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May 31, 2005
You tag that... I'll tag this...no wait... let's tag it together
Another post about tagging. Pretty soon, I'll rename my blog "emergence tarketing". But what can you do? This stuff has big implications on the way we will share, publish and organize information and conversations - so I cannot stop thinking about it (I know...I need a life). The other reason I felt compelled to write about it again is that there have been quite a few good entries around tagging lately.
Over at Feedster, Scott Rafer brings us his latest views on tagging after a week of doing it (and comments on issues raised on Brian Del Vecchio's blog - here). He believes that anonymous tagging is going to be important and that the arguments for someone to own up to a tag in order to avoid tag spamming is overrated. His posts also touch on some of the copyright issues related to tagging (here).
Ericka Menchen (here) and Ryan King (here) debate the differences between reader-based tagging and author-based tagging. Ryan argues that reader-based tagging have a distinct advantage over author-based ones.
As I wrote before (here), people will use tagging for different purposes - some to alert others of new content (author-based tags, much like people technorati tags), some to share new found information with others or merely organizing their own information for later retrieval (reader-based tags). They both have a purpose in life and as such I am not sure whether it makes sense to add more value to one than the other. It would be nice to have a system that would cluster these tags as related (i.e. the author-based tags and the user-based tags on the same content). I am starting to be convinced that Folksonomies in general will only have real value with some form of clustering.
The issue of anonymity goes beyond accountability and tag-spamming (the act of associating inaccurate or bad tags with an entry anonymously) - it goes all the way to affecting the "credibility" of a tag. If you tag anonymously and tagging is now widely accepted (so we have "tag chaos" and we all become selective about which tags we subscribe to) - can you build credibility for that tag while being anonymous? I am not a big fan of anonymity in general, but I don't think this will work. It would be interesting to see how many people at del.icio.us subscribe to "people" tags (i.e., /plasticbag (Tom Coates), /linkorama (Ross Mayfield), etc.) rather than keyword tags (i.e., /marketing, /tools).
There will be more "tagging" related posts on this blog...not because of the hype surrounding it but because I truly believe that this is important to the way we market ourselves, build products, share stuff and get customer feedback. Just today, I had two lengthy conversations with ex friends and colleagues on tagging in the enterprise and in the new product development process.
[Technorati Tags: tag tagging folksonomies]
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neat new collaboration solutions
Robin Goode talks about a few new collaboration/conversation systems on his site (here - specifically Conversate and Quick Topic). I played a little with Conversate and I really liked it. I would add one more idea to his list of thingies that would improve the product - some form of presence indicator.
[Technorati Tags: collaboration chat]
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Blogging becomes a corporate job
According to a WSJ article today Blogging is becoming a corporate job (here - part of the free content today).
I can totally see that becoming a widespread trend. If corporate mouth pieces are to become better ways for them to participate in the ongoing market conversation, then blogs will have to become an integral part of that - if not totally replacing the existing static corporate web pages.
...which is exactly what I helped Blogbridge do. Granted for some large corporate sites something like this may never work, but I still believe that companies could do a better job at thinking through how to incorporate blogs within their corporate web sites rather than having them on the side.
[Technorati Tags: blogging corporate blog]
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May 30, 2005
David Koch missing on Grouse mountain
Shel Israel over at naked conversations (here) is relaying a message from Garry Bolles about his friend, David Koch, missing since last week on a mountain near Vancouver. They are concerned about the lack of ongoing interest in finding him and are hoping that the blogosphere might help raise awareness for the situation. Here is a news article about the story.
I happen to be very familiar with the area - good luck David!
[Technorati Tags: david koch vancouver]
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New site ready to go...
As I said before, I helped redo the BlogBridge web site - turning it into a hybrid blog/web. It is finally ready to go. Check it out and let us know what you think!
[Technorati Tags: blogbridge bloeb]
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More articles on new media technologies in mainstream media
First I ran across an article about social networking in the Boston Globe today (here) which looks at Spoke, LinkedIn, Ryze, ecademy and Tribe Networks and the benefits of online networking vs. f2f networking. It seems like the most popular usage for these sites these days is for job searching. I use it primarily to find new people to bounce off new ideas. It's an ok article...
