{"id":516,"date":"2009-04-05T11:46:34","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T17:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/000516"},"modified":"2009-04-05T12:24:33","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T18:24:33","slug":"boulder-new-media-breakfast-notes-a-presentation-by-john-jantsch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/516","title":{"rendered":"Boulder New Media Breakfast Notes: A Presentation by John Jantsch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went to the second Boulder New Media Breakfast<\/a> last week (this will be a monthly event, but this particular talk was delayed by a week due to weather).\u00a0 It was interesting–a 15 minute networking session over bagels and coffee, then an hour presentation.\u00a0 The catch is that it started at 7:45 in the morning–so you still had a full day left when you were done.<\/p>\n

It was an interesting presentation and crowd and I think I’ll attend in the future.\u00a0 It was a much smaller crowd (30-40 people) and\u00a0 far more focused on marketing than the typical group I attend (New Tech<\/a>, BJUG<\/a>, CU Colloquia<\/a> [which incidentally is having an interesting talk on “leveraging social networks in information systems” on Apr 7<\/a>]).\u00a0 I talked to a couple of people who were PR folks interested in technology, which isn’t my typical networking group.\u00a0 I also talked to a fellow named Joe, who often asks hard questions, but always wears the great hat, at the Boulder Denver New Tech meetup.\u00a0 I also got a chance to talk to Dave Taylor (of elm<\/a> and Ask Dave Taylor<\/a> fame [who answered a tough question well enough<\/a> it got emailed around to me])–it was interesting to talk to him about his move from software developer to strategic business consultant.<\/p>\n

After the networking, we all sat down for a presentation on reputation management by John Jantsch<\/a>.\u00a0 The following are my scrawled notes from that presentation (any sentences that start with I<\/em> are my thoughts).<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lots of people use the internet to do research for products and services.\u00a0 36% of people think more positively of companies with a blog.\u00a0 I don’t know how many people think less positively of such companies.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a company, says John, you need to have a policy on digital conversations.\u00a0 Such conversations with customers will happen, so you need a policy, and HR is the right department to produce one.\u00a0 He discussed three types of conversation: person to person (like Dell customer service reps answering questions on forums), thought leaders (like a blog from a industry heavy weight who happens to be employed by IBM) and company communication (like an official blog from the USPS).<\/p>\n

John also mentioned that it may make sense to, in the same way that sales folks sign non compete agreements, to have\u00a0 customer service reps that interact through social media sign such agreements.\u00a0 After all, if someone is the face of the company, and then they switch jobs, do they (and their new company) have a right to all the followers on twitter that were acquired through the original company’s hours?\u00a0 Who owns the facebook profile?\u00a0 I never have liked non competes, but the idea follows logically from the personalization of customer service on company time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another concept that is important is transparency.\u00a0 Given the proliferation of digital communication, transparency into a company is here–now the question is, how can you influence it.\u00a0 The best way to influence it is to host your conversations as much as possible.\u00a0 In addition, be proactive in responding to issues (ie, customer complaints).<\/p>\n

As a company, you need to have coherence in your branding across your internet presence.\u00a0 Just as the website used to be ignored 10 years ago, facebook profiles are now often ignored and grow up from the ranks.\u00a0 This leads to lack of message and branding consistency.<\/p>\n

Now John moved on to cover some tools that are useful.\u00a0 Most of the tools are free, but he did mention a few paid services.\u00a0 The following are free alert services that help you search for keywords in various areas of the internet:<\/p>\n