Today at lunch I met with quite a few colleagues to discuss Naked Conversations. We had a fantastic group of individuals representing many industries: legal, public relations, television, telecom, internet, email marketing, sports, entertainment, information technology, marketing, and publishing!
Not bad for a first showing!
Most of us had fully read Naked Conversations, some were part way through it, and a few had implemented some of the material from the book. My colleagues can feel free to chip in if they would like, but here’s my impression of the luncheon, feedback on the book, as well as blogging in general:
- Blogging may not be for all companies. If you are not going to be transparent, you may do more harm to your company than good.
- Your customers are going to have conversations with or without you. Why not try to control the direction of that conversation by being the first to blog about it? A message forum waits for your clients to ask. A blog is your opportunity to comment before it’s asked.
- Blogging policies are useless. When employees blog, adding an inappropriate post is no less damaging than saying it in an email, over the phone, or conversation. Employees are accountable for what they say through any medium. If you are the blogger… when in doubt, ask! (Example: I didn’t ask permission from the group if I could list their names, companies, comments, etc., so I’m not going to here.)
- Resources were a concern and a topic of conversation. Where’s the time? What’s the strategy? What’s the message?
- It’s easy to blog, but you must learn how to leverage the technologies behind your blog… RSS, links, trackbacks, pings, comments, etc.
- What is the return on investment (ROI) if blogging is deployed as a strategy? This was a healthy discussion. The consensus was that it’s no longer an option where a return on investment should be evaluated… it’s a demand and expectation from your customers to open these lines of communication. Otherwise, they’ll go elsewhere!
If you’re a business, marketing or technology professional in the Indianapolis region and would like to join us for our Book Club, register at I Choose Indy! and submit your story on why you’ve chosen Indianapolis. We’ll put you in our distribution email with the name of the next book to read and when we’re going to follow up on it.
On a side note, Shel Israel had a trip overseas canceled and is open to some consulting. As he puts it, I’ll Consult for Mortgage Money. Special thanks to Mr. Israel for his book and for inspiring folks here in Indianapolis to dig into this opportunity for ourselves and our clients. We owe much more than the cost of the books!
Special thanks to Pat Coyle for his generosity in organizing our first get-together and Myra for hosting our club and providing a wonderful lunch!
PS: Also, thanks to my daughter, we were late to class registration. And thanks to my employer, who cut me some slack for the afternoon!
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