thrifty!

witty guide to a thrifty life hope you enjoy watching it

WIKI-fied

think you want to try using wikis in your group or company but don’t know where to begin? here are some tips that will help you get started

1. Remember that wiki is a culture shift – from having to convene personally to using emails to having instant messaging, it was never easy to convince everyone to use them. Until now some people prefer to talk face to face rather than online. What you need to keep in mind is that with the right explanation and a little coercion you’ll get to have them change ways. Tell them: what wiki is all about and its importance, how do to use it and what the should do as users — responsibility to add content. Aside from the new social media aspect, you are also now responsible to keep them active, to speak their minds and to contribute. Wikis won’t work without its contributors so remember to embibe in their hearts and minds the importance of adding content
2. So start easy – start with an easy task rather than shocking them with a very big wiki project (making them end up hating it since they were caught off guard). A group discussion would be a good first step asking them to edit and add content slowly but surely they’ll get the hang of using it making it easier for everyone
3. Seed the wiki – there’s always something daunting with a blank page. You’re free to do anything but a lot of room for mistakes. Give your wiki a good foundation and your users a little bit ease in posting by put some content and structure to follow.
4. Capture feedback – add a page specially for giving out feedbacks and new ideas. This would be helpful in having a record of what has transpired during the whole process
5. Praise or reward – it gives them to boost to continue what their doing and the inspiration to do more. it makes the contributors feel valued and their post recognized.

sounds hard?? i don’t think so just always remember that wikis are a collaborative work — everyone has a voice that they should use. Each of us can contribute so let’s make use of it the more the merrier!

corporate blogging for you and me

aside from being a member of an organization or corporation, what else do we need to consider in putting up a corporate blog?

1. Companies don’t blog; individuals do — who would want to read a boring, technical and formal blog (it’s a blog not a business letter???hello!) just as everything else in new social media, it’s suppose to be personal, it should be a mix of you and the corporation that your attending to. you should make a piece that is about your experiences while not mixing out with what your company is all about

2. Writing blogs is about reading blogs — just as in the real world, you won’t get notice if you don’t put yourself forward and introduce yourself. only when you say some something to a stranger (‘nice dress’), will you might be able to spawn a new friendship and next thing is that you alreaady have a huge network. it doesn’t always go well. but when you read and comment, not only that you might have a chance to expand but you’ll also learn and teach somebody somethings worthwhile.

3.Blogging is just a tool, it’s a strategy — don’t expect to have millions of clients just by blogging, just as the other new social media tools, it’s just a supplement. it should be a part of something bigger like a PR campaign or a marketing strategy.

and best of all, you should have PASSION, readers are not dumb and passive in this medium. they are active and loud. so show your sincerity and love in doing this. it will triple or even quadruple your initial expectations regarding the result. blogging is about sharing experiences and knowledge. if you’re not happy to this, just like everything else, don’t do so

realistically speaking…

for the past (very) few entries that i have, i’ve been bragging about hownew social media can change our lives. i’ve put it on a pedestal so high that i don’t think that i can really deliver…

a few weeks back, our prof tasked us to make case studies on how companies used new social media. (btw, i love how it was used by farmers. i can just imagine them on the field, holding a laptop and googling. lol).  based on the presentations, these are what i understood:

• companies mostly used it to mine information esp about their consumers
• nsm are mostly used as supplements for marketing strategies and if it is used solely it’s full of loopholes
• based on studies conduted, nsm didn’t provide valuable  increase on sales or customers although it is cheap
• most companies neglect the fact that nsm can give them the ‘conversation’ that they and the consumers need.

i don’t think philippine nsm isn’t mature enough to set aside just fb-ing or take nsm seriously. most of the time we (especially the consumers) use it for play and not minding that it could also be used for work. And sadly, if they ever use it for work, it’s like it was done in random. i guess, orcom practitioners are really needed to set things right. i hope we can do it in the very near future

identity crisis

when i introduce myself, it’s already a part of me that i would also say where i study and what i study. then people would ask what is organizational communication. errr. if i state goldhaber’s defintion i don’t think they would understand it at all so i usually opt to answer ‘as the name implies how people communicate in organizations’ (duh??). butthen, my answer would be too simple that they would ask so what would you do in the future… and the list will go on since orcom people are gifted enough to do everything communication related

then we had a group exercise yesterday. after discussing new social media stats, our professor asked us to make a plan re: dishwashing soap launching a new product and he answered ‘so what?’regarding the stats. being the bongga students that we are, we made different marketing plans and what have you. some were effectively able to answer the so what part but others they did great with the plans.

