6 posts tagged “blog”

By virtue of my job, I am a member of the British Association of Commuicators in Business (CiB), the "UK's leading professional body for in-house, freelance and agency staff involved in internal and corporate communications."

They send out a regular e-newsletter, which includes a message from the chairman, Suzanne Peck. This one was so off base - even though I went on my first ever pitch with Suzanne when we worked together many years ago - that it goes to show just how much the CiB has to change to become relevant.

First, putting an RSS feed on a page does not make a 'blog'. In fact, of Blogging's Six Pillars, this one ticks just one:

1. Publishable
2. Findable
3. Social
4. Viral
5. Syndicatable
6. Linkable

I can live with that.

But the argument that: "If a writer doesn’t have respect for one aspect of writing, such as an e-mail message, how can I trust his advice in another?" was just a ridiculous example of intellectually bankrupt moral high-mindedness. And I have an editorial background. So how to highlight the fact that a typo or three doesn't mean the writer doesn't care, or that the message will be lacking?

Although I haven't posted in a while - work-related stuff of which more later - I have been reading. And Hugh Macleod's post about Leo Burnett and Microsoft is perfect. And contains a typo. Do I care? Nope. Do I think HM cares? A pin-prick to his professionalism at the most. But disrespectful?

As Hugh's post states: "One world ending, a new world just beginning, and the people caught in the middle not liking either side of the deal, much." The CiB is trying to reinvent itself. I hope they succeed because internal communicators need a professional body holding a torch for them. If the CiB doesn't sort itself out, it will become part of a lost world.

The headline is, of course, from the rather excellent positioning adverts from the Financial Times. But while we might indeed live in financial times, some of their journalists seem to suffer from a more traditional outlook on what's happening on the interweb.

Michael Skapinker asks of blogs:

"How many are read by anyone other than the blogger? How many are worth reading?"

For someone who is actually paid to write about what he's thinking, and a week after BlogWorld Expo, that's a strange question. Maybe it's a Gen Y thing, which is not to suggest Michael valid question suggests he is over the hill, but that his mindset is such that, for all his protestations to the contrary, he just doesn't get it.

Maybe, like some of his colleagues, he should start a blog.

Coca Cola is the best brand, according to the 2007 Harris 'Best Brands' poll. Congrats. I wondered what part social media played in this success, and it seems the answer is: not much!

True, Coca Cola has used blogs to varying degreees of success externally - as this great wrap up from Search Marketing Guru reports - and has had an internal employee blog for its 55,000 staff since around 2004. But as SMG states, the Real Thing doesn't seem to have any corporate public facing blogs.

For a company that offers more than 400 brands in more than 200 countries, you know the market is talking about the company and its products. And internally, the staff might be talking to each other and/or chosen customers. So why not talk to the world?

Probably not, according to a friend of a friend of Debbie Weil.

Update: Props to Johnny Boston, CEO, Raw Digital, though how he knew to aplogise openly when he did not know about reaching out is interesting (scroll down Gaping Void for Fresh Meat as I have not managed to work out how to link to an individual post).

This line is something that encapsulates the essence of social media in a corporate context for me. It's a derivative of the introduction to the Social Media Club video: Ideals to Ideas - be everywhere your customer expects you to be. And even if you think that your employees don;t expect you to be on a blog, vblog, wiki etc, surprise them!

Social Media Club: Ideals to Ideas

I did see another clip from elsewhere that was a seminar called something like: From Social Media to Corporate Media. Now, there's not getting it, and there's not getting it!

I read the following from the ever-rapier Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times the other day (A quick message for the e-mail killjoys, 24/04/07 - subscription needed), and it struck me that in terms of what to consider when a company starts to draft blogging/social media guidelines (bare in mind, as far as i know, Microsoft have none) is the follow nugget relating to e-mail etiquette laid out in the US business bestseller Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe.

"There are only two rules in Send that I wholeheartedly agree with: polite is better than rude, and legal is better than illegal. However, if you need to have these pointed out then I’d like to suggest a rule of my own: your poor mastery of e-mail technique is the least of your problems."

Not only e-mail or blogging common sense, just plain old common sense!