The MBS Deans’ Blog

Melbourne Business School continues to impress me with the way it is building its online presence because, last month, they started an internal Deans’ Blog.

The blog has three contributing authors:

  1. John Seybolt, Dean & Director
  2. Jennifer George, Associate Dean of Academic Programs
  3. Richard Speed, Associate Dean for Faculty Resources

And is hosted on the MBS intranet (so it’s not available to the public). The Deans write about things that MBS students, alumni, staff, and faculty are interested in, such as school-related news and events; commentary on current events; and discussions on things like school resources, exchange programs, alumni chapters, new faculty members, and so on.

Some of the posts are information dissemination type posts while others are more discussion oriented. Presumably, there is a communications strategy in place that will guide the blog’s growth over the next few months and, most likely, the intention is to continue publishing both kinds of posts: the kind that provide management-level information to the whole school (but don’t generate much of a discussion) and the kind that seed discussion among the blog’s readers (including the “what do you think?” type of posts that you see on many blogs).

All in all, this is an exciting new addition to MBS’ online presence. Hopefully, once this blog becomes a regular feature its authors will start itching to write an external blog as well – maybe even one like the long-running Dean Bruner’s Blog at the Darden School of Business – but that’ll probably take time. Writing an external blog is hard work and you really have to commit to the idea before getting into it. Which is why an internal blog such as this one is a great way to start.

Here’s hoping the blog grows really well and that both the authors and readers enjoy participating in it (I know I will).

Core Economics Becomes a Multi-Author Blog

Speaking of MBS blogs, Joshua Gans’ Core Economics blog has also gone multi-author with four of its nine authors hailing from Melbourne Business School. So, if you want to see what MBS professors are blogging about, take a look at that. They write on a lot of interesting topics and they have a really good readership as well.

Of course, no discussion of MBS professors who publish their work online would be complete without mentioning Paul Kerin who writes a regular business column for The Australian.

Back-in-Melbourne Catch-Up Post

I’m back in Melbourne after spending a few weeks vacationing in Pakistan. It’s hard to believe but I hadn’t been home in over two and a half years! I didn’t get much time on the Internet while I was there so here’s a quick catch-up post in which I’m linking to some of the stuff I would have otherwise discussed on this blog.

First up we have Connie Benson who has updated her three excellent posts on online community managers:

Next are two posts from Scott Berkun, with the second one lending itself nicely to a discussion you might have with a community manager who claims to be an “expert” but doesn’t actually have much experience in building or managing online communities:

Then we have Dmitry Fadeyev who wrote an excellent post for Smashing Magazine on:

Next, Toby Ward talks briefly about the latest intranet trends as reported by Jane McConnell in the Global Intranet Trends Report for 2009:

Ward also wrote a humorous blog post called ‘25 Random Things About my Intranet’ which, if you want, you can balance-out by his high-level overview article on ‘Intranet Strategy: Planning a Successful Intranet’.

And finally, both Laurel Papworth and Stephen Collins reacted to a Courier Mail article on Facebook and other social media sites being banned at work:

Regular blogging will commence shortly.

Privacy on Facebook

How do you use Facebook?

Do you, like me, use it as a supplementary publishing platform in addition to your blog, website, online photo gallery, Twitter stream, and so on – even though this online presence of yours is technically within a gated community? If so, then you’re probably already careful about what you upload there. And by that I mean you only upload stuff that you would be happy to share with everyone you know including friends, family, acquaintances, classmates, colleagues, employers, future employers, users of Google Search, and so on. If this is the case, then your privacy settings on Facebook are probably fine they way they are, even if they are all at their default values.

If, however, you use Facebook as more of a private website – i.e. one maintained more strictly within a gated community of your choosing (e.g. something that only friends or family can access) sort of like MyFamily.com – then you might want to read Nick O’Neill’s recent article on ‘10 Privacy Setting Every Facebook User Should Know’.

Facebook gives you a great deal of control over who gets to see which parts of your online profile including your wall, newsfeeds, photos, applications, friends lists, and so on. It also lets you control who gets updated when someone else tags you in a photo or video that they have uploaded. If you didn’t already know all of this, then that article is certainly worth a read.

[Via Laurel Papworth]

Social Media in the Economic Downturn

A few days ago CNET’s Caroline McCarthy wrote an interesting article on social media’s hidden bubble. She contends that, while there are many good social media strategists out there, there are also many bad ones who are ready to give poor advice to companies interested in –  but clueless about – developing a social media presence. The coming US recession, she says, is good in that it will burst the social media bubble and will help wipe the bad ones away

She makes a good point and you don’t have to look too far to find examples of social media missteps from around the world. You won’t find too many missteps made my Australian companies, though – but that’s because most of them aren’t doing social media at all so they have nothing to mess up! The biggest disaster story from last year, for example, was the brouhaha over people from National Australia Bank posting promotional comments on popular Australian sports blogs. Some people insisted that was equivalent to corporate spamming though, really, it wasn’t such a big deal.