in retrospect, orcom students face a tough question about who we really are and what are we really meant to do. we are not that sure how we should appropriately act since there are myriads of possibilities and responsibilities that we ought to do. we could be in marketing or advertising, corpcomm or wherever but they are all just part of being an orcom student–PART. we must be true to our selves to communicate the information to the org whether that would be from external to internal, bottom-up, top to bottom or what have you. our main responsibility is to be an interpreter ensuring that people in orgs understand all information fully and make use of it for their advantage.

it’s a hard task. but orcom is here to do it.

[r]evolution

we used this concept for our PR strategy before.

(n) development, evolution (a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage)) “the development of his ideas took many years”; “the evolution of Greek civilization”; “the slow development of her skill as a writer”

(n) revolution (a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving) “the industrial revolution was also a cultural revolution”

based on what you will see in the video communication evolved from one point to another, but based on what we are experiencing, there’s a revolution and it’s taking the world by storm (sorry for the cliche).

so what is it really..

evolution or revolution?

revolutions

our OC152 class(communication trends and styles) is about REVOLUTIONS…

• from how we communicate
• to how we do business
• and now, to our business structure itself

communication is really evolving and it’s taking us with it

we were recently asked to read THE WIKI WORKPLACE: Unleashing the Power of Us. it’s the the same as our previous readings–how new social media tools can help the workplace and all with the addition of more concrete examples. i especially like the part about the Geek Squad. It’s hard to describe them since i find them larger than life (lol). They have their own culture, their brand, then, i think, they enjoy what they do and it seems like they’re in paradise for the geeks(i’m so happy for them that i’m not making sense already). I also like the part regarding the google employees. They are very efficient with what they do and even regarded as the best computer programmers plus they are in a company that let’s them be free to make pet projects.

so here’s my verdict on the wiki workplace…

what works for me:

bottom-up approach. putting power to those who really holds the information, it is a nice concept but companies often forget about it. they usually give it to those who have proper education and experience to boot but what about those who really interact with the customers like the frontliners?? they are often the ones who holds valuable information that most of the time are wasted since people of higher status put themselves on a pedestal and waste money doing aimless research even though the answer is actually within their reach.

collaborative tools. most companies waste money buying softwares that they think would make their employees communicate easier. though the thought is endearing, most of the time, employees already an answer to those kinds of problem. humans are adaptive, they will continually look for ways to make their lives more comfortable. rather than imposing new softwares that would just make your employees illiterate and confused why not observe them and look for ways that would improve what they are already using.

self-organizing. we are all afraid of information overload that’s why most of the time companies just post the necessary information somewhere even though most of the time they are incomplete. humans develop organization if they think the information/things are of value. just like using the internet with the vast information it hold s people in organization will find ways to arrange the information they will input if they are given a channel to put them on–more information, more knowledge and more power to you employees who will be posting and taking them when needed.

what doesn’t work for me:

loosening organizational hierarchy. with this concept, i think i’m contradicting myself since i mentioned at the beginning that i like companies that foster freedom and creativity. i find it hard to picture a company with no hierarchy–no more aspiration to have a higher position, to person to reprimand that what you are doing is wrong and everyone is equal. i believe that humans strive to have power (sounds evil??) and if you take the hierarchy and put everyone at the same field of equal position and level it disastruous. <– i know i sound like an old fart, i’m still not comfortable with this thought.

Revolutions don’t happen overnight, it  waits for an opportunity where you think that it will all fall apart and poof it happens and there’s no way you can stop it. the three concepts that i found interesting were just innovations or even instincts to make organizations better, the real revolution lies on whether companies would really loosen their hierarchies. Whether it happens or not, one things for sure, communication is revolutionizing with the onset of the internet and we have to adapt to it.