There is a good article about Wiki's in Time Magazine (here). Talking about how Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia)gets emails from newcomers to Wikipedia, it says:
"But the e-mails that make him laugh out loud come from concerned newcomers who have just discovered they have total freedom to edit just about any Wikipedia entry at the click of a button. Oh my God, they write, you've got a major security flaw!". There are other great passages, including this one
"An Encyclopaedia Britannica editor once compared Wikipedia to a public toilet seat because you don't know who used it last."It also has some other interesting tidbits - like an MIT study that found that an obscenity gets removed in an average of 1.7min...or that it contains 500,000 English articles compared to 65,000 in the 2005 edition of Britannica.
I am still amazed about how many people have not yet heard about Wikipedia.
[Technorati Tags: wiki social networking wikipedia]
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May 29, 2005
NextBillion.net - development through enterprise
If you want to contribute (words, thoughts, ideas...not just money) to a site that seeks to eradicate poverty through profit - go to Development though Enterprise - via business week's tech beat.
Their stated mission is:
"Our goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world's poorest citizens."
[Technorati Tags: poverty]
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May 28, 2005
Marketing and PR blogs I read and would recommend
I was asked to put together a list of 5-10 marketing and PR blogs I read and would recommend as part of the BlogBridge Expert program (link may change over the weekend - I will update when it does) and realized that I am probably missing quite a bit of good ones. Here are the ones I submitted for the Expert program - which ones do you think I am missing?
- Marketing
- Brand autopsy
- MarketingVOX
- Diva Marketing
- Seth Godin’s BLOG
- Fryer's Blog in the Mountains
- BL Ochman’s whatsnextblog.com
- tompeters!
- PR
- a schel of my former self
- Corporate PR
- Flackster
- The Bach Door
- Nevon
- Micro Persuasion
- Musings from POP! Public Relations
[Technorati Tags: blog marketing pr]
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May 27, 2005
[interesting] Graphing del.icio.us
Grafolicious looks at the evolution of a del.icio.us tag (for example the history of the Flickr map here)
It's cool, but I am not sure what to do with it yet (I admit that I can be slow)...
[Technorati Tags: tag history delicious]
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Blogorrhea by a barking moonbat anti-idiotarian
You don't know what I am talking about? Look it up...(and if you do...get a life)
This is a hoot...as we were waiting for the meeting to start yesterday - someone found a blogging glossary on samizdata.net (here).
[Technorati Tags: blog glossary blogging]
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Tag-poetry and competitive tagalysis
Last night I went to my second Berkman Thursday discussion (agenda here) . This one was led by Shimon Rura and was about tagging – a topic of great interest.
After reviewing the traditional tagging suspects (technorati, del.icio.us, flickr, spurl and furl) we talked about the whys and the hows of those emerging tagging services and the differences between folksonomies and taxonomies. A good example of the folksonomies would be eBay. A good example of taxonomies could probably be found in the technical documentation department of Boeing.
Why are emerging tagging services increasingly popular (somebody quoted that del.icio.us counts 45,000 users to date)? Is it because Google does not do what we need it to do? Is it because of the “shortcomings” of DMOZ (the open directory project underlying Google)? Will tagging conventions emerge over time (one non-profit organization mentioned that they use an arcane tag for all its members to use when they tag something that might be of interest to the rest of the organization)? How can you assess the “authoritativeness” of one tag vs. another? All great questions that made for an enlightening evening conversation.
We also discussed the need for simple clustering of tags so that it becomes easier to find “related” tags. Some of that is already being implemented by the various players – del.icio.us recently started an experimental post to delicious that recommends a tag when you post something. Technorati shows you related tags – including tags coming from furl and delicious. Spurl even has a search engine based on its tagging system – zniff.
Interesting was to hear how people use tags. Some use it to share information with others (when someone tags something which they want a group of people to see – which they do by “subscribing” to that particular tag). Others use it to “store” information for later reuse (using delicious for links or furl for “perishable” content as furl saves a snapshot of the page for you instead of the link). Some use it to tell others what they are writing about (bloggers tagging their posts with technorati tags), while others use it to discover new information (by subscribing to popular tags). A real interesting scenario was that of tag-poetry. Children blog poems and are asked to tag them with tags – then they follow the links of poems that are tagged similarly.
As I have said before, I think that tagging has a tremendous potential in the enterprise – even for those companies do not have agreed upon taxonomies. Think of using tagging to share content that sparks ideas about new products with employees, customers and prospect (you ask them to tag whatever makes them think of your product or service with a special tag), or using tagging to proactively do competitive analysis. Or should we call it competitive discovery? Nah... how about competitive tagalysis?
