Our SWOOP Personas are having a much bigger impact than I expected. For a quick summary of the five personas see our previous posts: Observer, Broadcaster, Responder, Catalyst and Engager. In summary, these personas provide you with insights into your online behaviour on your enterprise social network.

I recently spoke to a community manager about this, and he told me this wonderful story about the impact the personas have had in his organisation. One of his colleagues, a senior manager, had been receiving help from a communications specialist to write updates on the Enterprise Social Network.

However, when the community manager showed the senior manager how little she had used the 'Like' feature, she realised two important things. Firstly, she was missing out on the positive recognition a 'Like' can provide the recipient, especially in her role as a senior manager. Secondly, she realised that she couldn't outsource posting, replying and liking to her communication specialist. Interacting on an enterprise social network is a deeply personal thing, and as ex-CEO of Telstra David Thodey told us in a recent interview, he found the most important thing in generating transformational chance was to have authentic conversations with staff. The senior manager now does her own posting, replying and liking, and for me this really shows that:

Seeing how you work, changes how you work.

In CUA, an Australian bank piloting SWOOP to drive adoption of their Enterprise Social Network, they also saw the power of these simple personas in creating a common language so you can think about what you do, and what collaborative profile would be most effective for you. For instance, a communications specialist might operate best as a Broadcaster and a technical expert as a Responder. We generally consider the Engager to be the persona that all people managers would want to be, but a lot of the real value lies in reflecting over what you are, and what you ideally should be.

What is your SWOOP Persona?

By now you might be wondering what your own persona is. Answer the following questions to get started. Please note that your persona is not dependent on volume of your online activities, but the relative spread of what you do (post/reply/like) and what you get back.

Now, review your answers and determine which persona you think you are referring to the image at the top of this article. Is that what you’d like to be?

If you are with an organisation that has SWOOP running, then you should jump in and have a look at if your self-perception mirror reality. I've always thought of myself as an Engager, and must admit to you that I was pretty guttered when I saw that I was a Broadcaster on our network. My knee-jerk reaction was "Why aren't you responding or liking the stuff I post!", but my wonderful co-founder Laurie Lock Lee calmly said "Well – maybe you need to think about what you're posting.". I, of all people, should know this. I mean, we actually created the SWOOP persons to provoke this exact conversation, but it still hit me pretty hard as it was suddenly about what I was doing and not about what other people weren't doing. It got very personal. I started to reflect over the posts, and replies that I had been making, and thinking about ways to make it more engaging. I tried to ask for more feedback by @ mentioning people, and also started to think more about what actually generates value for others rather than just focusing on things I think they need to know.

By seeing how I worked, I managed to change how I work. For the time being I am an Engager, but I know I've got to keep an eye on my persona to ensure that my changed behavior is locked in. This is not set and forget just yet!

Not on SWOOP yet? Try our 2 week free trial to check it out and get your SWOOP persona.