IBM's social computing guidelines

Source: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/top_brands/source/3.htm

One of the interesting topics this week is corporate social media policy. The number of people participates in online communities, such as blogging, virtual world, and social media, are increasing every day, and chances are, of course, your employees are the ones who are active in online communities. One of the controversial issue is how should business deal with this growing communication technology. IBM is one of the company that has a written policy about how should its employees, called IBMers, comment about IBM in their blog, social media page, and other online communities.

The list below is IBM's 12 concise social computing guidelines:
[http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html]

IBM Social Computing Guidelines: Executive Summary

1. Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines.
2. IBMers are personally responsible for the content they publish on blogs, wikis or any other form of user-generated media. Be mindful that what you publish will be public for a long time—protect your privacy.
3. Identify yourself—name and, when relevant, role at IBM—when you discuss IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
4. If you publish content to any website outside of IBM and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: "The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions."
5. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
6. Don't provide IBM's or another's confidential or other proprietary information. Ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to IBM.
7. Don't cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, where possible link back to the source.
8. Respect your audience. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in IBM's workplace. You should also show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory—such as politics and religion.
9. Find out who else is blogging or publishing on the topic, and cite them.
10. Be aware of your association with IBM in online social networks. If you identify yourself as an IBMer, ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and clients.
11. Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
12. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective. IBM's brand is best represented by its people and what you publish may reflect on IBM's brand.

Source: http://www.fredcavazza.net/2008/06/09/social-media-landscape/

In my opinion, there are three main points about this policy.

The first point is about IBM business conduct policy. from my understanding, the guideline emphasizes that IBMers should follow general policy even in online community; for example, employees should not publish customers-related contents without customers' approval, or they should not discuss about confidential information, such as financial report or IBM's future plan wheher in real-world or online community.

Second, it suggests the best practices of how should people write a blog or make a comment in the internet. People should act under laws, respect other people beliefs and differences, avoid commenting on political and religious topics, be the first to collect their own mistakes, use proper references, etc.

The third and most interesting thing of this policy is that IBM communicates trust to its employees. It states that employees should use their best judgement of what should and should do. And, surprisigly, the company also encourages its employees to identify themselves as IBM employees in thier blog and other social sites. I personally think that it might help remind an employee to act properly online if he identifies himself as the company's employee, but, on the other hand, the fact that IBM emphasizes this identification issue first is what I consider a powerful way of communicating trust to employees.




Link
IBM's Social Computing Guidelines
http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

Site Search Engine

How search engine, like Google, work is what I learn from my class this week. On the outside-in, it is important to know how to bring your website to the top rank of search engine. However, on the inside-out, another thing you need to consider is how your users or customers find something within your website.

Site search engine helps your customers find what they want within your websites. Basically, it is a search engine that works specifically on your websites. Think about when you looking for a marketing class on Depaul’s website and don’t know where to start; there you go to the search box on the top right of the screen and type “marketing class winter 2010”. Then all the pages about marketing class in winter 2010 are brought to the SERP (Search Engine Result Page).

I think most medium and all large companies in the States has this site SE runs on their website, but what about small business and companies in other countries. After I have looked for some site SE companies, I found some site SE that you can install for free in some websites. The other companies, such as Google site search, Picosearch.com, coveo.com, wrensoft.com, offer their basic version for a price range of $100-$200 per year.




I personally suggest small company to utilize site search engine and will convince my uncle to do the same on our website.



Note: Of course, you can learn more about site search engine by using Google and Youtube.

Social media as a mean to build reputation

Social media is the topic that really catches my interests in MKT595 week 2 class. The discussion on how businesses use social media to promote their brands recalls me of news about Hollywood celebrities started using Twitter as a mean to communicate their activities to fan. Nowaday it is quite usual for famous persons to use Twitter or Facebook to tell their fans about what they are doing or thinking. Thinking about this, it would be interesting to share story about social media trend in Thailand.

In Thailand, though the majority of Thais do not actively participate in social media, many people have started using them rightnow. In political field, Abhisit Vejajiva, prime minister of Thailand, is currently using facebook and have around 40,000 followers. The ministry use Facebook as a mean to communicate the prime minister's activities and build supports. Also, the number of supporters or "like" could be the popularity indicators among new generation.

In entertainment field, I have already become a fan of a Thai comedian DJ, which now she has about 20,000 fans. Also, a friend of mine, who just released her first band album last year, created her band's Facebook page quite a couple years ago and used it as a mean to post her concert videos and tell people about where and when will be the next concert.

As I started searching famous people's name, I found their page on Facebook, though I never see Thai brands on any social media sites. I don't have knowledge about how much it cost to start a page on social media or create an application that has a brand merged in it. Compare Thai market to Western market, I would expect Thai companies that particularly target at youngster will do something more than pasting banner in social media sites within 2011.