[Technorati Tags: blogging tagging berkman]
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May 26, 2005
Readers' Choice Blog Awards
Marketingsherpa is holding an online survey on the quality marketing blogs (here). I wonder how they finalized those lists. As far as I am concerned, there are major marketing blogs which I visit every day that are missing (and I was not talking about mine
I will soon start a list of my favorite marketing and PR blogs at BlogBridge (over there - on the new site). If anyone is interested in becoming an expert there - let me know - I do have some good connections over there...
[Technorati Tags: marketing blog blogbridge]
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People addicted to email
You find yourself hitting the send/receive button every 30 second on your email client? Not only will it reduce your IQ (yeah right - here), but a new study just found out that you are not alone (here - via techdirt).
[Technorati Tags: email addiction]
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May 25, 2005
De-friending, de-endorsing and other online social behaviors
Last week I attended one of the Thursday meetings at The Berkman Center (here) where they were talking about Livejournal (which has more than 7M users!). From what I gathered, it is similar to MySpace, which now boasts 12M users.
One interesting part of the conversation was when they talked about friends. In most of those places, as well as in most online games, you can create friends’ lists. A difference with the real world is that in virtual spaces, a person can put you on their friends’ list without you putting them on yours. What kind of a message is that? The other one is what people do when their friendship falls apart. On Livejournal (there were many real users at the meeting), people often times start a new Livejournal without inviting the person with whom their friendship ended, and they let the old Livejournal go stale – as to not hurt that person’s feelings. On X-Box, my son usually has no problem kicking someone off his friend list – but the other day I did hear him tell some of his friends to turn their profiles to “invisible” and go play somewhere else – as to not hurt the feelings of a younger kid that was getting annoying.
This also reminds me of a behavior on LinkedIn. What do you do when someone asks you to endorse them and you don't really feel like it?
To me it’s fascinating to witness some of the new social dynamics that are emerging online.
[Technorati Tags: social behavior relationships]
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Future of web sites when we have RSS?
Matt McAlister over at InforWorld wonders what the future of web site will be in the face of growing RSS usage (here). He is drawing an analogy between RSS and web sites and what the web did to print publications.
It's an interesting - although a bit alarmist - perspective from a traditional publisher.
RSS is full of opportunities. If you can believe Lockergnome, they are seeing a 5:1 ratio of click throughs on rss feeds vs. their email subscribers (according to marketing studies). But beyond that, the biggest opportunities for RSS may be in area of content personalization.
[Technorati Tags: rss email publishing]
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May 24, 2005
[rant] Why is it so damn hard to buy stuff online in Belgium?
Being from Belgium and having family over there I tried buying a digital camera and a mic online for my brother. I could not use Amazon.fr or amazon.uk since they would not allow me to ship to a Belgian address (actually they did, but at the very end of the ordering procedure I got an error saying they could not do that).
So I figured I would try a few local shops with self-proclaimed online commerce presence (ColliShop, Photo Hall, Colruyt, Super Company, Intellihome, and Krefel) - only to find out that none of them could take my order. Some had forms that would not allow the buyer to be from another country, one tried to send me to paypal for payment but misdirected me, one required me to chose a local shop to buy from, and one said they were going to call me for payment (which of course never happened - and when I replied to their email to cancel my order, my email came back undeliverable 5 days later). I thought I was lucky when Krefel took my order, only to find out (3 days later) through an email that they want me to fax them copies of both sites of my credit card and a copy of my identity card (both sides as well). I have not had one of those is years!
What the heck is happening? Is online shopping in my native country really that backwards? Or did I just have dumb luck? I have bought online for family - wines, flowers, books, cd's - but now that I come to think of it, it was all through UK and French sites...
We're now six days later, and I will clearly miss my brother's birthday. If anyone has suggestions on how to buy this stuff, let me know...
[Technorati Tags: belgium online shopping krefel]
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May 23, 2005
Becoming boring - daring - and getting dumped on
This past weekend, Joi Ito reflected on what he writes about these days vs what he may have written about a year ago (here) "However, as I read criticisms in the comments and on other blogs about what I write, I have become increasingly sensitive about what I say here. The criticism is often valid. "Check your facts before you post." "Read before you write." "Don't be so self-obsessed." "That was stupid." "The tone of your post was offensive to me." "So this guy posts every time he's 'off' to somewhere new."
Because of that he feels that his blogging is maybe becoming too broad and boring. Hmm...I hope not!
