Social Media University, Global (SMUG)
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Captain Anthony Deiss is the Electronic Media Engagement Officer for U.S. Central Command. CENTCOM doesn’t have a blog, but is engaging with bloggers to communicate.
He highlighted the Little Green Footballs site and its role in watching the media, both in the Reuters Photoshop controversy and the Green Helmet Guy story.
Capt. Davis went through the process his three-member team uses to identify receptive bloggers and approach them to consider adding links to the CENTCOM web site.
Dan Cooke from Whirlpool presented the case study of this podcast, which is aimed at breaking out of the “sea of white” customers face when they go to buy major appliances.
Whirlpool’s target is the psychographic segment called the “active balancer,” someone who is “time-starved, willing to delegate household chores to others, open to new technology and change, and for whom quality and brand are extremely important.”
One point I think is important here is that they see this as “not as polished as other consumer-facing efforts.” It doesn’t have to be fully produced. These are done as phone interviews, so it’s not CD-quality sound.
This strategy also appealed to Whirlpool’s conservative nature, as it seemed less risky than blogging, because they could control the message.
Results: It has grown from 800 downloads a month in the first quarter to > 30,000 per month.
Technorati: Whirlpool, Podcasting
Mark Jen is a product line manager for Plaxo. His personal blog is Plaxoed.
Here’s his quick case study of Plaxo, which is an on-line smart address book. It lets users of Plaxo update their address book automatically instead of having to gather business cards.
Concerns have been privacy, security and that they used to send lots of e-mails. They allayed the first two relatively easily, but the third was harder: a perception problem among people who have been on the receiving end of their e-mails. They started a blog, but it wasn’t a silver bullet. They needed to get employees blogging so people knew there were real people behind the company, and then also started communicating with bloggers directly via e-mail, at events and through the blogosphere.
He told his story of being fired from Google for blogging. He had only been at the company for 11 days. At Google there was secrecy built into the corporate culture, but they didn’t want to be transparent. Google had originally caused his blog to go dark, which led to some controversy, but when they fired him it led to a huge PR hit traffic (and monster traffic to his blog).
At Plaxo the policy is pretty straightforward.
Technorati: Plaxo, Google, Blogging Policy
Chris is the uber-blogger for IBM. He tells how IBM used a Wiki to develop a blogging policy within about two weeks. They did this whole project in exactly two months, because wikis speed the process of collaboration. They found about 25 people who were familiar with blogging. The goal was to encourage external blogging and also finding ways to use blogs internally.
Here’s an interview with Chris published previously.
Here’s that policy. The NewPR Wiki has a directory of others you can compare.
Informal networking would be the best way to identify the contributors to a blogging policy. Find out who blogs, and who they know is blogging.
Now more than 300 IBMers blogging externally, and letting them know about the business. By providing the information to these bloggers who are talking to the outside world, they can clarify the information and break down hierarchy.
Since formally launching blogging guidelines they have tripled the number of active blogs and registered users. Talk to the employees on the blog platform, on their turf.
In response to a question about management fears that the blogs will be just a platform for airing gripes, he share the story of the lay-off of 15,000 employees and how someone posted a blast that got lots of attention. Chris posted a thoughtful response, which turned the conversation as others chimed in. Instead of a complaining session, the conversation became constructive on how to turn the company around.
People who comment must be identified by name. No such thing as anonymous posting or commenting. People need to be willing to stand behind what they post.
Chris was peppered with questions, and the group was really engaged. He says the good from blogging for IBM has FAR outweighed the risks. He says he would never let blogging go forward without a policy. Since blogging is happening anyway, what that means is everyone should have a blogging policy.
He says the most skeptical people were the communications staff, because they were resistant to having the rank-and-file employees control the messages. IBM’s pension change roll-out earlier this year worked really well and led to a healthy dialogue. If a situation as perilous as that could work well, anything can.
He also says don’t try to convince the skeptics to blog, because they will be lousy blogs. Let the people who are passionate do it. The best assets we have are our employees. Hand them the keys.
Technorati: Blogging, IBM, Internal Communications
…only information you do not yet have.”
Great quote from Shel…not sure who said it, but it highlights the need for transparency.
Here’s the biggest run-on sentence ever, from our speed networking session, listing those who are here. It’s quite a cross section. (If I missed or misspelled anyone, let me know in the comments…and if you have a blog you would like linked here, let me know and I will update the post.)
We have representatives from the U.S. Air Force, Dansko, FEMA, H&R Block, Fleischmann-Hilliard, Leinart Health Products, American Airlines, Dr. Laura, American Association of Community Colleges, U.S. Navy, World Cynosport Limited (a group that emphasizes recreation sports with man’s best friend), Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, Electronic Arts, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Accenture, U.S. Military Central Command, Charles Schwab, Shutterfly, United Way of America, GroupHealth, Southwest Airlines, Xerox, Plaxo, Campbell Soup (Mmm, Mmm, good!), San Francisco Opera, Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union, AOL, Reformed Church in America, H-P, Publicis, Whirlpool, Boeing, Informatica, Prudential Real Estate, Syngenta, Wyndham Worldwide, Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Verizon Business, U.S. Department of Energy, Tejon Ranch Corporation, Sage Software, GE Energy, Naval Surface Warfare Center, New Zealand Trade economic development agency, ComAvia (sp?) and Mayo Clinic (that’s me).