Employers Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
Return to the blog index.
In the previous post I talked about how corporations that are creating social media programs inherently need to rely upon the individuals involved with those initiatives. But what about the individuals? Quoting from the previous post:
On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they're not an individual, they're the company's blogger. I've seen it happen at conferences, "Oh hey, John....you're X's blogger?" They're always introduced as John, X's Blogger, never just John. It's like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn't be anybody.
What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own?
It's a double-edged sword. The major brand is what has put them in a position to possibly move on to other opportunities, but that brand can also obscure them.
Sometimes you also get lost in the crowd at large corporations. Would you want to hire the PR person that 'oversaw' the blog or the person that actually wrote the blog? Executives taking too much credit for their staff's work is nothing new.
What do you do if you're the company blogger and want to establish your own identity? In smaller circles this is easy since the majority of the people you interact with via the blog will hopefully know you. It's a natural effect of the blog and the interaction between individuals. In many cases that might be all you need. If you're looking to move on, often it's the folks in the small circle that are your best resources.
Recently Jeremiah talked about his career blog, or a blog that moved with him from job to job. It's part personal, it's part professional. Striking the balance is the challenge though.
In my case, I'm fortunate because my name and brand, Hyku, are somewhat synonymous. But then again I work for myself :-)
A number of 'corporate blogging' friends I know also have personal blogs. Some are open about this, as in it's easy to find them and the connection. A few others like to keep thing separate and on the DL. It's only their friends that know the address. However, we all know that keeping something hidden in plain sight doesn't always work.
One little issue is the simple Google search of their name. Many times the corporate blog will be the first result. The only way to gain control of that is to get out there and start blogging/linking, etc. Taking on too much of a personal presence could cause tension at work though.
Facebook might be the solution. A number of corporate bloggers I know are my friends on Facebook, it's a great way to network.
Getting back to the question, what should/can a corporate blogger do to establish their identity?
First off, own your name, create a basic site/blog that is your personal brand. What you do there is open for debate, but it's important that friends know how to locate/interact with you outside the corporation you work for.
What else should one do? Comments?
One of the elements crucial to corporate social media initiatives are the individuals who blog for organizations. Often these individuals become somewhat official spokespersons for the organization, but that's what they're supposed to be correct? It's the humanization thing. What are the downsides though?
Recently I was on a teleconference panel with a few organizations. One of the panelists talked about all the major social media initiatives that were handled by a member of their staff, let's call them John. John had become their spokesperson. Previously they never had one. The relationships that John built within communities online (and offline) were invaluable to the organization. During the Q&A, the questions mostly focussed on technology issues and we ran out of time before I could ask, "What happens when John leaves?" From the earlier discussion it would seem that if they left their entire community outreach efforts would vanish and so would a portion of sales.
Another issue related to business blogging is ego and internal politics. In some cases a junior staffer suddenly becomes an invaluable asset, sometimes that goes to your head. However, most of the corporate bloggers I know firmly have their egos in check, but it could be an issue. When Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft one of the questions that often came up was what do others in the company think of his profile? Here was a person that recently joined the company and suddenly is mentioned in the same breath as Gates and Ballmer. There were probably quite a few folks that said to themselves, who is this guy? I've been here a decade....etc.
Then of course Robert left Redmond and some folks foolishly asked, "What will Microsoft do?" I think Microsoft is doing just fine. Along the same lines, does anybody remember Cooper/Katz? (if you do, you somewhat date yourself in the PR blogging world.)
In Scoble's case, PodTech knew one of the things they were getting with Robert was his celebrity/followers. There is attention/publicity that comes with that, and to some degree that can be of value. You could compare this to pro sports before free agency. Often the star player would remain with one team for their entire careers, today that's a rarity. In the gadget blogging world the editors/writers seem to change teams quite a bit.
It will be interesting to see how situations like this play out in the coming years. Could you imagine a Ford press release: "Ford hires former GM Chairman Bob Lutz to launch new F-150 Fanatics blog!"
But let's go back to my initial example, if/when that person at a small operation leaves there would be huge consequences. That person is a communication channel and that suddenly disappears. It is possible to move on, but since much of the community is built upon relationships with an individual, you can't easily swap people out. That's been standard operating procedure for companies though. If it's a faceless corporation, then you can swap out the 'faces' as much as you want :-)
On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they're not an individual, they're the company's blogger. I've seen it happen at conferences, "Oh hey, John....you're X's blogger?" They're always introduced as John, X's Blogger, never just John. It's like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn't be anybody.
