Category: Blogging

Social Media Summit – Day 1

I had planned to live blog this ALI meeting, but found out when I got to the room that there was no wireless internet access. So, here are some highlights from the presentations, less detailed than if I had blogged contemporaneously.
Michael Rudnick from Watson Wyatt gave the conference introduction and overview. He talked about the Google applications that make it possible for consumers to buy a new computer and never purchase Microsoft Office. There are likely security issues for businesses, but in five years we could see business using on-line applications instead of the desktop. That would be a huge blow to Redmond.

He referenced a McKinsey & Co. report on social media use in business, and his summary advice was helpful:
Focus on benefits, not technology or risks. Security and legal issues will stop anything. Focus on business benefits first and foremost.

Don’t position this as something ‘completely’ new. People instinctively fear radical change. Let them experience the real difference for themselves

Use betas and move quickly. Deploy a quick beta site and let it loose on the users. They’ll tell you if it’s any good or not, what needs changing and what needs adding.

Don’t get hung up on measurement. The tools are inexpensive and easy to change; if it takes off, the users will write the business case for you.

Or, as Zig Ziglar would say, “wait until all the lights are on green, you’ll never leave the garage.”

Christopher Barger, the former “blogger-in-chief” at IBM who moved to General Motors about a month ago, reprised much of his presentation from the San Francisco conference. He has new challenges with GM, moving from a tech company to one that is more traditional.

Likewise, it was good to hear from Mark Jen again, too (and to join Chris, Mark and several others for dinner this evening.) We also heard presentations from Jim Goldstein from Informatica, who attended the San Francisco conference and went home and applied what he learned, Susan Russ from the Reader’s Digest Association and two gentlemen who worked with the Acuvue-sponsored podcast for Johnson & Johnson Vision Care.

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Getting Nekkid

On Wired, Clive Thompson has a provocative article The See-Through CEO about the value of radical transparency achieved through CEO blogging…

Pretend for a second that you’re a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you’re an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you’re not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn’t tell Pepsi what’s in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that’s exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.

You’ve gotta read that now, right? Go here to see it.

And while you’re at it, this history of Microsoft’s Channel 9 is a good case study of how blogging, and especially video blogging, can help key audiences better understand a company. If you think your company is basically doing things right, transparency like this can help the world see it. And if you’ve got problems, it can help even more…by shining the light on things that need to change, and showing that you’re open to solutions. Let your stakeholders help find them.

Interestingly, Thompson’s article was written “in the buff,” so to speak. He did it out in the open and asked for comments, which made the final product stronger. Not the way to do it if you’re looking for a “scoop,” but a way to take advantage of engaged readers to bring different facts and points of view into focus.

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Mayo Clinic InTouch Launches

This is a project I’ve been working on for some time, starting from the early discussions of what should be included in the service, to the public roll-out, which will be announced in a news release from Garmin, Ltd. this morning.

Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune has an extensive feature (click here to read in its entirety), which begins…

Nagging headache? Neck pain? Now you can check your symptoms along with stock prices on your cell phone.
The Mayo Clinic is rolling out a health information service today that soon will be available via most major cell-phone carriers. For $2.99 a month, subscribers who sign up for Mayo Clinic InTouch can get first-aid tips, watch health videos or find the closest emergency room on their cell-phone screens.

Digital Cyclone is the Minnesota-based Garmin subsidiary that developed and is distributing the application through the major wireless carriers. Here’s the Digital Cyclone page with more information on how to order.

And here’s the post on this blog I’ve been using to show journalists what the application is all about, in the pre-launch phase. It was previously password-protected, which is a very convenient way within WordPress to have a public blog that has portions that are private. It’s a way to pitch exclusive or semi-exclusive stories and have rich-media assets, without developing an expensive press kit. And it’s neat to be able to use new media to tell the story of a new media application.
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I See Debt People

Dave Ramsey has done a good job of blending broadcast radio and new media for his mission of inspiring Americans to get out of debt.

He’s got a great web site, and offers an hour of his daily three-hour program as a free podcast on iTunes. The one-hour version is funded by commercials. The full three-hour podcast is available without commercials for members of his subscription web site, mytotalmoneymakeover.com, for $8.95 a month.

I subscribe to lots of podcasts. This is the only one I pay to receive.

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Pew on Tagging

The Pew Internet Project has a good study on the increasing prevalence of tagging.

Just as the internet allows users to create and share their own media, it is also enabling them to organize digital material their own way, rather than relying on pre-existing formats of classifying information. A December 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.

These people said “yes” to the following question: “Please tell me if you ever use the internet to categorize or tag online content like a photo, news story, or a blog post.” The wording was designed to capture the growing use of tagging on sites such as http://del.icio.us/ (a site for sharing browser bookmarks), http://www.flickr.com/ (a photo sharing site), http://youtube.com/ (a video sharing site) and http://technorati.com/ (the blog search engine).

Tagging is gaining prominence as an activity some classify as a Web 2.0 hallmark in part because it advances and personalizes online searching. Traditionally, search on the web (or within websites) is done by using keywords. Tagging is a kind of next-stage search phenomenon – a way to mark, store, and then retrieve the web content that users already found valuable and of which they want to keep track. It is, of course, more tailored to individual needs and not designed to be the all-inclusive system that Melvil Dewey tried to create with his decimal-based
scheme for cataloguing library materials.

The great thing about tagging is it takes search to the next level. Instead of Google ranking sites by how many inbound links they have, these social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us let average users categorize content in ways that are useful to them. This is a report worth reading if you want to understand some of the trends in internet use.

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