That inspired Halley Suitt to write a pretty thoughtful and honest piece about her perceptions of rich and snobby suburbia and how she increasingly feels alienated by it all (here). As I was reading her article I was both laughing and feeling deep empathy for what she is going through. While for very different reasons, I too ask myself many of the same questions - and I am sure that lots of people do.
But then you get to the comment section and she gets dumped on...concluding that "The blogosphere has become so contentious, it seems like no matter what you write, people jump all over your ass." Maybe Joi Ito's idea of switching to autoblogger is not such a bad idea after all...
[Technorati Tags: blogging feedback]
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Open source radio to go live next week
Chris Lydon is back - this time with Open Source Radio (here is the new blog - here is the announcement). They are looking for ideas:
"We’re figuring this out from scratch, but here’s how we look at it: the Internet is our beat. We’re looking to capture the way people talk to each other online, the way they record their own stories. The blogs and the podcasts and the Wikipedia are not the story; the people we find through them are."
[Technorati Tags: radio chris lydon]
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May 22, 2005
More tagging
I just ran across this piece of code to let you add a "bookmark this" link at the bottom of your post. When a reader clicks that link it posts that posting to del.icio.us. You do need an account to post to de.icio.us.
With all this random tagging going on, I wonder if some kind of organizational hierarchy will emerge over time (much like Wikipedia's structure emerged). If it doesn't, then all this tagging will have little value. And if people try to impose it from the top down (through some sort of standard-setting activity), I fear we will run into the same issues that KM ran into in the corporate world - people just don't use it.
[Technorati Tags: tagging tag]
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May 21, 2005
Building a new web site in "public"
As you know (see the bio if you don't), I have been involved with BlogBridge - one of my friends and ex-colleague Pito Salas' main projects.
In the spirit of participating in "market conversations" (after all, I was one of the very early cluetrain manifesto signatories) I have been tinkering with the idea of moving away from the "traditional" corporate web site metaphor and towards a more "conversational" web site for awhile - and finally decided to try out it with BlogBridge. I am sure I am not the first one to come up with this, but if you have some cycles to look at our work-in-progress, I would really appreciate the feedback. The new and experimental site still has some technical issues and lacks the "in-depth" content for now, but you should be able to get the gist of it and tell us what your initial reaction is.
[Technorati Tags: blogbridge corporate web cluetrain]
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May 20, 2005
Playing around with Feedster tags
Feedster came out with a different tagging scheme - let the reader tag your stuff (see button below). More information on Scott Rafer's blog (here - via media guerrilla).
Update - after using it a few times, it turns out that the anti-spam scheme is way too hard. The last time I tried I had to re-enter the scrambled message 7 times!
[Technorati Tags: feedster tagging]
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Blog survey results from Germany
Webpronews reports an interesting CRM agency Proximity blog survey done in Germany with 2,700 people (here - via AMA). The purpose of the survey, according to AMA, was to uncover "customers' perceptions about marketing/business blogs and the influence these types of blogs can have on the brand/company". Results:
- 91% of the blog readers expect a fast and appropriate reaction to questions and comments in enterprise blogs.
- 90% think it's important to make a clear difference between commercial and non-commercial content.
- Of the blog readers, 54% form their opinions about products/companies on the basis of blogs.
- 51% of the blog readers visit product and/or corporate sites as a results of reading blogs.
- 58% of the blog readers, read them to find news and information they can't find otherwise.
- 57% of them are interested in the personal opinions of the authors, but only 43% are interested in the discussions.
[Technorati Tags: blogging marketing brand]
Posted by francois at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 19, 2005
Revenge of the "C"th
As I was driving to a meeting this morning, I kept thinking about all those companies that monitor their employees (see previous post) - and it reminded me of the proverbial A, B and C people that we find in companies.
The story goes something like this.
- A people love people who are smarter than them and so they hire other A people
- B people are intimidated by people that are smarter than them and so they hire C people
- C people know that they have no right to be in the job that they are in, so they weave a web of processes around themselves as job protection (eventually it chokes the company)
You think that "C" people are responsible for all this monitoring stuff? No? So, do you think that 76% of the people electronically monitor web surfing at home as well?
Definitelly a far cry from what we envisioned in 2001 about the future of the workplace (see here - some people asked for those, which were part of the proceedings of the event)
[Technorati Tags: surveillance privacy workplace]
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Corporate employee surveillance...