What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own? Part two coming soon.
A somewhat belated congratulations to Alex Hillman and the Philly co-working group. Alex recently signed the lease for Independents Hall a cool co-working initiative in Philadelphia. The local paper did a big piece on the launch of their space last week.
Alex Rudloff is testing the waters to see if a similar thing would fly in Orlando. (I guess you have to be named Alex to do this). Even though I'm not based in Orlando anymore I told Alex I'd support any space he launched.
Constantin posts that Paull Young has joined Converseon. As a student, Paull made a name for himself in the PR-blogging world and was a sought after hire. (Other students are you paying attention?)
Congrats to Paull and good catch on the part of Converseon.
One of the interesting points to come up during Jeffrey Treem's session on social media for employee engagement was that internal implementations of social media tools are great proving grounds.
Often corporate communicators fear the risks involved with social media, however internal instances can have a great deal of control. As the tools are adopted it also helps shift the culture internally. Organizations learn about conversation and interaction with groups outside their normal circles.
That's a good thing.
Over at the Big in Japan blog Jake posts about a recent legal issue surrounding comments in an old blog post. You can read the post, but the gist is a firm didn't like the fact that there were negative comments about them on a blog post. They requested that Alex (one of the guys behind Big in Japan) remove the post and reveal the identities of the people that left the comments.
Alex contacted the company and their lawyers and suggested that he was willing to remove the post and the comments, but he wasn’t willing to provide the identities unless ordered to by a court. The company demanded that he backup the database and retain it in the event that the company can secure a court order for the release of the identities.
Do you think Alex is doing the right thing? Should he remove the post? What obligation does he have to stand up to companies who receive a few negative comments?
What do I think? Each case is a unique thing, but I'll just share a similar experience I had.
Back in 2005 I got involved in a situation where a person that commented somewhat anonymously (i.e. they left a handle and fake e-mail address) posted some possibly libelous statements on a blog I contribute to. Obviously the firm in question was interested in knowing who this employee was.
At first I wasn't planning on revealing anything. However, when we removed one of the potentially libelous comments from this person they began to lash out at Robert French and myself. The individual claimed that he intended to remain anonymous and challenged us to figure out who he was. This was conveyed via some interesting e-mail conversations (the person was always using a generic e-mail accounts, i.e. Hotmail, etc.).
Robert and I pointed out that we had his IP address and it was the same for each comment. The response? It would take court order for the ISP to reveal the identity, and a few other choice words.
The big problem for our anonymous tormentor was that we didn't need a court order. The company in question ran Exchange server and allowed staff to check e-mail via the web. All that we needed to do was cross reference the IP address of our 'friend' with the server logs of the mail server. Want to guess what happened?
The lesson to be learned is if you're trying to remain anonymous with your comments, don't piss off the owner of the blog since they hold some key information that can sniff you out.
Jeremiah Owyang talks a bit about traditional corporations and media needing leadership in web strategy and social media. This is an interesting knowledge gap that I have seen as well. There are those that are savvy at social media and can counsel clients and then there are those that can build businesses/divisions around social media. However, there seem to be fewer of the latter.
I have been contacted by a few headhunters looking to fill some social media jobs at some large corporations. In each case they needed a person with a blend of social media know-how and corporate smarts. Specifically, they wanted people that could build an entire division or team and thus handle all the standard business stuff, i.e. budgets, personnel, etc.
In almost all the cases the headhunters said they were having a difficult time finding the right person. They were easily able to identify some strong players in the social media space, but none of them were interested (or qualified) in the corporate side of things. This really didn't surprise me. I told the headhunters that many of my peers are independents like myself, and we didn't really want to work full-time for a corporation. We enjoy our freedom too much.
It seems then that there might be a job market for a strong corporate types that understand social media. Perhaps I should build a job board, ala CrunchBoard :-)
Tampa-based blogger SarahInTampa recently posted about a business blog she has helped create for a local furniture store. As she states in her post, inspired DECOR is not a standard cookie-cutter furniture store so they decided not to go with the traditional web site. Instead they created a blog.
Blogs and web sites are obviously a great way to reach a national or global audience, but some business aren't capable of providing services outside their local area. In this case, how can a local business blog generate traffic in a local market, or convert traffic from across the globe to local sales?