So, if you want to cover your social media butt during the economic downturn, here a few way to tell whether your social media ‘expert’ is any good or not:

Meanwhile, if you’re a social media expert and are considering a social media project offered by company:

Both of those are worth reading, regardless of whether you are, or whether you are hiring, a social media strategist. [Via Laurel Papworth’s blog]

BBC News Starting New Show Containing User-Submitted Content

The BBC has just announced plans to launch a new weekly show, called Your World News, that will feature the best of user-submitted news content (mainly photos and videos):

Thousands of videos, pictures and emails are sent in to the BBC every week and we are now choosing the best ones to make it onto a new show called Your World News.

So what do you have to do to make it on the programme? Quite simply, get out there and send us what's happening in your world.

I hope that, like CNN’s iReport, they also make this content available on the web once the show has been broadcast.

This new initiative sounds really exciting and here’s hoping it’s a big success.

New IP Think Tank Podcast

Duncan Bucknell, who co-taught the Strategic Management of Intellectual Property course that I took during my MBA at Melbourne Business School has just launched an intellectual property related podcast on his IP Think Tank website (you can get the first episode here).

Not only does Bucknell really know his stuff, his blog is the place to go to for all IP-related news, information, and resources. Indeed, it's the #1 IP blog in the world according to BlawgSearch. And the podcast is an excellent addition to everything he's already doing there.

MBS's Online Presence

Speaking of Melbourne Business School, I've been very impressed with the way MBS has been building its online presence over the last few months. For example, I was immensely pleased when I found they'd uploaded audio clips of the talks given at the Dean's Circle launch event that I attended last month.

I've already mentioned on this blog the SouRCe student newsletter that is now available online. Here, then, are two more things you can find on the MBS website:

  • MBS Leadercasts: These are videos of recorded presentations by MBS faculty members on the various topics of expertise that they possess.

  • MBS Today: This is the monthly newsletter that MBS publishes for "alumni, past faculty, and friends in the government, corporate, and community sectors".


Both are good though the MBS Leadercasts -- much like the University of Melbourne's Up Close Podcasts and Visions Video Podcasts and a little like TED talks -- are lots of fun to watch. I highly recommend them. (I was actually going to tell you my favourite three videos but I can't narrow it down to just three!)

Two Social Media How-To Guides

I read two good social media how-to guides this week:

First, Toby Ward at the Intranet Blog linked to Bill Ives' recent post on a 'Sample Action Plan for Business Blogging'. Ives presents a good high-level plan that lists the steps you need to take in order to successfully launch (and, obviously, maintain) a business blog. This is assuming, of course, that you already have a blogging strategy that is aligned with both your business and marketing strategies. And note that by 'aligned' I also mean that it makes sense for you to actually start and maintain that blog!

Second, Laurel Papworth recently gave an excellent presentation on how to plan and run a social media marketing campaign. She's put her slides and a quick bullet-point list of those steps on her blog. This is a must-read for anyone involved in social media -- even if you don't plan to run a social campaign yourself -- because a stripped down version of this plan is what you execute when you launch a blog and, more generally, it's a good overview of how social media itself works. Besides, you'll inevitable be a part of such a campaign at some point in your life so it's good to know what's going on.

James Nachtwey's story

In 2007, photographer James Nachtwey won the TED Prize which awarded him $100,000 and "one wish to change the world". His wish was:

I'm working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.

On 3 October, Nachtwey's story will break -- both online and around the world. Melburnians can view his story at Federation Square while the rest of you should check the TED Prize Event Location page to see if it's being shown at your location (it's on in 16 countries). If not, you can always view it online:

For more:

Social Media in Management

CIO Magazine's Sue Bushell has written an interesting article, called 'Management 2.0? That'll Be The Day', on the challenges that CIOs -- and companies, in general -- are facing with the advent of social media technologies in the workplace.

In his book, The Future of Management, Gary Hamel suggests that organizations today face a new set of business challenges that the existing management model does not match. The drone worker of yesterday is giving way to the engaged and vocal employee of today who expects a company culture that replicates the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 — in other words Management 2.0

The name Gary Hamel will, of course, be very familiar to anyone who has done any MBA and has studied the (frequently incorrectly-used) Core Competency concept.

The article is long but useful as it gives managers a lot to think about and hopefully look into:

Managers have a general sense of what Web 2.0 tools are — especially when it comes to applications they’re familiar with like YouTube, Facebook, or Linkedin. But they still struggle to understand these technologies, discover their real business value, address the risks and figure out how to best use them.

This, by the way, is where someone like me would come in: I know both management (theory and practice) and technology (uses and implementations) and can help senior management come up with an implementation of social media that enhances project management, decision making, and internal communication and collaboration.

