The Naked Org
One of the Web2.0 fears we often hear about is the loss of control. Control over brand. Control over PR messaging. Control over content. Etc, etc. The fallacy in all of this, of course, is that we never really had control to begin with - and with social media, indeed, we have even less control (as defined by the old guard, anyway).
A seminal work on this concept was the Cluetrain Manifesto. A real call to arms for a new way to engage with customers/stakeholders. And, it was released way back in the pre-Web2.0 stone age of 1999! Go buy the book now (or download the free version at least). Part of their message is that everyone is already talking about you and so you might as well get engaged in the conversation. That is, you have no hope of controlling the chaos itself, but you might as well control your reaction/participation with the chaos...
Robert Scoble's Naked Conversations follows along the same lines, though is somewhat more blog specific. Even the more encyclopedic Wikinomics gets into the philosophical side of "naked" interactions, distributed engagement, etc, before diving into tactics and tools.
Further, Wired's March 07 cover story on "radical transparency" in the corporate world was inspiring. Though, sadly, the association community is way behind - in part due to our sluggish rate of change.
Heck, I was literally called a jackass and an idiot on live national news. Certainly, not part of our organizational talking points/plan... First thing I did was post the video feed to my blog... It's a long story, but I definitely came out on top ;)
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Comments
Jason, I totally agree! Executives that are scared of opening their brand to criticism fail to realize that negative comments are happening anyway... it's better to embrace that feedback and have the opportunity to address it on your site than to turn a blind eye to it because it's on someone else's Web site.
Those folks are also missing out on an opportunity...
Consider the old saying about word of mouth - a positive comment only gets said to handful of people, while a negative comment is said to several.
Today, all that commentary is documented and searchable for years to come! Executives should embrace the opportunity to defend themselves alongside that feedback. It's the great equalizer that brand managers didn't have available to them in verbal word of mouth.
Posted by: Cecilia Satovich | November 7, 2007 5:23 PM
All those book are for sale here at BlogWorld. So far Cluetrain and Naked Conversations have both been mentioned in sessions. Cluetrain might be my reading during my flight back east.
Posted by: Matt Baehr | November 8, 2007 12:28 AM