As I commented on Sarah's blog, Tampa has a very strong local blogging community. I frequently mention Sticks of Fire, but just head over to TampaBLAB to see a list of other Tampa bloggers. In the case of inspired DECOR they have a large local blogging community that they can tap into. But what if you're in a town like Orlando that lacks a large, local blogging community?
Traditional advertising can be used to drive local residents to a web site or blog, but that can be quite costly and is a shotgun approach. Pay-per-click advertising on Yahoo or Google is another solution and can help jump-start traffic at a lower cost. Hopefully you can rely upon compelling content to keep first-time users coming back.
The long term play though is the natural SEO benefits that a blog can provide. By continually posting good content that is somewhat keyword and geography sensitive (and getting those precious links) the results should come. You always need to consider the market you're in though. Keywords such as real estate, mortgages are always a saturated market. In Florida there is obviously a great deal of tourism related SEO as well.
We're also still at a point where there is still some 'buzz' surrounding blogs, so local reporters are always contacting me for stories about blogs. The reporters always want a list of local blogs, both business and personal. The personal blogs are easy to come up with, providing them a list of local business blogs is somewhat more difficult. My friends at Websolvers and RedRocket have both received local press since they had 'local business blogs'.
Does anybody have some good case examples of successful local blogs that aren't in a community with an active blogging community (i.e. not San Fran, Atlanta, NYC, etc)?
Over at FPRA Blog Week Bob O'Malley posted a great comment on Doreen's article: The Benefits of Volunteering. Bob said:
Every year, I tell graduating college seniors to take notice of which PR firms are represented at FPRA luncheons, events and committees, and which ones are not. I tell them that the ones that are not represented are not good places to work.
Take that quote and insert just about any industry/professional association. I also pay attention to things like this. When a new member joins a professional group and they are paying out of their own pocket (because their firm won't pay) I watch to see how long before they change employers.
Over at Forward Blog Ashley writes about corporate politics. There is always a certain loss of innocence when you start your first job, see a great idea that can really help the organization, only to see it killed because of internal politics. Too many times it's because a particular person did not come up with the idea or some other petty thing. Ashley writes:
But as professional communicators, you would think that the people in the business communications/marketing/PR profession could avoid it. Yet I am still hearing all of the stories of how different, yet very related, departments in a company may never even discuss the company’s goals, strategies or their implementation. The flawed division of power and inability to communicate freely with those in charge seems to resemble the same complaints we have about the “politics” we find everywhere else, whether it is the politics that govern our country or the social politics that seem impossible to avoid in day-to-day life.
The comments for her post provide some great insight to young minds not yet spoiled by corporate backstabbing.
That's one of the things I like about being an outside consultant, sometimes I can cut through all that because my job is not at stake. If I push too hard against the internal politics would I lose the contract? Perhaps, but it's better to walk away than compromise what you were hired to do. By running your own shop one of the greatest powers you have is the ability to say no.
I often e-mail friends when I see something of interest about their company out on the web. The majority of the time it's either a positive/negative blog post or more recently a video on YouTube. The problem is that they are usually blocked from seeing this content by their corporate internet police.
I can understand some of the reasoning behind the filtering. Corporations don't want their staff hanging out on YouTube, LiveJournal or MySpace all day. However, in some cases those places are where customers are hanging out and talking. Blocking the staff from accessing this content just further builds up the walls around the corporate office, keeping them out of touch with the customer base. Nothing worse than hearing about that hilarious video that mocks your company, but not being able to view it.
In most cases my friends/clients will send a request to IT asking that the blocking be removed for this person or that office. Most of the time it's PR/marketing that needs access, but how about public/legislative affairs as well?
Shel Holtz has been a longtime critic of blocking or monitoring employee internet use. I agree with him. Hopefully more corporations will stop the practice or ease up on the filtering, there's a whole world out there that they're missing.
Yesterday I did a quick interview for a magazine. One of the major themes of article will be the ROI of podcasts, with an emphasis on business podcasting. The overwhelming majority of podcasts I listen to are not done by businesses. They're done by individuals that are very passionate about their topic.
