It’s not just social media where it can go wrong

I was in the supermarket at lunch-time to get a few things as I’ve hardly been at home this week.

Make sure you send the right message (Image by bindermichi)

One of the assistants came up to me and asked me to read a label for her as she didn’t have her glasses. I imagine she was retired and working in the shop to get out the house. Good on her.

“Pork lunch meat,” I said.

Then she went on about the person that gave her the packet, “Why didn’t he just take it back to where he got it?”

I smiled and thought well it is your job and mumbled something, hmmm.

Then just as I thought she was going she swung back round and said, “Bloody foreigners.”

Racism is alive and well and living in your local supermarket.  I have to say I was quite shocked, almost felt like I was being punched. Why was  this woman, seemingly nice saying something like this to?  The fact that I’m white seemed to mean it was ok, so do lots of people come across this sort of thing?  I have never heard it at work and most of the time when I’m out at the weekend it is with the family.  So do people think this all the time?

Now she may have  thought it was ok to say that to me because I’m white and male but she is unlikely to know that my wife is one of those “bloody foreigners.” I’m not sure what she would make of our children.

My point

While all the attention has been on social media in business over the past 12 months or so, the risks, the danger of getting caught up in something, this just goes to show that it is the content with which employees interact with the public not the tools they use in that interaction.

Employers can block employees from Facebook but if they go and tell their friends that the management are useless, that message is still getting out – the issues still needs to be addressed – not the fact that the employees are saying these things to friends, but why do they think that management is useless.

Likewise if your employees are making racist remarks to customers you can expect someone to write about on their blog and tell their friends. The employer needs to make it clear that this sort of behavior will be dealt with.

I have no idea if this supermarket chain has a set of values and guidelines for it’s employees but it should start there. Then it wouldn’t need to worry about the tools it’s employees  use because it will be clear on what content is acceptable, no matter what.

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.

If IBM could stand for one thing, what would it be?

Say IBM took a stand on a certain subject, got behind a cause, what would it be?

For a consumer brand like Dove’s campaign for real beauty for example, this is very easy (ok, easier) but for what is essentially a business to business enterprise not so. That’s not to say IBM doesn’t touch nearly everyone of us at some point each day – just think of banks cash machines and shop tills.

My personal view is that the Dove example is a poor one, it is a brand not a company (Unilever) which has many contradictions with sister (or brother) brands like Lynx.

IBM has been a great supporter of diversity, especially gay rights, where more and more businesses are starting to understand that good employees come from a every area of our communities.

But what next? What is inspirational, how can IBM distill it’s many values into something simple and memorable?

Robin Hamman joins Headshift

Two (rss) feeds become one.. as talented social whizz joins whizzy social media company.

Lee Bryant said:

I have been a fan of Robin Hamman’s work at the BBC for some time, and I rate him as one of the most knowledgeable people in the UK about online communities, user engagement and online journalism, among other things. So when we were offered the opportunity to work with him, we snapped it up. Robin will lead our social media practice working with existing and new clients on social media and user engagement projects.

Nice work if you can get it.

Every penny counts

This week in London we will see fuel protests over the current price, with protesters asking the government not to go ahead with a 2p tax increase on petrol later this year, which all seems a drop in the ocean when prices seem to go up by 2p every day.

Sooner or later we will all have to face up to higher fuel prices, even if we find more gas and oil under the arctic we can’t go on burning fossil fuels the way we are if we are going to survive as a species on this planet. Don’t worry about the planet – that will go on fine once we annihilate ourselves in this crazy race of life.

I would think all the protesters would be better off looking at ways they can be smarter about the fuel they use and look for alternatives to transport goods or retraining than wasting time trying to save 2p a litre.

Fuel prices will of course increase the price of everything we buy which seems the obvious incentive to everyone to reduce consumption and become a bit greener, then the Conservatives come out with a crazy idea for individual carbon allowances – a process in itself will create a huge increase in the use of valuable resources.

We either decide to save the environment so we can live on this planet or we keep economic activity growing the way it is and face, if not extinction in the not too distant future, then a serious change to the current situation.

We also have fishermen on strike over the cost of diesel today all over Europe. Governments that at one time talked about green issues are looking at ways to keep this old economy going.

passwords and my memory

The other night while still in Taiwan I woke up realising I couldn’t remember my Windows password.  Obviously my mind was thinking about coming home even though I wasn’t.

Not remembering my passwords is nothing new. Often though I leave a reminder for this is a place that I will see easily when I get home. Not this time though, with everything going on in the flat, passwords were not something I was thinking about – basically I wanted to get out of Dodge and away on my hols, asap.

So that morning (4am) I sat in bed a wrote out a list of words that I may have and have used in the past.  The second to last word was the correct one….how odd is that? Even though I was tired and decided I would be able to sleep it happened after I recovered the password.

OK, not the most thrilling thing to happen but the relief when I got home was fantastic and after trying all those other passwords.  The thought of re-building Windows and losing some data didn’t interest me at all. Especially as I probably have a 1000 emails to go through on Monday when I’m back at work.

At some point I will write about Japan but still to tired to bother.

internet connection just keeps dropping

Still having problems with my Internet connection.

As I get it via work through BT, I have to ask the help desk, who seem to do nothing for a week – but the connection does seem to work a little better. When they call back a week later they ask me if it is ok and I say yes and the ticket is closed – the connection then gets worse.

I just cannot be asked to keep calling the help desk for them to do nothing and not really get anyone to fix it. Even though the ADSL line help desk is in-house I still feel that there really isn’t a link between them and BT.

As I’ll be moving soon hopefully I’ll just have to suffer the broken connections. Then I’ll have the joy of transferring the connection to my new flat.

re-org comms

Next week we will discuss how the re-org of our comms roles within services will be worked day-to-day.

To an extent, partner format we shall move to is something I do already. To provide value to people you can’t do too much – advice and support will enable more people to do things themselves, and lead to better local comms and a clearer picture for the guy/gal on the ground. You just need to guide people, that way you can spread yourself a little thinner.

Execs and management have to realise that this is in their interest to not just tells comms what should and shouldn’t be done. It may look like anyone can do this but it does take a little brain power.

working hard – blog on

It’s now Wednesday – albeit only the first 37 mins of it.

Been too busy at work to even think about starting things here. Internal blogging at work is proving a valuable tool and although I’m getting more contacts, it does generate a lot of things I feel I must do.

I’ll talk more about my internal blogging experiences within the company I work for as this develops.

BTW, I work in communications, as in internal communications or what some people call Employee Comms. Whatever you call it, it is the same thing, just a different time reference.