“Speakers & Speeches: Social media, Friend or Foe?”

Here are the notes I took on,Speakers & Speeches: Social Media, Friend or Foe? – October 24, 2008. This was a panel discussion led by the CEO of Ragan Communications, Mark Ragan, about social media being incorporated into his organization.

Why should we blog in corporate America?

• Customer’s are having conversations and we need to listen to them.
• When we listen to them, we are building relationships and become “passionate evangelists” and part of our community.
• Accessibility is key. We need to be accessible to audiences of all ages.
• We need to have a place for people to talk on “our playground” and be authentic.

Who is writing the blog?

• Employees that are in the trenches, so to speak. They have the details consumers are interested in and then the CEO can blog ever once in a while about overall concepts.

What if someone writes something bad about us on our own blog?

• There will be certain guidelines and restrictions enforced making that a non-issue.
• Also, you don’t have control over your customers, so this way you can hear a problem and deal with it instantly.
• It is in the companies best interest to remain “transparent”, to show the culture and process of the organization to the public.

What is the ROI, or bottom line?

• Understanding customers is priceless.
• Marriott hotels made $10 billion through blogging.
• This is an open-source technology so it is basically free.

What about people using social media at work?

• Social media is good during work hours. It is a form of collaboration and work life integration.
• Work place policies will be implemented and strongly enforced.

Where should we be in 5 years as far as social media goes?

• We need to be experimenting with new technology all the time to be ahead of the game.
• We must be adaptable to new technology and open to it.
• Communications people need to work on building relationships with IT people in their company.
• We can learn from our children and how they use social media.

February 20, 2010. Social Media Monitoring, Topic of the Week.