You know how to talk, but do you know how to listen?

Let’s face it, the average communications professional knows how to talk.  Through press releases, internal blast emails, intranet articles, and through things like traditional marketing and publications.  This is what many of us learned in school, spent years practicing and putting into action in the corporate world.  This is what we all had become used to until folks started talking back to us. 

The game has changed across the board for those of us responsible for social computing initiatives.  Sure, all of the above efforts still exist and have their place, but now there is more to add to the plate.  Who’s responsibility is it now to listen?  Simple answer?  All of us.

Now, when you put out a press release, odds are someone is talking about it on a blog somewhere on the www. Put out an internal blast email and someone is blogging about it on your intranet (assuming they  are fully versed in your social computing guidelines).  Write an intranet article and (hopefully) your stakeholders are commenting, discussing, debating, working together in raising awareness and strategizing toward the future.  Post marketing materials on YouTube or www and the public will surely comment.  You get my point…

Do we all know how to listen to what our stakeholders are saying?  Are you tempted to delete bad YouTube comments?  Is this wise to do?  Are you unsure about how to engage and react to criticism and constructive discourse?  Do you even realize this is sometimes all your stakeholders want/need to feel confident about your brand – some respect and intelligent discourse?  Does your organizational culture support and enable this kind of work? 

It should.

IBM Social Computing Guidelines

Three years after we released our Blogging Guidelines, and once again created through IBM employee blog and wiki collaboration, the new IBM Social Computing Guidelines have just been published.  As participation in social platforms has grown by IBMers, both inside the company and out, it became clear that having disconnected Blogging Guidelines, Podcasting Guidelines, Wiki Guidelines etc. was no longer an effective way to share best practices.  These all needed to be pulled together into one document covering all of the current, and hopefully some future, platform publishing practices.  Self publishing is simply that, self publishing.  It made sense to consolidate.

This was a fantastic collaborative effort and the result is, in my mind, a reflection of some forward thinking. IBMers are on Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, and are on a wide variety of internal tools as well, publishing at rapid pace.  Having a clear and understandable set of guidelines will only help us all to understand this new freedom as we connect with the world.  My thanks to all involved in the creation of this new document.

Some favorite blogs…

I guess this may be unnecessary but, I just wanted to point out a few of my favorite blogs – all of which can be found in the right nav of this blog home page.  Kudos to the not-updated-enough Devastationalist Manifesto.  My hands-down favorite.  Philip Shelley is a mad genius and fantastic writer.  Kudos as well to All Us Christensens, a ‘mommy-blog’ comprised of brilliant photography and wise and well written words.  A new favorite is Post Secret which may be a bit painful to read and consume, but gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling that reality (sic) TV never does.  Lastly, a shout out to Wonderwebby who creates blogs of a personal flavor sprinkled with an insightful admission that yes, many of us juggle between work and family. 

I may find myself being pulled deeper and deeper into the blogosphere as the coming months unfold.  Based on the amazing sites listed above, I welcome it.