The trick is that social media integration in an enterprise needs to be a long-term project and not something you hire a consulting firm to do for you in a few weeks. It needs to grow experimentally, possibly slowly, and from the ground-up. And while it will probably change a number of times as it develops -- which means it's not something you can really plan for in advance -- you can start with a few basic governance rules (who does what and what everyone is in responsible for), some content guidelines (that cover privacy, security, and intellectual property), and a simple usage policy (like the two-word "be careful" policy that is often a good start).

Speaking of governance...

Challenges of the Multi-Generational Workforce

The discussion on how to manage a multi-generational workforce -- which is an issue for many managers these days -- reminds me of a blog post on banning Facebook that Toby Ward wrote on the Intranet Blog about a month ago:

Beware of Facebook! It will crush your productivity and hijack your employees!

[...]

Employees prefer to be treated as adults. Judge their performance and actions instead of counting their minutes spent doing "productive work."

Trust me, the threat and problems stemming from a ban far exceed the embrace option. Prescient Digital Media’s Julian Mills last week highlighted the findings of one recent survey that warned of the perils of banning Facebook:

  • 39% of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube
  • A further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban
  • The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16% would consider leaving and 13% would be annoyed

Of course "consider leaving" doesn't mean they actually will leave but it does mean that they probably won't join your company in the first place. Especially if they announce your blanket banning policy on the Facebook group about your company that you didn't know existed.

I know that I, for one, wouldn't want to join a company that bans sites like Facebook or doesn't let you blog, read blogs, pay your bills, read the news, check your e-mail, or basically have a life outside work while you're at work. Limiting YouTube usage makes a little more sense since there's a bandwidth cost associated with online video but, even then, it shouldn't be banned outright.

As Ward said in his article, companies shouldn't be taking the Taylorist approach to management. Of course you'll get employees who'll take 30 minutes to make themselves a cup of coffee or spend an hour on Facebook every now and then -- but that's okay as long as they (a) get their jobs done, (b) don't stop others from getting their jobs done, and (c) don't use-up too many freely-provided company resources (like bandwidth or, for that matter, coffee).

I guess all I can conclude with is that, with the advent of social media and the existence of a multi-generational workforce...well, the next five years are going to be really interesting

Online Community Compensation Study

The Online Community Report just released its Online Community Compensation Study.

Most of the study's key findings shouldn't come as a surprise to people working in this space: the community team employs more women than men, most team members are between 31 and 50 years old, and most have over five years of work experience. However the compensation figures are a little higher than I expected at an average of US$81k (approximately AU$95k).

I also wasn't expecting women to be earning 91% (on average) of what men are earning. Assuming that factors like experience, industry, average company salary, position in corporate hierarchy, department within the company, importance of community role for company, etc. have all been statistically removed from this analysis -- and they probably haven't all been removed -- then the lower salary for women is most disappointing.

Meanwhile, the most heartening result from the study is, of course, the job satisfaction rating which is an average of 4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5 :)

FYI: OCR's Key Resources blog post category is a great place to look if you want to start or further develop your online community.

Social Media in the Enterprise

Toby Ward writes on the Intranet Blog about a survey conducted by Robert Half Technology that found that over 70% of US CIOs don't plan to use social media tools -- such as blogs and wikis -- in the next five years.

That number might sound a little daunting but, really, it isn't.

Issues with the Survey Itself

Because these are aggregate numbers, they're too generalized and don't give us much information. In fact, they're pretty useless: so what if 70% of US CIOs don't plan to use social media in the next five years? What does that "70%" actually mean to you and me and to our company and its social media adoption decision? Not much.

A breakdown of the results by industry and company size would have been better...but even that wouldn't have been enough. Had each social media tool included a follow-up question that asked "Why will you not be using this particular tool?" the survey may have been somewhat useful.

Also, "next five years" in technology or Internet time is ages! How can CIOs realistically predict whether or not they will be using a particular tool or technology five years from now? The question should have asked for a one-year prediction and the survey should then be conducted annually. Which is why Forrester's surveys, or the annual Enterprise 2.0 survey conducted by McKinsey (which I wrote about earlier), are much more useful.

Issues with the Conclusion

That said, even the implicit conclusion -- that most CIOs don't see the benefits of social media in the enterprise -- isn't all that worrisome because true social media adoption rarely starts at the CIO level. More often that not, it's bottom-up instead of top-down.

That is, employees first start to use social media on their own and among each other. Over time, the business begins to benefit from this. Once usage crosses a particular threshold -- and the benefits become more obvious and more measurable -- management (finally) realizes what's going on and has social media (or just the particular tool in question) implemented across the entire organization.

This is pretty much the conclusion that Toby Ward reached as well. Read his complete post (with conclusion) on the Content Matters blog.