But once again the question is what's the ROI? I understand that there has to be some benefit to spending your time and perhaps money doing something but it isn't always measured in dollars. Shel Holtz talked about blogging ROI earlier this month:
As cheap as they are to set up and maintain, there’s really no need to measure the ROI of blogs. After all, is it necessary to measure the ROI of your pants?....It’s even easy to extend the “pants” argument to higher costs, as Toby Ward does when discussing intranet ROI. Intranets, obviously, cost more than blogs, but Toby has asked if companies demand ROI justification for their telephone networks? Not even the bean counters insist on a tally of the ROI for phones because everyone knows the consequences of removing them.
I usually ask somebody if they go to church, if they do what's the ROI? As Shel goes on to point out, too often ROI is thought of in terms of dollars and not opportunity/risk:
But I would make the argument that the kind of ROI assurance executives want is not the kind of ROI accountants measure; we’re getting too hung up on definitions. The ROI in question here is more commonly referred to as a cost (or risk) benefit analysis. While ROI generally refers to the amount of money earned after all expenses are tallied, the risk-benefit analysis weighs the consequences of an action or expense against the benefits it will achieve. Because so many executives fear the consequences and don’t understand or recognize the benefits, I still think this kind of measurement is important.
I'm a little late in posting this (sorry Erin) but a group of college students that are showing way more drive and initiative than I had at their age have created a new blog/resource called Forward-Moving. The site bills itself as:
the online springboard for new and upcoming PR professionals.
Our goal is to provide insight, answers and information to sharpen your perspective and help you go Forward in your career.
So far there a number of great posts in the
blog. I think that they might be selling themselves short since much of the material can also serve as a refresher for 'established' PR professionals.
Perhaps as a side project we can track the career paths of the contributors, since they are all sure to be moving-up in the world.
Salespeople everywhere, do you want to have happy, loyal customers? Find out what your customer needs and then give them a solution that fits that need - not one that offers you the greatest commission.
Sounds simple doesn't it? Sadly it's never that easy though. Case in point, my in-laws recent cellphone shopping experiences.
They rarely use their mobiles. Their usage over the past few months have been a total of 7 minutes. Paying a monthly contract with X number of minutes is a waste of money. In advance we did some online shopping and figured that one of the pre-paid plans offered by a major carrier would probably work best. Next they visited two of the bigger carriers to compare deals and equipment.
Store 1: Pre-paid, no problem - phones cost $40 each and then you prepay $20 for airtime and that would cover them for a year. Total cost approx, $120/year (including the cost of the phones) for both of them.
Store 2: Pre-paid, you don't want that - suggestion is the base monthly contract ($70/month with taxes for both phones). Total cost approx. $840/year (not including the cost of the phones).
Which salesperson listened to their needs and gave them a solution that fit their needs? First correct answer gets a cookie.
Over at Daily Blog there is an interesting review of the AFL-CIO blog, the comments are interesting as well.
The space the AFL-CIO created that it labels "blog" appears to me to be no different than the rest of the site: it's simply offering information (which is fine) but it prevents debate--a long-time hallmark of the AFL-CIO's culture that pre-dates the Sweeney Administration. No one can post comments. You're simply asked to absorb more propoganda and be interested in a one-way conversation.
Hat tip to Justin M for the tip.
Over at GigaOM Jackson West blogs about the new trend in office space, the coffee shop. It's always good to see articles like this, especially since I can send them to people who think I am crazy when I tell them where I work :-)
Of course it takes a little time for trends on the West Coast to make it to Central Florida.
Steve Rubel is moving over to Edelman, Jeremy Pepper was hired by Weber Shandwick...all kinds of interesting changes over the past few weeks.
Now who will hire Josh Hallett? :-)
Stephen Davies says that his blog helped him land an internship at LEWIS PR. Of course connecting with PR blogger/LEWIS employee Morgan McLintic helps out :-)
I think we'll be seeing much more of this over the next few years. I know if I was in charge of internships/hiring at a PR firm one of the first things I'd look for would be blogging/social media experience. Of course having your own blog is a great way to show that you 'get' this blogging thing :-)
Update: You can follow the student comments over at Marcomblog
A previous post about Publix Supermarkets titled The Un-Official Publix Blog has become somewhat of an 'Un-Official Publix Forum'. There are currently 16 comments with more coming in each week. The majority of the comments appear to be from Publix associates discussing the pros/cons of working for the the supermarket chain. A sample:
I have worked for both Publix and Winn-Dixie, they don't even compare. Publix takes care of those that want to work!! If your lazy, you'll stay making minimum wage. If you care and work hard, then you are rewarded with more hours and more pay. Name another retailer that pays there PART-TIMERS 4 retail bonuses and a Christmas bonus, plus vacation time. Don't even get me started on how well they take care of there full time associates. Stop complaining, you can't get everything on a silver platter, some things you have to earn.
