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 😛