ICTlogy

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session IX

Debate: The Handbook of the blog in the enterprise.
Chairs: César Ramos

Genís Roca

We should focus on what is an enterprise and not on blogs. Do we agree on what do we understand by “enterprise”? An enterprise is:

• the acknowledged and legal way to have a personal adventure.
• A temporal union of people around an interest
• An interest group
• An institution: a big telecom is like a ministry, and a ministry like an enterprise.

There are many enterprises: working for your own or employed, with or without employees, with or without workmates, with or without leadership, with or without partners, etc.

Blogging in the enterprise is easy when you’re alone (e.g. freelance) or part of a network and with small decision-taking capacity. If you’re a big decision-taker in a big institution, blogging is more difficult.

The problem is that most GDP and employment is generated at big institutions. So, blogs and GDP and employment do not (so far) go hand in hand. And more, while freelances are 2.0 and explain how do they do things, and the others explain what they did achieve and their version is the number of the inflation rate, which is the number that counts.

Real value of blogs: do they affect the ROI? EBITDA? power quota? value of shares? brand? customer satisfaction? …really?

Enterprises need to improve performance. If blogs play this game, great. If not, forget about them.

The bigger the enterprise, the deafer it is to customer “noise”.

Alberto Ortiz de Zárate Tercero

So, what’s a blog?

• A tool
• A communication medium
• A lifestyle
• A participative social action
• A part of a biggest thing: the blogosphere
• A selling platform?
• An advertising platform?

A blog is a way to listen and talk with the network (not to the network)

The blog can be used to listen and know about your:

• Customer habits
• Campaigns
• Branding
• Reputation
• Notoriety
• Competence
• Ways to innovate and improve
• Authority
• Ways to listen inside the enterprise

The conversation is ubiquitous.

Once you’ve listened, now it’s time to speak and share: listen, reflect, link. Some uses:

• Viral campaings
• Microniches
• Public Relationships
• Communication medium
• Show authority
• Leverage notority
• Create communities
• Team building
• Innovate with the user
• …but not intended for selling

The keys to success… in a World that’s changed:

• Be connected
• Openness to the World
• Weave networks
• Become an attractive place
• Control is not relevant
• Having is not important, but linking

My reflections

I don’t think the size is that important in the reason behind having or not a blog (to impact the ROI, etc.), but:

• Their dependence on the customer’s opinion
• Their degree of competition within the sector
• Their dependence on innovation for survival

Two examples: IBM and Dell are increasingly becoming more 2.0. They are big, but depend on the customer, on innovation and the market is really competitive. On the other hand, big banks, big oil enterprises or the Administration, are almost monopolies (or oligopolies), do not depend on the customer and do not depend on innovation.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi adds to my arguments another reason: dependence on brand and reputation.

Genís Roca adds that this might be more a cultural issue (i.e. we are native digitals and think openness as a natural and a necessary thing) than a business valid argument. Maybe, if decision-takers happen to know and learn and perceive this cultural change and see how it really affects their firm, maybe then they’ll shift towards 2.0, but…

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