So, Facebook user names…
I always liked Chris Brogan’s take on identity and personal brand
I got a real domain name for my blog.
Anil Dash has a lovely take on Facebook user names
Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames – Anil Dash
None of these posts mention that you can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook.
Social Media & Knowledge Management
Social Media in the Enterprise
I wondered about the impact social media tools were making in knowledge management for the enterprise. We have got some very rapid growth in the takeup of the tools in my company; we have loads of wikis, internal blogs – growing use of Twitter.
I wondered about the difference between *Information* Management & *Knowledge* management.
Thanks to a tweet from @elsua I found my way to an excellent presentation given by John Bordeaux (@JBordeaux, since you ask).
As with many of these things, what you can take away from it depends to some extent on your organisational culture. I found it very interesting, particularly the view on
Basic information sharing infrastucture – just do it!
…Enterprise search
Democratic web publishing
Social media! Everything 2.0
Image Credit: I am K.E.B.
Flock O’ Tweets – sorts tweeters into flocks
Every now and then you find a little mashup that makes you go “Now that’s a good idea!”.
Flock O’Tweets is one.
Put a group of those you follow in, separated by commas: out pops a nice little RSS feed for you to consume at your leisure.
Give it a try.
Websites, blogs and content management
Please, can we have a website?
How many of us get questions like that?
I did, and the Cromarty Coastguard website was the result.
So, the answer was “Yes”.
Recently, my local Coastguard Team decided they wanted to get a quick team website off the ground. Most of the team are happy with the internet for searching for technical information, they all use email, but they’re not really content providers of any sort.
They seemed astonished when I said that they could have a website, with their own domain name within a day or so. They were then a bit surprised by the number of questions
What’s your website for…
Usually the first thing you should decide.
Are you:
- providing a service
- sharing information
- building your brand with it
- selling something
- or just learning HTML/CSS
We wanted an information site, which would highlight the work we do for potential new members, and provide some easy reference material.
Who’s going to manage this?
The idea was, “Oh, the team’ll do it”. I’ve heard this before, so wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to provide content. I’ve offered to help admin things, but I expect the Station Officer will take a lead.
What’s it going to run on?
It’s a tiny wee website; I’m not expecting huge traffic. I expect regular changes as we respond to incidents and do training exercises. I thought I’d better get a content management system(CMS) . I’d heard about Joomla and Drupal… but I’d also read about using WordPress as a CMS. I blog with it, so am familiar with it. I’d been thinking about moving a couple of other hobby sites onto WordPress, so this was an ideal opportunity.
So, our website runs on WordPress.com, with its own domain name. I’ll watch the stats with interest, and see how many members author content for it – and look for any links for other coastguard sites.
From request to up took 2 days; much of which was finding content and getting the domain name up on WordPress.com. I’d certainly use WordPress again for a hobby/small site.
Giving customers what they want
or, are we dinosaurs?
@jobsworth has written another thought provoking post on the customer’s voice and choice, and I commend it to everyone.
We need to be in the business of providing the customer what she wants when she wants it, where she wants it, how she wants it. We need to focus on making things that the customer wants to buy, rather than trying to get customers to pay for things they neither want nor need.
There was a time when we could decide for the customer. There was a time when we could constrain the customer’s voice and choice. There was a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
I think it’s fair to say that we need to know what business we’re in, and what we can sell to our customers – and in these turbulent financial times – what we can sell that will bring us cash in, and provide us some margin for our business.
If we can’t bring in cash quickly, and make margin on what we’re selling, then we need to walk away quickly from that opportunity and fix what we do.
Otherwise, we’ll sell the customer what they want, but what we can’t afford.
Image Credit: whizchickenonabun