real need for wholesale participation in the system because that provides the connective matrix that helps generate trust.

Am I mistaken when I say that the enterprise is a 100% closed environment. Using Ramanathan's thoughts from his research, it is pretty easy to see that if you want information to flow in the enterprise, you have to build a level of trust within the enterprise between employees. As trust levels increase, flow of information between employees occurs at higher and higher effectiveness levels.

This concept does not just apply to Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) but it applies to the analog world and other technology systems. Obtaining 100% participation is easy when employees are in close proximity to each other but when people are spread across multiple floors, buildings and countries, obtaining 100% participation and building trust is much harder.

So if your employees need to trust people that are one floor above them or across the world, companies need to approximate close proximity. One of the best tools to use to enable improved communication through a trust network is an ESN built around virtual communities. Communities are places where people can go to share information about a topic of interest. These virtual communities can be for a topic like Java development or it could be about a project.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1680.

Trusting intranet sites to improve search results

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Authority of a site or page is crucial for determining how a page or a site will show up in search results. That is the case for the internet and that is the case for enterprise intranets.  So, how do you measure the authority of a page or site in an intranet? Can the interactions of employees on sites help determine the authority of a site? How much does trust play in the role of authority? If the employees trust the page, should that have an impact on the authority rank of the site? Can you measure how much employees trust a site?

My opinion? Yep.  

And in many cases there are ways to systematically determine the authority of the site because of the actions of the employees on the site. One way of determining if a site is trust worthy is to measure the frequency of employees viewing a site. As enterprises embrace social though, there is the huge potential on how improving intranet search results.

David Amerland's book, Google Semantic Search, talks specifically about the internet and the influence of social on search results. Specifically, he states that based on individual interactions (social included) the search results are influenced. The ideas discussed in David's book easily translate to an enterprise intranet that has an Enterprise Social Network (ESN). David's list of influencers include:

• Commenting in a blog post on the website
• Responding to comments on a blog post on the website
• Commenting about a website in social network
• Responding to comments about a website in social networks 
• Resharing the content of websites and adding a comment to the reshare
• Resharing the content of websites without adding any comment
• Following websites that have a presence on a social network
• “Liking” or “+ 1-ing” the content of websites
• Interacting with the social network posts of websites

Why is this list so important? Because the list provides a way for people to show that they trust the content. And if they show they trust the content, than the there is a higher chance that the page or site should have an increased authority.  And if the content has a higher authority rank, then it should show up higher on the search results.  Without this type of interaction, enterprise search will continue to fall short.  

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1560.

Trust and Authority of Intranet Sites to Improve Search

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My trek reading through Google Semantic Search book continues with some insights into trust and authority of pages and sites. I continue to see search engine optimization similarities between what happens in the internet and what should be happening in the enterprise. For instance, in this note, the idea of a page or site being authoritative can be applied directly to helping employees find content in sites that are created in a company intranet.  

Inside the enterprise, often there are many different types  of "sites". These sites range from sites or pages for policies, sites where projects occur, reference material sites, self help sites, business procedures sites and community sites. And for each of these sites, the level of authority of trust associated with each site varies. In addition, these trust scores vary based on the subject or topic of the site.

For example the policy pages/sites should have a high trust/authority score, since they are basically the rules the company and employees need to follow.  A site for a project should have a much lower trust or authority score. Project sites typically are working on future state ideas, and do not represent the current state.  Just imagine what could happen if an employee were to read and use content on a project site to answer an customers question.

Similarly, sites that are for communities of practice should have a higher trust / authority score for the subjects they are centered around. The Java community site should have a high trust / authority score on the Java topic. The customer support community should have a high trust / authority score on customer support. etc.

By improving the authority of specific sites, especially around subjects, the findability and discoverability of sites increases, making every employee's life in the enterprise that much better and makes each of them more effective.

This note was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Speed of Trust - The impact of Enterprise Social Networks

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Information in the internet flows along the path of trust.  Do I trust the person that shared that piece of information with me?  Yes? Than I trust the information they shared with me. And the interesting thing is, the internet is not even necessary, but the internet provides extra "grease" to make that flow of information happen faster.  

Similarly, information flows in the enterprise along the path of trust. This is true when there is technology involved (e.g. Enterprise Social Networks(ESN)) and when technology is not involved (the water cooler, break room, etc.). And just like in the internet, technology like an ESN provides the "grease" to allow the information to flow even faster. 

Why is this possible? Because the technology increases the reach of one message from a small group of people to a large group of people. And within the enterprise, trust of another employee is high that people will naturally trust what others say, even if they shouldn't.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search.

Engaging employees by empowering them through authority

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Still on the SEO spin.

This time around though, SEO techniques (new and old) have the potential to have positive impact on employee effectiveness.

By promoting individuals to build their authority (author rank) related to a company product or topic or even just the company itself is brilliant. Why? If author rank (even the defunct version) is built based on the social aspects of the individual, allowing them to post ideas, thoughts, etc. is a way of empowering the employee.  And by empowering the employee, leads to a more engaged employee which leads to a more effective employee.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1471

The Personal Touch of an Individual

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As I read through different books, each books gets me thinking and the note I create might not make perfect sense.  And sometimes when I review my notes, a note causes multiple thoughts to occur that are really not related. Yesterday's and today's post are both the outcome of the same note from the same location in David's book.

Enterprises are often very quick to use organizational or departmental names when posting an article or piece of content, instead of posting the content with an individual's name. While this is viable and there can be argued some great reasons to do this, there are definitely reasons to minimize the approach of using the non-descript, non-personal organizational name.

Using an individual's name and associating it with the content provides that personal touch that an organization name or identity does not. And if you do it correctly, the arguments for using an organizational name becomes less of an issue (not going into the details on that subject here). As a company creates content and applies a person's name to the content, the person becomes a voice of the department or organization, and the individual becomes the voice and authority on the subject or topic.  In addition, the employees will embrace and interact with the content more often because they feel a person is talking to them, versus some non-descript organization.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1457

Multiple Authors, Authority and SEO

Photo by Sarah Ziegler

As I read through different books, each books gets me thinking and the note I create might not make perfect sense.  And sometimes when I review my notes, a note causes multiple thoughts to occur that are really not related.Today's and tomorrow's posts are both the outcome of the same note from the same location in David's book.

One of the issues with authorship occurs when more than one person is responsible for the blog post, document, wiki page. This is especially exposed when the last person that modified the document appears as the author of the document or content. Thankfully in the enterprise, there is a solution already in place to help resolve this issue (at least in most instances). Most internal collaboration and intranet systems include a mechanism identify each of the authors via history and versioning. Based on this history, the content can be attributed to each of the authors.

Enterprise search systems can use this extra meta data to increase authorship rank, trust and authority of that person on the subject while also influencing the page rank of other content from the same author on the same subject.

This comment was inspired by +David Amerland 's book, Google Semantic Search - Amazon location 1457