The American Management Association yesterday released its "2005 ELECTRONIC MONITORING & SURVEILLANCE SURVEY"(here - requires registration, but free). The numbers are awful - "76% monitor web surfing, 36% of employers tracking content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard, and 55% retaining and reviewing email messages". At least "fully 80% inform workers that the company is monitoring content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard".
Ok, I guess that means no individual rights in the workplace.I also wonder what would happen if companies would spend as much time and energy on innovation in the workplace instead - what do you think would happen?
[Technorati Tags: surveillance privacy individual rights]
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Cannot get the attention of main media - try social networking
Article on Wired.com (here) talks about new bands who sign up 100,000 fans and sell 2,000 CD's using MySpace. Fascinating...
[Technorati Tags: MySpace social networking marketing]
Posted by francois at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 18, 2005
Buzz, blogs and politics
The Pew internet & American Life Project just released a preliminary report entitled "Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004" (here - via smartmobs). One of their conclusions is:
“The blogosphere is clearly a major addition to the national discourse...But we need to be cautious with respect to the power of particular political bloggers. That power waxes and wanes depending on the sort of information available, the behavior of other public voices, and the tendency of internet forms and formats to evolve in a very short time.”I have not read the full report yet but it sounds like it contains lessons that are applicable beyond political blogs.
[Technorati Tags: buzz blog politics]
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PR agencies and blogging - do you need a balance?
Jeremy Pepper over at POP! muses about whether there needs to be a better balance between PR agency blogging vs. client work, or whether some PR agencies are becoming too blog-centric. (here). From a recent exchange at the Syndicate conference he says:
"One person asked how I balance blogging and PR, and whether or not I am worried about my blog overtaking publicity for my clients. This is a growing concern, particularly as you have to explain to clients why you are getting press for your blog, but not press for them. And, it's something that we should never have to address, because at the end of the day it is about the clients."As more PR folks are starting to develop meaningful online presences through their blog, that is a great question to ask yourself when selecting a PR agency (for the sake of full disclosure - I know the folks at PAN (mentioned in Jeremy's posting) real well - both as a former client and a friend of the company).
David Weinberger thinks that PR folks should get out of the way, "connecting passionate clients with the public" (here).
My view, which I expressed earlier (here), is that while conversations are happening in the marketplace - sometimes without the involvement of the company - a company should get involved in those conversations. I agree with David that PR agencies should facilitate connections and then get out of the way. But there is another role that they can and should play - that of coaching clients on how to engage in those conversations in generally acceptable ways. While many web companies already know how to do that, I suspect that a majority of marketing executives, who must be increasingly getting pressured by their CEO to do something with blogs, have no clue how to do it. Having a trusted PR agency show them the way may be something of real value. And how else can they know how to do it, but by doing it themselves.
[Technorati Tags: pr blogging pan]
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May 17, 2005
Blogging for dollars
Guerrilla News Network reports that USWeb is paying people to leave favorable comments about certain companies on their blogs (here - via problogger). Reminds me of those shops that would post for dollars in online user groups and Usenet newsgroups in the mid to late 90's. Funny how these business models have a way of coming back...it also goes back to my posting yesterday - what "trust" mechanism will help the consumer filter what's paid advertising and what is not?
[Technorati Tags: trust blog consumer]
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Consumer of 2020
An interesting study by Bain (here - via MIT lab for brand cultures) analyzes the consumer of 2020 and predicts:
"The top quintile of consumers will increasingly rank their time and leisure over their money, and reward businesses that recognize this. They will value products and services that are tailored to lifestyle and life-stage needs, particularly health and ageing..." as well as "Despite this growing disparity among incomes, consumers at every level will exhibit crossover behaviours."In this day and age where people only have so many spare minutes but an increasing amount of pocket money - you better be prepared for cross-category competition.
Oh...and don't count on being able to put consumers into well defined market segments in the future!
[Technorati Tags: consumer behavior marketing bain]
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May 16, 2005
Consumers, blogs and trust
Steve King from the Institute of the Future has a great post over at the IAOC Blog (here – via Corporate PR) about the impact of blogs, and the trust that consumers have in those blogs, on purchasing decision-making.
While his research does not find much impact of blogs on purchasing decisions yet – he lists the reasons why people “trust’ a blog. Not surprisingly, those reasons include:
- their view of the credibility of the author and content;
- the amount of traffic they perceive the blog to be getting;
- the number of other sites linking to the blog;
- how active the blog is;
- the look and feel of the blog
The questions Steve has are “will blogs achieve high levels of consumer trust, and if so what kinds of blogs will be trusted?? What will this mean for corporations and how they communicate with their customers?? What role will professional blogs play in customer communications??”
