Social Computing at Work

Roo Reynolds at IBM has the job title 'Metaverse Evangelist'. He's also very switched on about social media, networks and virtual worlds and on a recent post to his blog he has posted the IBM Social Computing guidelines.

Reading through these make a lot of sense and since I have had some rather dire, sensationalist junk (surface) mail over the past few weeks that is advocating draconian policing of (and even banning of access to) social networking in the work place, I think it is about time we tempered this approach with a little common sense. And that's what you'll find in the IBM guidelines. By the bucket load.

For any business organisation of any size, don't kid your selves, they are covnersations taking place on the internet about you. Your best approach should is to be an active, open and transparent part of these conversations and to use your educated and informed staff to do this. Ignoring the conversations is a lost opportunity to reach out to your customer base.

Social media used as an open channel to your customer base helps you to do something that I advocate as an essential element of any business communications strategy: be in your market the same way your customers are.

PH

Blogvertising

Last week I did an internal awareness session on the (mis)use of Social medial to deliver brand/product advocacy and advertising messages. The concept that companies may be crowd sourcing the writing of this kind of copy into blogs, forums and other social networks – including those that aren't your own - was met with some scepticism and a (healthy) amount of disdain. Then I happened to buy a copy of the February 2008 edition of Wired magazine and found an article by and about someone who does exactly this: is paid by advertisers to blog (positively) about products and services. You can find it on page 58 entitled ' Hawker Media: Advertisers paid me to blog about them. Is that so wrong?' See. Told ya!

Pale