Just blocking Twitter doesn’t work

So another example of why every organisation needs clear social computing guidelines on how to USE this media. Simply stopping the access through computers just directs people to their iPhones or other mobile device.

A school teacher posting up to 38 post a day (not sure if I am supposed to be shocked by that statement but it’s what was on the web site) was talking about her pupils.

The BBC web site reports:

Argyll and Bute Council said it has a policy of blocking the use of social networking sites in all its schools.

It is thought the language teacher, who has not been named, may have accessed the site via her mobile phone.

You would think that the advertising billboards around most towns and cities telling you how just about every mobile phone service provider will get you on Facebook or Twitter for next to nothing or free would have been a hint.

What this really points to are problems in the school, disenfranchisement of students and staff with a situation that is not rewarding to either. The teacher needed to get something off her chest but didn’t have the policy that supported her.

With a policy that says you can only blog about professional topics of value Argyll & Bute seem to have a rather ridiculous policy. Especially for a school. What is professional and what is personal? It is hard enough to tell in industry but where you job is to handle the emotions of teenagers I doubt the divide could be even finer. Just saying someone can’t have their own blog is similar to saying you can’t have your own phone or email account.

The 21st century is here A&B, would you all please hurry up and join it.

Run it through the business

Just read this Q&A with Sandy Carter:

And finally I think that companies don’t realize that this is brand new. It is not what they studied in college and is bigger than marketing. It encompasses the business. Social technologies should be part of your market intelligence, your strategic delivery, your development cycle, your customer support, your marketing and your sales. It is a cultural change in how we create business.

Which I think sums up what people miss so often. You can’t just use social media for marketing, you need to engage customers and influencers at every stage now. 

In a meeting last week where someone said that it has become a cliché to say “join the conversation” but also that it is still true.. that’s what you need to do.

The rest of the interview with Sandy is great. If you haven’t heard of Sandy before she is something of a legend in IBM.

CoTweeting

Blogging has slipped lately. Due mainly from a huge influx of work in new areas and not a few new toys that I’ve been playing with like our latest pre-beta of Lotus Connections that is causing quite a stir with all it’s new features.

Tweet together

Externally I have also started using CoTweet to manage the ibmevents twitter id I set up almost two years ago (where does the time go?).  I have to say it is a great tool.

The assign (screenshot) feature that lets you put ownership next to each tweet you get is very useful and means that your team isn’t answering the same tweet twice – but as I’m the one usually using the id I now have a way to hand off questions I can’t answer.  As the number of people using the ibmevents id has increased these sorts of problems come up. 

Built in stats for links and a nice way to follow id’s across a variety of your own id’s makes life simple.

The aggregation of conversations between tweeters keeps you on the ball and makes referencing chats easier.

Sending updates at a set time in the future means you don’t need to be online all the time.  Great especially for when you want to announce something but you are stuck in a meeting or driving somewhere.

But the most useful feature for me has been the On Duty roster, where you can sign yourself in or out so that you know who is available – and in addition get email notifications of replies and dm’s.  It means you don’t miss anything.

The search part of the tool is probably the weakest link. Being on another page I find it not as user friendly and other sites like twazzup do possibly a better job.  But you can’t be all things to all people.

Will have  to give some more meaningful feedback to the CoTweet guys and gals when I get sometime.

In other news

Have you tried Seesmic Desktop for twitter? You should.  Like TweetDeck but with multiple accounts.  Already the latest version has got rid of some annoying bugs and the general idea is working so well I rarely, if ever use anything else.