What do you think? Let him know if you have an opinion. The way I look at it, blogs will increasingly play a role in market conversations. As such, they will have an impact on the buying behavior of certain products – especially those products that tend to generate conversations and buzz. Companies, therefore, will need to jump into the fray and start participating in those conversations. And when they are ready, they have three options to do that:
- do it directly and in a controlled fashion – that is when companies have one or more executives or PR employees blog within strict guidelines (i.e., stay on message)
- do it directly but in an uncontrolled fashion – that is when companies encourage their employees to blog and give them the freedom to say what they want (there are many examples of companies embracing such blog strategies – Microsoft, hopefully IBM, etc.)
- hire outsiders to do it for you – that is when a company hires existing bloggers to write on their behalf.
The second option is clearly the best strategy to quickly gain trust for what is being said, but unfortunately I suspect that many companies will not be able to embrace such openness. There are instances where the first strategy works in being able to establish trust (i.e., GM, HP, etc.). In general, I suspect that those corporate blogs will increasingly face an uphill battle in terms of upfront credibility. The last option is my least favorite option. Many companies will hire professional bloggers to stimulate online conversations on their behalf. Even under full disclosure, I think that there are very few people that can establish enough trust for themselves so that their personal trust can carry over to the conversations that they are having on behalf of the companies that pay them.
Of course, there is always the option of treating bloggers like journalists and influence them to write about your company and its products. You should always do that! But in addition to that I believe that companies have to participate directly in the market conversations as well.
[Technorati Tags: trust blog consumer]
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May 15, 2005
[interesting link] Blogging is hot!
Jon Stewart on blogging - funny hilarious (here - via the bach door)
[Technorati Tags: jon stewart humor blogging]
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[interesting] IBM to launch largest corporate blog initiative
Silicon Valley Watcher announced (here) Friday that "Early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company." (via mediations).
Wow...this will be fascinating to watch. Another interesting tidbit from the article is that this initiative will also include the rollout of a wiki. I wonder if and how that will integrate with their Notes collaboration platform.
[Technorati Tags: ibm corporate blog blogging]
Posted by francois at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 14, 2005
Ranting about (anti)privacy in the workplace
Shel Holtz is ranting about Spectorsoft and Websense on is blog (here) - rightfully so! If you do not know what they do, those companies make "big brother" type products that monitor employee emails, web surfing activities, as well as their chats/IM. Their products also capture every keystroke and programs launched. Yikes - I sure would never want to work in a company that deployed those apps! And I suspect that few people would.
Shel goes on - on the topic of whether those anti-privacy tool companies are evil he says:
"Well, yeah. They’re profiting by creating unfounded fear and introducing products into the workplace that will suck the company dry of employee commitment.."I could not agree more. I would go a step further and say that the companies that are deploying those tools are evil too...(ok maybe too harsh - definitely clueless). What kind of culture are you creating by deploying tools like that? I am sure there are abusers everywhere, but by and large, I would argue that letting people do personal stuff online while at work probably ends up having a positive impact on productivity. By letting people do some of their shopping or some of their banking at work, not only will you reduce their stress level about getting personal things done, you will also free up their time to think more about your company's problems. And if they surf seemingly random sites - guess what? You may actually increase the rate of innovation within your company. The web, just like conversations, is a great source of ideas. Monitoring employees with those software tools will clearly kill both their commitment to the company (as Shel argues) and the company's ability to innovate!
Shel concludes his rant with
:"The question is, how do we get this message into the heads of executives who are bombarded with the kind of pathetic, fear-mongering crap that companies like SpectorSoft and Websense shove down their throats? I certainly don’t have their advertising budgets. I’m open to ideas."
...maybe we can start a wiki listing the companies that deploy those solutions. This is one case where a reference list of customers can work against you rather than for you!
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Posted by francois at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 13, 2005
If they don't get it - how can we expect others to?
I got a new email from Marketing Sherpa (here - free for two weeks or so). I was surprised by the report, which includes things like:
- "RSS challenge #1. No HTML graphics. You can't put your logo, or a product shot, or a photo, or any graphic..." (ed:I guess they never tried a Flickr feed, or the new business week feed)
- "You can't send a newsletter with a variety of items in it for people to click on. You can on