All I know is that after the stock split. I will have 6 thousand share of stock. This stock was given to me for WORKING at Publix. It has cost me nothing. I know many people who have MORE!
Somehow these employees have found my blog and started the discussion among the comments. In the absence of an official or even an organized un-official forum, people will congregate at third-party locations to discuss issues that are near and dear to them.
My 'Does Publix Need a Blog' post is quite popular. On a daily basis there are a number of inbound searches from Google looking for a publix blog. The post has now started to get comments from Publix employees. One recent commenter said this:
A Publix blog would be great thing to have. It would allow associates to share valuable stories and information about the company and its operations. It would also be a means to communicate with upper level management on an informal basis. Publix is a large company, but it is also a family. I feel like a company blog would allow all of our associates to communicate with persons outside their individual stores. Another reason to have this sort of forum would be to get feedback and suggestions from our customers without the information first going through corporate. If the information were openly available, all associates could benefit from one customers suggestion, rather than on a store-by-store basis.
So many great points. Let's highlight them:
- allow associates to share valuable stories and information about the company and its operations
- a means to communicate with upper level management on an informal basis.
- a company blog would allow all of our associates to communicate with persons outside their individual stores
- get feedback and suggestions from our customers without the information first going through corporate
Continuing from the previous post on employee blog issues...
2. If You Didn't Own Your Posts Would You Blog?
This does not apply everywhere but imagine you were a brilliant mind in a knowledge industry such as programming, law, medicine, etc. You also have a definite career path in mind, i.e two more years at Firm A, three years at Firm B then off to your own start-up. Spending the rest of your life with a company is not for you. A blog is a great way to build your own brand. If you start a personal blog then you will always own your posts. If your initial blog is within your employer's blog framework then you don't own your posts. What do you do?
What happens when your employer says, "Hey Steve, you're really knowledgeable in the intellectual property law field why don't you blog about that on our corporate blog?" You can't really say no to your boss. If you start blogging do you hold back the really good stuff for your personal blog? Then what happens when you leave? (See previous)
Last week when I had the opportunity to meet with Constantin Basturea in Ft. Lauderdale, one of our conversation topics was about who owns the posts in a corporate blog? The obvious answer is the company since they are providing the blog platform and allowing an individual to blog on company time. Anybody have a different view on this?
This quick answer brought up some interesting points:
1. What Happens When an Employee Leaves the Company?
Does the company delete the blog and forfeit any links and commentary that may have been built up? In some cases, "there may be gold in them thar hills!" Is the employee allowed to post a 'goodbye' message with a link to their personal blog? Once an employee blog becomes fallow the traffic would slowly die off with the only future traffic the result of inbound searches or old links.
This example really only applies to individual blogs within a corporation rather then a collaborative blog written by a group of employees. Clif Bar recently faced this issue and said 'adios amigo' to an employee on their blog.
Another alternative? In the spirit of corporate indifference the person who replaces the original employee takes over the blog. Just imagine a telecom rep blog, there would be a new blogger every three months.
Many of the corporate blog policies address what an employee should and shouldn't blog about, but do not address what happens when an employee leaves.
While browsing the NewPR/Wiki I discovered that Constantin Basturea has also put together a list of corporate blogging policies that are available online; he started to collect them almost a year ago !
Fredrik Wacka has put together a list of corporate blogging policies that are available online. Looking to develop your own? You'll want to start by reviewing what some of these firms have already done.
Hat tip: Drew B
Jeremy Zawodny points to the official Yahoo! Employee Blog Guide (PDF Version).
Yahoo! believes in fostering a thriving online community and supports blogging as a valuable component of shared media. The Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines have been developed for Yahoos who maintain personal blogs that contain postings about Yahoo!’s business, products, or fellow Yahoos and the work they do. They are also applicable to Yahoos who post about the company on the blogs of others. The guidelines outline the legal implications of blogging about the company and also include recommended best practices to consider when posting about Yahoo!.
You will notice that the language covers comments on other blogs as well. The guidelines are broken down into two major areas: Legal Parameters and Best Practice Guidelines.
Jeremy says that he did not write the specific guidelines, but that Yahoo asked him and a few other existing Yahoo bloggers to provide some input.
This past Sunday the San Jose Mercury News had an article about Silicon Valley cafeterias (Slashdot post and comments). Google has the cafeteria that everybody envies.
What's the Google food like? Brett Lider has posted some photos of his recent lunches at Google. There is also an earlier photoset on Flickr of his Google lunches.
Stephen Baker over at Tech Beat talks about the new world of search and RSS:
This is new arena of search that companies such as PubSub and Technorati are creating. PubSub founder Bob Wyman calls it prospective search, and he predicts it will destablize many entrenched businesses. An example: Monster.com. If you tell PubSub that you're looking for a Wharton MBA who's fluent in Mandarin, and such a person posts those details on his or her blog, the search engine makes the match for you--with little need for a job-site intermediary.
My question is, why doesn't Monster.com just create their own RSS feed (or RSS tools)? You know like their competitors have.
Always Low Prices a blog the deals specifically with Wal-Mart has a post listing some Wal-Mart employee blogs. These are not 'official' employee blogs, but rather personal blogs by people who work at Wal-Mart.
Kevin warns that:
Most have little to do with WM, and many are rather vulgar, so don't read on if you're easily offended.
In the post he does pull pertinent quotes from a selection of blogs. It looks like he found some of these from doing a Technorati search for 'work at Wal-Mart'
For a bit of fun and what I loosely call research, I hit Technorati every few weeks and search for "I hate my job". Some very interesting results show up. Personal blogs from Blogger, Journalspace and AOL Journals make up the majority of the results.
Many of the posts are from younger individuals who blog about their disdain for their hourly wage jobs, others are from people that seem sincerely depressed with their lot in life.
This week's pick: Heather who hates working in the 'dreaded' gift shop at the Historical Society
These personal blogs by young employees probably represent the biggest PR issue for large corporations. Most 16 or 17 year olds don't realize that what they write in their 'personal journal' is being indexed by sites such as Technorati and can be found easily by their employers and journalists.
I have a friend that works at a large retail chain in the PR department. For the most part their company is very low on the radar in blogs. Recently though when I did a search in Technorati for the company name I came across a blog post from a teenager who had just started working their. In his post he detailed the training program and videos they watched as part of orientation. His comments were not very flattering. He doesn't work there anymore.
Earlier this week I pointed to the Mac Genius blog. The blog appeared to be written by a staff member of an Apple retail store.
The blog is no more. A quick check provides this:
Error: Journal has been deleted. If you are themacgenius, you have a period of 30 days to decide to undelete your journal.
Jack Cheng provides a link to the Bloglines cache in case you missed seeing the site.
BuzzHit has picked up that HotJobs is now offering RSS feeds of job search results.
Looks like there is not a big job market for bloggers :-)
A few interesting items in the comments from BuzzHit's post. First is that Scoble is working on getting Microsoft to provide a RSS feed for MS jobs. Second, there is a job site that provides RSS feeds for all job sites. Indeed.com is quick to point out on their blog that they have a RSS of Microsoft jobs.
Previous posts on RSS job feeds: Feedster Launches RSS Job Search & Job Search Results Via RSS
Engadget points to a new blog, Genius-Like which is supposedly written by a Mac Genius (Apple's Retail Stores Uber-Geeks). The blog is new, only four posts. The most recent post: Conscience fades away is an Apple PR person's dream :-)
There's something to be said for honesty in repair work. While the majority of the work done in stores is within warranty, there is the occasional out-of-warranty computer. Let's say an iMac G4. I put a couple discs into it, no response. Clearly the superdrive has failed. I tell this to the customer, and then go to look up the price. I find the part number, and the price. My jaw drops. I try to close my mouth before telling the customer, "It looks like it's going to be about six hundred dollars for a replacement superdrive." Never mind that you can buy a faster drive on Newegg for $69, you have to have this one because it has an apple printed on its label.
Or how about a G4 tower - "There's $135 labor for installing that replacement logic board." Never mind this takes about six minutes, but it's officially a "level 2" replacement. I wouldn't feel very good if I found out my auto mechanic was charging $1300 per hour.
This blog will probably not be long for this world, considering Apple's recent blog related lawsuits.
Perhaps this blogger can help Seth Godin with his Mac issues.
Update: Church of the Customer also has some thoughts about improving the Genius Bar
Over at IAOC Blog Philippe Borremans has a post about 'Blogging at IBM.'
At this moment we have about 2800 internal weblogs (on a total worldwide population of about 330.000 IBM'ers.) with about 12700 entries. About 200 blogs have more than 10 posts on them...
On the other hand, editors can come from any part of the company; engineers, communications, research, software... you name it.
My sister-in-law has worked for IBM for over 30 years. I'll have to ask her about any experiences she has had with internal blogs at Big Blue.
Neville Hobson has some more thoughts on the subject and noticed that Philippe's blog mentioned podcasting at IBM.
I recently talked to a friend whose company is considering converting their current intranet over to a wiki. I loved the idea. What's great about his situation is that the technical folks are on board as well. When I show people how a wiki works one of the things I always talk about is the internal uses for wikis and blogs.
There is a great article over at Gilbane about Blogs & Wikis in enterprise applications. One of the many key quotes:
...being dismissive of blogs and wikis because of how they are most often used, and talked about, today is a mistake (PCs and web browsers werent considered as serious enterprise tools at first either). What is important is how they could be used.
This is a major issue I see quite a bit. A PR or marketing person I talk to goes back to IT and asks about the utilization of a blog or a wiki and they get the cold shoulder.
This is also true in the web development world. If a web firm or IT person does not understand a technology or a tool they dismiss it or try to convince the client to use another solution. That is when I usually step in for the client and ask, "Is your reluctance to use this solution based upon some sort of research or experience, or do you just not know how to do it?" Almost every time, it is becuase the IT department/developer knows nothing about it, and does not want to take the time to investigate it.
Continue reading "Blogs and Wikis for Intranets and Project Management" »
Civil Unrest has come up with some sample Blogger job descriptions. With the rise of blogging, and the adoption by corporations how long will it be till we see job listings such as this?
Public Relations Blogger
Interact with top management and the media. Communicate the company image inside and outside the company. Help the company to learn from and respond to queries and comments about it.
Development/Quality Assurance (QA) Blogger
Interact with developers, QA, project managers and middle managers. Help document and communicate best practices within projects and groups. Maintain technical level communication between development teams of business partners and outsourced projects.
There are a few more samples so read the whole post.
Tom Murphy has some more tips for employees and employers about blogging.
You can check out the other posts I have written employee blogs.
Robert Scoble had dinner with Mark Jen, the Google employee fired for the content of his blog, and posts some thoughts . Robert lets us get to know the Mark a bit better and offers some tips he picked up about employee blogs:
1) Know about strategic dates that are coming up that might make managers or employees more skitish or uptight than usual (Google's pre-IPO employees will be able to sell another round of stock this month).
2) Make sure you really understand the culture of the company you are joining before writing openly about that company. An Apple employee was also at the table at dinner tonight and agreed that the expectations around blogs were quite different at Apple than at Microsoft. If you don't understand that difference you can really get into trouble.
There are four more tips, so go read the whole post.
NPR had a story today about bloggers who have been fired by their employers.
Can blogging about your work get you canned? NPR's Eric Weiner reports on people who have been fired from their jobs because they maintain Web logs about their work. The firings raise questions about the rights of bloggers.
You can listen to the full story online. Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of Sky is one of the interviews.
Journalspace has a post with a list of companies that have fired individuals for blogging.
1.) Delta Air Lines
2.) Wells Fargo
3.) Ragen MacKenzie
4.) Starbucks
5.) Microsoft (some say yay, some say nay)
6.) Friendster
7.) the Houston Chronicle
8.) the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
9.) Nunavut Tourism (Canada)
10.) the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University
11.) Maricopa County Superior Court of Arizona Self Help Center and Library
12.) Mike DeWine, US Senator (R-Ohio)
13.) the Durham Herald-Sun
14.) Kerr-McGee
15.) ESPN
16.) Apple (according to this blog entry AND this article)
17.) Statistical Assessment Service (DC nonprofit)
18.) Minnesota Public Radio
19.) The Hartford Courant
20.) the International Olympic Committee (barred athletes from blogging during the Olympics last summer)
21.) Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (?)
22.) the National Basketball Association (NBA)
I would like to see a reference to the blog/blogger that was fired. Some are well known, such as Ellen Simonetti aka Queen of Sky and Delta Airlines.
