Intranet, company collaboration, backchannel, whatever you call it, your team needs to communicate behind the scenes.  

One tool we use daily at Social Strata is our own Hoop.la platform.

Here are some tips and ideas for using Hoop.la as an intranet:

Make it a Private Community - First item on the checklist is to ensure your community is set to private. If you want to further restrict access, you can even go to Member Settings and "whitelist" a specific IP address range or email addresses.

Authorized Bloggers - Add anyone who will be authorized to blog to the "authorized bloggers" permission circle.  You could have each department contribute a blog post on a regular basis.  If you have a central editor, you can moderate blog posts and review them before they go live.

Room to Discuss - Set up forums for collaboration, making sure each internal group has a space. Get great ideas from within your team; you already ask your customers what they want...include your internal staff in ideation as well. You might also want to set up a free-form "watercooler" forum as well, for off-topic discussions.

Photos and Videos - Add some life to the intranet by allowing employees to add photos or videos to the clips area.  Maybe create a clip set for historic pictures, or videos from company events.

Support Training - Upload and share training or tutorial videos, and allow employees to comment on them.

HR Documentation - How about offering an "ask the HR department" forum where employees can ask about benefits or download policy documentation?  Answer the question once for everyone.  Use the file upload to post HR documents or forms to be completed.

Polls - Would you like some input from your staff?  Post a poll and ask them what they're thinking. Watch collaboration skyrocket.

Chat events - Do you have employees in different locations? Use a chat event to have a real-time discussion.  Transcripts are automatically generated for the record.

Make Sure it's Integrated - Integrate your intranet community with other platforms you're using internally, to remove any barriers to participation. Use a single login (with SSO), brand the look and feel, and consider bringing in data or portions of other platforms into the community.

That's just the tip of the iceberg!  Do you have a corporate intranet community yet?  What are you doing to enhance the sense of community among your employees?