Tracking your buzz is really something that is becoming more and more important over and will continue to increase in importance as time goes on. Everything is going social right now and messages fly around the web at a million miles by hour. In order to manage your reputation you need to track the right things, so here’s a list of 10 things that you absolutely need to be monitoring.
Christophe Kenton writes on Marketonomy: Have you ever noticed how it sometimes takes an epiphany to reveal the reality of an obvious truth? Like, I don’t know, sitting in traffic in a $60k SUV burning $3.50 a gallon and, even though you’ve sat in the same gridlock every day for years, on this day you happen to notice the endless lines of single-occupant vehicles, the single half-empty carpool lane, and for the first time it dawns on you with sparkling clarity the breathtaking stupidity of modern life? Yeah, that feeling. I had a moment like that yesterday. Not during my commute, but during a panel discussion about blogging and digital media technology.
I was part of a panel for the Backstage Pass series of industry discussions at Pillsbury Winthrop in Palo Alto, moderated by Tamara Ireland Stone of Rainmaker Communications. Though the discussion was highly practical, focusing on the challenges and pitfalls of new information channels like blogging, I fell into my usual routine of veering off into the social and philosophical context of the debate. While it’s important from a business perspective to understand the immediate impact of disruptive technologies, I’m always interested in seeing the flow of the bigger picture—in this case, how the control of information is becoming distributed, how consumers are learning new skills to filter and process data, how businesses are having to learn how to shift from polished monologue to broader dialog with their audience.
The old paradigm of corporate communications that businesses understand—the one-way broadcasting of a tightly designed and controlled message—is giving way at an accelerating pace to a chaotic and uncontrolled market discussion. Bulletin boards, chat rooms, blogs and list groups allow consumers to share information and influence public perceptions about companies and products, and businesses are quickly being relegated to just another participant in the conversation. Some companies are actively engaged in the discussion, some are trying out various schemes for influencing the dialog, but most are just standing on the sidelines scratching their heads.
So while we panel experts were doling out our sage advice about how businesses can better understand and engage the blogosphere it suddenly occurred to me why this is such an immense challenge for so many businesses. I always just assumed it was about control. Businesses want to minimize risk; control is a powerful tool in minimizing risk; and the new channels of communication take much of the control away from business. Panic ensues. But my epiphany was about something much more obvious and fundamental.
The advice that has become standard among blogging experts is that any business engaging in a dialog with their market must be authentic, open and responsive. You can’t just hire a PR agency or a freelancer to write your blog—you’ll be defrauded or disregarded, or both, in an Internet minute. Companies must put executives on the frontline who can engage intelligently, responsibly and passionately about what the company does. This is an obvious challenge for companies that have a contentious relationship with their market, a hyper-secretive culture, an impatience for dealing with questions, or a style of business that might not stand up well under public scrutiny. But it’s also a serious challenge for companies beleaguered by a far more common vice: uncertainty.
And this, finally, was my penetrating revelation into the obvious. Why do so many businesses fear the give-and-take dialog that is the currency of our new communications technology? Not primarily because of the lack of control—that only scares those who were good at controlling their image in the first place, an elite few who are now engaged in tactics to control their image in the new paradigm. What far more businesses fear is the lack of a consistent, cohesive and compelling story–much less business operation–they can be confident in sharing and defending clearly to win the hearts and minds of their market. After all, it’s easy to package, polish and publish a perfect message for mass consumption. But to embody that message as a business, to understand its meaning and its implications throughout every commercial function, to champion that message and to believe it, that takes something that most businesses just haven’t spent a whole lot of timing working out.
The market for enterprise social networking software tools is growing, with suppliers such as Traction joining the likes of Socialtext in providing purpose-built tools for organisations that want to replace unstructured communication tools, such as e-mail, with something more sophisticated. They offer the granularity of control and the permissioning and workflow structure of other enterprise-scale software products.
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UK delivery company eCourier is using Traction’s Teampage project management blog software. The web-based despatch firm has been using the system to speed the development process of its bespoke, mission-critical IT systems between teams around the world.
Jay Bregman, chief technology officer at eCourier, said, “We are a small, cash-strapped new company, so every penny we spent on supporting the development process was important. We started with a five-user trial of Teampage, but now people are really used to this kind of interaction. And I have found it more collaborative and easier to use than Microsoft Sharepoint or Project software.
“Our developers in the UK, Italy and Germany now have a consistent view of development projects regardless of language barriers that is searchable, and provides invaluable background for new starters. And we have found we can customise it as much as we want.”
Sun Microsystems’ Mike Dillon joins blogging CEO Jonathan Schwartz and becomes the first Fortune 500 General Counsel to blog via the legal thing…
Via BlogWrite for CEOs.
Blogging is how CEOs and other top-level execs can quickly and easily position themselves–and their companies–as thought leaders in highly competitive markets. Read the whys and hows in ChangeThis :: Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging.
Via ProductMarketing.com.
Yahoo! just launched Yodel Anecdotal, their first corporate level blog on WordPress. The first post, by Niki Dugan, is here.
Yahoo already has a number of product level blogs, some on Wordpress and others on Yahoo 360.
Via Techcrunch.