So What's My Point?

Surveys like this provide neat sound bytes and are used as justification by senior management for not looking into social media.

So be careful when you talk to senior managers about social media usage and adoption in the enterprise: they usually don't have a clue but, sometimes, they do have a little bit of knowledge (such as this survey) but turns out to be dangerous.

Chris Brogan on Social Media

Over the last couple of weeks, Chris Brogan has been writing a series of fantastic primer/best-advice blog posts about social media on his blog. Make sure you read them:

Oh, and here are a couple of more of his posts that are really good:

Awesome work, Chris! Thanks.

McKinsey's 2008 Social Media in the Enterprise Survey

McKinsey recently published the results of its second annual survey of social media [1] usage in the enterprise: 'Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results'. (You need to register with the McKinsey Quarterly website to read the article, though).

The results, in one sentence, are encouraging: "Companies have adopted more Web 2.0 tools this year than in 2007 and are using them for higher-value purposes". For a good overview of and commentary on the results, read Hadley Reynold's article on this topic on the FASTForward blog.

[1] The term 'Web 2.0' is just plain silly. It's like saying: "We now ship frozen food in refrigerated trucks via our road network so we should start calling it 'Road 2.0' because that's an extension of what the network was originally created for. Regular warehouses are 'Roads 1.0' while refrigerated warehouses are 'Roads 2.0'." And so on.

Standard Format for Online CVs in Australia

ITWire's Stan Beer reports that a number of Australian technology recruitment companies have signed on to make the iProfile their preferred CV template for candidates applying through them.

This sounds like an interesting idea and will probably make life easier for recruiters. I don't know how it'll work out for candidates, though. If candidates can retain their individuality despite the standard format -- as the 'The CV is Dead - Long Live the iProfile' video seems to indicate -- then it should be okay. If not, it'll commoditize them and that's not good.

Since I haven't actually seen the iProfile template -- you can't unless you sign up and they don't have any samples you can view -- I guess I'll just have to wait and see (or, of course, sign up and take a look).

That said, the good thing about the iProfile standard is that a whole bunch of recruitment companies have signed up to work with it. Without that, it'd be no better than your standard Seek, LinkMe, or SixFigures online profile: good but maybe not as widely available as you'd want it to be. Also, the privacy and viewing controls that this system seems to have are really nice too.

More generally, I like the fact that this announcement evangelises the use of online CVs to the Australian recruitment industry. So while all recruitment agencies won't be using the iProfile, maybe they'll start to pay more attention to things like LinkedIn profiles and other social media attributes of their candidate pool. Here's hoping.

2008 List of Forms of Web Marketing by Jeremiah Owyang

I meant to post this...well, months ago but I completely forgot. I found it in my Windows Live Writer's draft posts lists this afternoon and figured that, even though I'm late, its' still well worth posting.

Jeremiah Owyang maintains 'A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing' which he updated for 2008:

This document catalogs the many tools and tactics available for corporate web strategy in 2008. Even if your strategy or resource limitations restrict you from entering all spaces, awareness of the changes in our digital landscape are critical. This document is intended for decision makers roles such as CMO/VP/Director of Web and Marketing.

It's an awesome and hugely important list of, well, everything you need (or could possible want) to think about for web marketing. You must take a look at it.

Online Reputation Management

Laurel Papworth wrote an excellent post a few days ago about reputation management in social networks. I highly recommend you read it.

I'd actually go a step further and say that most of what she said is also true for your reputation on the Internet in general -- though that's a little more scattered and is therefore a little harder to gauge. Still, if you've been online for even a short amount of time and have participated in almost anything, you will have left a trace.

People can (and do) search the web for your name, e-mail address, phone number, alias/handle/nickname, and so on. And the deeper they dig, the more they usually find. For example, you can search for me using the following queries and can learn a little more about me each time:

Cool, isn't it? Or scary...depending on how you look at it. And the best (or worst) part of all this is that, once your information is up there, it's pretty difficult (read: darned near impossible) to get down.

To quote an already oft-quoted quote, Sun Microsystem's CEO Scott McNealy way back in 1999 said: "You already have zero privacy (on the Internet). Get over it."  Yup. Get over it and, since it follows logically: manage your online reputation really well. Particularly since your online and offline reputations are increasingly crossing over -- that too in both directions.

Links: Marketing, Web 2.0, Management Blogs

I don't usually do link posts but I've been so busy these last couple of weeks I haven't had time to write about the following useful links in any detail:

  1. Samuel Dean from Web Worker Daily wrote a post called 'VTC: Killer Online Tutorials, Mostly Free'

  2. HR World wrote about the 'The Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark' [via Trevor Cook]

  3. Jeremiah Owyang presented 'A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008'

  4. Ross Dawson, writing in BRW Magazine, listed the 'Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications'