ShareFlow is basically a threaded comments system for your business. And it just so happens that a threaded comments system is exactly what most office communication needs. It’s also free for an entry-level account, so is priced perfectly for my budget. The best part? Each plan includes access for unlimited users, so organization size is immaterial when it comes time to picking a plan.

Registration and Initial Setup

The second-best part? It takes all of about 10 seconds to sign up, which regular WWD readers will know is a huge benefit in the opinion of this registration-weary reviewer. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll see that ShareFlow most closely resembles Facebook’s redesigned home screen, minus the interminable stream of annoying surveys.

Once you’ve been invited to partake in a “flow” (a conversation), or created one yourself, you can post comments, files, emails, events or maps to the ShareFlow stream. You can add other users to your flow by clicking the “Invite” link, at which point they’ll receive an email from which they can view the flow (and easily sign up, if they don’t yet have an account, without being redirected to another page).

Posting and Content

Users will have to keep their ShareFlow window open, or subscribe to an RSS feed for the flow in order to receive updates, since emails are only sent for invitations, and not for subsequent additions/changes made by flow contributors. At first this seemed puzzling, but when I considered that ShareFlow is meant to be an email alternative, it made much more sense. Plus, with RSS support built in, there’s absolutely no reason to ever miss any updates.

The ability to post other things, like files, emails, events and maps is a huge bonus, and Zenbe implements all of these features very well in the app. It doesn’t overwhelm you with options; it just asks for exactly the right amount of information required to complete the associated function. Clicking on “files” instantly opens a file browser window and upload dialog box, for instance, and “map” allows you to type in an address and then automatically retrieves the best-guess Google Map for whatever entry you make. This is all achieved without leaving the main dashboard window.

If you’re unable to access the ShareFlow web interface, you can also add updates via email, thanks to a unique email address created for each individual flow. When I tried this out, ShareFlow recognized and posted the emailed update to the flow almost instantaneously.

Filtering and Organization

Some nice extras are the ability to flag any post in your flow with a variety of icons, which provide great visual shortcuts for finding specific kinds of content. If you’re not crazy about a manual approach, you can also apply filters using a drop-down menu in the upper left-hand corner of the ShareFlow interface, which allows you to view only emails, pictures, movies, etc. Like every other feature in the web app’s arsenal, the filters here manage to be simple without sacrificing usefulness.

Conclusion and Pricing Options

With a free account, the only limits you’ll encounter are file storage space and the number of active flows you can have at any one time (five as of this writing). If you find the service handy, you might quickly find yourself reaching that cap. Tiered pricing plans ranging from $20 to $80 per month will get you between 25 and 200 flows, and a lot more storage, too. This is definitely one time I can see myself springing for the expense sometime down the road, so long as I can actually corral team members into switching from email to a much more conversational flow communications setup.

What’s your current team communication tool of choice?

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Photo by Flickr User Orange_Beard under Creative Commons

Josh Bernoff wrote about the modern listening problem and compares it to those speaker phones where you can’t talk and listen at the same time. On those not-full-duplex speaker phones, you are either talking or listening, but not doing both at the same time. In the social media age, we need to be both listening and talking, but many people are only doing one or the other. On Twitter and other social web sites, we talk about what we are doing and listen to other people talk, and we do it simultaneously.

Listening

I tend to automate as much of my listening as I can using various monitoring tools. These are two of my favorite ways to monitor and listen to what people are saying, and we’ve covered both of them in more depth in previous blog posts.

• TweetDeck: I have several different searches that are set up in TweetDeck, and I get real-time notifications when someone mentions my name or several of the projects that I’m involved in.
• Yahoo Pipes: More sophisticated monitoring with Yahoo Pipes looks for mentions of a list of keywords across many different social media sites, blogs, Twitter and more.

Responding

Now that you can find the conversations and have started listening, the hard part begins: finding the time to respond. Depending on the volume, this could be a small task or a huge effort. I do a pretty good job of finding and listening to feedback, but when I get busy, I sometimes find it difficult to carve out the time to respond. If I respond right away, I won’t forget to respond, but responding immediately can really disrupt my work flow. If I put the responses off and do them in batches, I am probably more productive, but I run the risk of missing opportunities or forgetting to respond. The key for me is finding the right balance to respond quickly, but without disrupting my ability to be productive and efficient in my other work.

How well do you listen and respond?

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When I talk about monitoring “dashboards,” I use the term very loosely. In some cases, I set clients up with RSS readers that have a typical dashboard look and feel for monitoring feeds, while in other cases the “dashboard” is really a monitoring section in an existing RSS reader with the feeds delivered as an OPML file.

In my experience, people who are new to RSS readers tend to do better with a reader that looks more like a dashboard than the a tree or folder structure. This is particularly true for monitoring because a dashboard lets you see more information at a glance. Netvibes and iGoogle are both good choices for new users. However, I think that the Netvibes layout tends to work slightly better for this purpose. Here’s an example of a monitoring dashboard built using Netvibes:

However, I personally use NetNewsWire for my RSS reader. I have my monitoring dashboards set up in folders that don’t in any way resemble a typical dashboard. Try out a few different readers to find the one that works best for your style and usage. The tool that you select isn’t the critical element. The real magic is in the content that you are monitoring.

I monitor three primary types of content in my dashboards: vanity mentions, competition and industry analysis.

Vanity mentions are the conversations that people are having about you, your company, your products and your employees. Keep a close eye on these mentions so you can respond quickly to questions and concerns. A proactive approach to monitoring and responding to discussions can help you avoid potential issues before they get out of hand and can show people that you are responsive to your customers. I track vanity mentions for companies that I am involved with across Twitter, blog searches, Flickr, various video sites, FriendFeed and more.

You can get interesting insights about your competition and their activities by proactively monitoring their communications and what other people say about them online. I often monitor competitors blogs, press releases, support forums, job postings and personal blogs or social media accounts of key employees, in addition to monitoring mentions of the competition on various sources.

Industry analysis should also be part of your monitoring dashboard. Monitor blogs written by thought leaders within your industry along with tracking for mentions of keywords that are important to your organization or your interests. I often use this section of the monitoring dashboard as a way to find content for blog posts. It can be a great way to see what other people are talking about in your industry and give you an opportunity to respond to, disagree with or build on interesting ideas from other people.

In addition to the dashboard technology, I use tools like Yahoo Pipes and PostRank to help me find relevant content and filter it down to the pieces that are the most important for my purposes. If you have never used Yahoo Pipes, I have several two-minute Yahoo Pipes video demos that can help you learn what you need to get started.

How do you monitor online conversations? What kind of monitoring dashboards do you use?

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