Blogging in My Worklife and Personal Info

The first thing that struck me in the articles was “You’re likely experienced in your field with a few tricks up your sleeve and ideas in your hat that you’re excited to share.” (Radian6, 2011)  I do have things to share at work.  Today my first meeting was updating a Wiki for Employee Engagement and was interesting.  My second meeting was with my peers about a new process for approvals during purchasing equipment.  I had to leave before the meeting was complete, but we were already 30 minutes over our scheduled time.  My third meeting was with another group of peers about the same thing!  My final meeting of the day included some of the same people from the earlier meetings and now some management.  This meeting also lasted longer than it should have.  A blog might be a good way to document the process without 25 people spending more than 5 hours in meetings discussing it!

The community that would be helped from a blog about the process above has a tool we use called MyServices.  This tool encompasses many groups and is the starting point for many end users from all over the country.  There are many people that use this tool as their primary source of work.  All of these people would appreciate a source of providing feedback other than the group mailbox that we are told to use.  The people responsible for the mailbox have a bad reputation for responding, so I don’t think they would be the right people for maintaining the blog, but there are a lot of people interested in the tool.

Having a calendar of blockpoints and outages for MyServices would be very beneficial too.  If the change requests that would be included in the blockpoint information, people would be happy.  One of their programmers takes a lot of time off, maybe if we could have that posted on the blog, it would be good.

Reference:

Radian6. (2011, November). Four Steps to Creating Content for a Social Media Community.

Just because I think this is an awesome organization and they should be a part of the groundswell:  http://www.specialolympicswashington.org/

My daughter, Stephanie (with the Gold), at the 2012 North Puget Sound Bowling Tournament with her friend Sarah.

Me at the Puyallup Fair last year feeding the camels.

To Drive...Or Not to Drive...That is the Question!!

This is only the second blog I have ever posted.  I claim no expertise, and I am by far, the amateur of all amateurs, for sure!  

One doesn't have to be an expert in social media to understand that there is one constant within any social media platform.  Community!  As our reading suggests, "this is where it all begins" (radian 6, 2011).  It begins with one person who has a message to pass along to others who share a similar interest in a topic.


Photo is courtesy of ProBlogger.com

 

Soon we begin to see the community grow.  As the community becomes larger, the content begins to change and shape new and interesting discussions.  Both radian 6 and ProBlogger.com suggest becoming an active participant in your own blog.  What do you suppose would happen to the blog if the curator didn't drive...Let's say the driver ended up in the back seat as a silent observer to their audience?  Can the blog still be successful?  If a small company (10 employees) has created the blog, how important is it that each employee engage in the conversation and reach out the their community?
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/28/8-tips-for-building-community-on-your-blog/

www.radian6.com

Old and Still Learning After all these Years!

Okay, call me; out of touch, old fashioned, stuck in my own world and lost is the social media world.
I had no idea that so many people blog and use social media and that so many companies are listening to people. I mean who has this amount of time and energy to post and blog? Why are so many people blogging? So many questions popped into my mind.
Even more, I had no idea that companies have entire organizations that seek out the information from social media and decipher that data into usable information for marketing, sales and improving on their products. Now, having said that, I was a little lost when I started reading the article, nine rules of social media. I'm thinking to myself, what are they talking about, "setting up a listening program"? As I continued to read more of the article it became apparent that I was clueless about how incredibly huge social media is. Okay then I started "getting it".
Listening in social media is about "more than just putting the proverbial ear to the door (radian6, 2010). It's about having a listening program within your company to listen to everything people are saying about products and services. There are three rules of listening; refine, refine refine,
meaning you should make adjustments to your listening program's strategy. Process what you hear and act upon it. Don't ever stop listening, social media is here to stay.
Not only are we listening to social media, now there talking about measuring social media. "Measure what matters, not what everyone else is measuring".  What, you don't even have to talk face to face with people to get engaged! Sharing is caring! And even rules and guidelines on how to engage using policy and guidelines. Wow, this social media is a whole different world... My eyes are wide open!

In summary I've been enlightened about social media and what a large part listening has to do with it.

http://www.radian6.com/how-we-help/social-listening/










Reference
Radian6. (2011). Four steps to creating content for a social media community. Community Ebook, Retrieved from http://www.radian6.com/how-we-help/social-listening/

Build, Refine, Listen

 Both of these articles had a lot of great information that will be useful as we head into the rest of the semester and create our projects. From the Radian 6 article “Four Steps to Blogging” I selected “Build a Content Strategy” because it related to information I’ve received in other classes. “This is where it all begins. Much like in preparing to run a print ad you would know your message, budget, call to action, media placement and launch timing, content needs some preliminary, upfront thinking to be effective. Content strategy plays a vital role in the curation and creation of useful, applicable content.” (Radian 6 p. 3) With other projects I’ve done I’ve always come up with a game plan that covered how I was going to accomplish my tasks and what those tasks even were. Sitting down to launch a blog seems like such a huge undertaking but breaking it up into pieces that I already understand and relate to clarifies where a to find a starting point.

 Looking at the article covering “Nine Rules of Social Media” highlighted the need to “Refine, refine, refine”. If you are already running a business that is successful you definitely need to go back and look at what you have done in the past and what did/didn’t work. Make sure you are looking at information that matters to your business. Review how you measure each part of your business, if there is a better way that has shown up as you work make it part of the process. Don’t drown yourself with information or else you’ll spend more time trying to handle it than your company. “Don’t feel obligated to listen to it all—sometimes that’s just not possible” (Radian 6 p. 4) Give that task to another person who will ensure you get what is important and won’t weigh you down with the inconsequential.

Lastly, “Don’t Ever Stop Listening”. This is a massive part of the Groundswell movement we are studying. As your customers voice their needs and concerns you have to be there to take part in the conversations. “There are no tips and tricks for this one. Social media listening (or monitoring, whatever more apt title you want to put on it) is a non-stop endeavor. It’s fairly obvious here for the long haul, which means you need to create a listening strategy that lives in the land of the ongoing.” (Radian 6 p. 5) Figure out what that will look like for your company or blog. Does it mean a form letter that you can pull and personalize as needed? It might mean setting aside a particular block of time to answer forums and fan mail. Where it is financially prudent, you could even hire a person whose sole job is answering your customers concerns and questions.  Don’t neglect your customers or readers, without them you might as well not even post your product.

Radian 6. (n.d.-a). Four Steps to Blogging by Radian6.pdf - Google Drive. Four Steps to Blogging. Retrieved January 29, 2013, from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B27ASwUxPtVROFY1MUV4NzUwOU0/edit

Radian 6. (n.d.-b). Nine Rules of Social Media Radian6.pdf - Google Drive. Retrieved January 29, 2013, from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B27ASwUxPtVRa0lDajI4Ym9yaUk/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B27ASwUxPtVRa0lDajI4Ym9yaUk/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B27ASwUxPtVROFY1MUV4NzUwOU0/edit