Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World – Enterprise stream Part 2
I’m at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I’m chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.
Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009
Jeremy Mitchell: Editor-in-chief of nowwearetalking.com.au, Telstra’s blog
Driven by Phil Burgess, who chose the site name.
Wanted to:
* Get conversation going on key telecommunications issues
* Drive interest in and demand for high-speed broadband
* Bypass the media (Telstra gets more newspaper coverage than the next 5 companies combined, but it’s often the wrong coverage)
Lessons from Broadband Australia campaign:
* Hard to activate non-online audiences
* Make it easy to take action
* Set targets and goals
* Thank people for their efforts
Have launched YouTube channel, with 78 videos up. Videos will also have text version and podcast.
1.7 million visitors per year, of which half are Telstra staff.
Web 2.0:
* There are no set rules
* Diversify content to use all channels
* Don’t be afraid of criticism
* Need support form the CEO down
Need to admit you’re wrong when you’re wrong. Are contacting people in business units when there are comments reflecting poor service.
People are talking about Telstra on other websites, it’s better if it’s on our site.
SUMMARY
Employees can be passionate advocates
Rewards outweigh the risk
Exciting new way to engage with stakeholders
Wayne Hughes, Virtual Medical Centre.com
Bring together content from 11,000 specialists.
Started with 20 oncologists, now have two-thirds of oncologists involved. Password protected access by doctors.
Do PGC – Professionally Generated Content.
Establish doctor mentor networks.
Key Strategies:
* Split your audience into unique groups
* Actively participate with each group
* Be responsive to their needs
* You want their criticism
FINAL PANEL
Wayne Hughes (WH)
Laurel Papworth, World Communities (LP)
Chris Knowles, Heinz (CK)
Andrew Mitchell (AM)
LP: Companies are either afraid to put their toes in the water, or going hell-for-leather. What happens behind the firewall will inform what you do on the other side of the firewall. That enables you to work out whether your social media guidelines are working.
CK: External community is different from your internal community. If I’ve done it internally, it gives me credibility and people have faith can get it right. Internally you don’t have anonymity (we made a conscious decision to go this way so don’t get flame wars) but can’t do that externally, where people choose what they do.
AM: Our internal experience wouldn’t help us with our external blogging, if we did that. They’re very different spaces.
LP: Your staff may be going onto forums if they can’t do it internally. It’s a credit to NAB that it’s staff are passionate enough to go onto forums to correct wrong impressions, but because they don’t have the experience from doing it internally, they don’t know how to do it well.
CK: There aren’t a lot of people mentioning Heinz on the web. We can find conversations that are happening, such as environmental perspectives on tuna, but it’s not going to be massive.
CK: A passionate group is bottle feeding. But it’s too delicate a topic for us to embrace. Some people started a thread on that on our forum, and we had to close it, but not before the Breastfeeding Association accused us of planting the conversation.
LP: We look at what tools are appropriate for different issues. People need to learn how to blog. Wikis require a more sophisticated understanding. We’d often start with easier tools such as blogs. However they don’t have an in-built audience.
LP: I hate IT departments. They block so much, and it’s often not necessary. In one case a local government used del.icio.us because there wasn’t the ability to do it internally, which made the IT department turn this capability on.
CK: People will only install their own servers or do things for themselves if they don’t feel their needs are being served.
Show of hands – a few more people think that IT departments block Web 2.0 initiatives than support them.
CK: We used to run geek sessions, just to help people understand basics of technology and online tools.
