Archive for August, 2007

I am delighted to report that my associate Silvia Cambie and I have been commissioned by business book publishers Kogan Page to write a book on New Trends in International Public Relations, aimed at business communicators, PR professionals and marketeers.

I will be focusing on the impact of social media on business communications and how PR practitioners can incorporate social media into their communications and marketing strategies. Silvia will be focusing on all the other key issues for practitioners such as corporate social responsibility, crisis communications and current hot topics and trends affecting international public relations.

We both have a strong interest in cross-cultural issues. Silvia is Italian and has lived and worked across Europe, speaking several European languages fluently. As for me, I have links with Malaysia and the Far East as well as being now based in London, UK. In today’s globalised world, PR practitioners are increasingly needing to work from a cross-cultural perspective so Silvia and I will be exploring the relevance and impact of cross-cultural issues for business communicators online and also offline.

I’ll be letting you know more details about the social media and cross-cultural issues I’ll be researching in the next few weeks. Silvia and I will both be blogging about our research and the progress of the book on our respective blogs and we hope very much that you will all be able to help us by adding your comments or sharing your experiences and thoughts with us. I will certainly give credit in the book and/or on this website to anyone whose contribution I use in the book - please see the contributors release notice for more details regarding contributions.

My dilemma is whether I should blog about this book primarily on my social media blog ZenGuide, because obviously, it’s all about social media - or, on my cross-cultural blog Fusion View, because obviously, it’s also all about cross-culture. If I blog about the book on both of them, will it get confusing if different people comment on one or other of the blogs? Would it be better to choose one of them and then stick to it? But Fusion View has a great international, cross-cultural community there already and I really would love to hear what everyone has to say there. But my cross-cultural readers may not be so interested in social media as such? But if I blog about the book on ZenGuide only, will I lose the cross-cultural dimension by focusing on my social media readers? You see my dilemma. What do you think?

Further information

Silvia’s blog X-Culture is at www.chandacom-xculture.com.

bkprj

For those of you just starting off blogging, whether for your business or just for fun, here are some tips on responding to comments:

• Make sure Comments are enabled on your blog to allow people to comment on your posts (a bit obvious, I know, but worth stating!)

• When someone leaves a comment, do respond - even if it’s just to say “thanks”. It shows you read your visitors’ comments and enjoy engaging with them

• But don’t leap in too soon. Sometimes, allowing room for other readers to add to the discussion and comment on the comments is a great way to create a community around your blog

• It’s very rare, I think, that you’d get a negative, nasty or malicious comment. If you do, you would be entitled to delete it as it’s your blog. Or, you may choose to address the issue publicly - approach it as if you were the store manager approaching a stroppy customer kicking up a stink in your shop or as the host who has to deal with a difficult guest at your party. It also helps to have set up a comments policy somewhere on your blog at the outset so all your readers know what behaviour will and will not be tolerated.

• Sometimes a debate in the comments section between a number of commenters can get more and more heated and one of them starts to lose their civility and common sense (as can often happen in real life, too!). In one case on my other blog, I withheld an over-the-top comment that was likely to spiral everything in to name-calling and childishness and emailed the commenter inviting him to re-phrase the key argument without the name-calling and with a greater spirit of civil disagreement. He did not chose to reply so that comment remains withheld.

• When you respond to comments, the usual form is to do so in a comment under the main post that started the chain of comments.

• You may want to expand on a comment chain in more detail in a post. In that case, refer (and link) to the original post that started off the comment chain, summarising the key points and then go on to discuss the issue in more detail in your post. This helps give new readers the context of this new post and encourages them to go back and read the original one.

Photo: thanks to customersrock.wordpress.com

Laurence van der Posts book “The Bushmen of the Kalahari” instilled in me an awe for the skills of the bushmen trackers in the eternally magnificent African landscape. Now in the 21st generation, their ancient skill that has been passed down through generations is being enhanced by PDAs - personal digital assistants. According to the International Trade Forum:

The high-tech wildlife trackers have been used against poachers, in ecotourism, environmental education, research and monitoring. The free software that links up traditional knowledge to electronic data mapping has been applied around the world to social surveys, organic farming, integrated pest management and disaster relief.

I love this photo that shows how comfortably the uber-modern sits with the traditional.

A survey by BurstMedia in June this year on women and the internet reveals that over half of the women (54.5%) in the US say the Internet is their primary source of information when researching products they might purchase. The survey sampled over 1,800 women aged 25 and upwards. Their next port of call is to ask family and friends - but only 10.9% of the sample do that. Newspapers and magazines come in at 9.9% and brochures and pamphlets at 5.1%, with radio as the last port of call with a rather sorry 1.3%.

While this survey is specific to the US, I expect that you might infer a similar tech-savvy approach to shopping in most of the industrialised nations where women are empowered and have the oppportunities for self-actualisation and financial independence.

For businesses, this represents a huge opportunity to tap into these eager consumers online. The key factor here is that these women are using the Internet to find out about products before or as they purchase. If your business has products and services that are of interest to women, you could really capitalise on this with creating informative and user-friendly pages that will help these potential customers in making their shopping decisions. While they are on your site, reading up on all your useful data and advice, they are engaging with your brand and your online presence - all great for marketing and customer-retention as well as conversion of these potential customers into actual ones.

One thing to remember - you don’t have to target your customers in a gender-biased way eg this opportunity is about more than handbags and pink accessories. Women have to buy household goods, computer equipment, iPods - even power tools - just like men. So whatever you sell, there’s an opportunity here to help all your customers with their buying decisions, not just “the ladies”.

Blogs are an easy way to share your opinions and reviews about products. Here are some to explore:

Shiny Shiny - hmm, very pink and very focused on the gender thing but a good and useful site in spite of that.

Endgadget - the ultimate gadget guide

Rugged Notebooks - a number of bloggers blog about this hardy product, one of whom is digitalnomad, a ZenGuide regular commenter.

Amazon of course have the customer review sections for all their products. I rely on those fairly heavily when considering whether or not to buy a particular book or digitial gadget they are offering. Whether it’s the case or not, customer reviews always feel as if you’re getting a range of opinions and not just the store or manufacturer’s party line.

Photo: thanks to brittanycondo.com

by Angie Macdonald

Yang-May : “I’m delighted to say that Angie Macdonald is joining ZenGuide as partner, specialising in web-content writing and blog management/ editing for businesses. She has a background in teaching and drama, freelance journalism and high-performance coaching.

Enjoy!”

Let’s face it, finding ideas for your business blog isn’t always easy. There may be times when you’re overflowing with thoughts and ideas and others when you hit a blank wall, or rather, a blank screen. Nothing. Zilch. Your readers are waiting for their weekly or even daily update, and you have nothing to say. Panic sets in and you haven’t a clue where the next idea is going to come from.

Relax. You’re in good company. Any writer worth their salt will be able to recount tales of when the muse deserted them. But what they may not tell you, is that there are many ways to encourage the muse to return, to free up the brain and get those creative juices flowing again.

History is full of stories of inventors who had their moment of revelation at a time when they weren’t consciously working on a project. Take George de Mestral for example, the inventor of Velcro ™. After a walk with his dog one day, they both returned home covered in burrs, the plant seed-sacs that cling to animal fur and fabric. Mestral immediately studied one of the burrs under a microscope, and saw all the small hooks that enabled the burr to cling to tiny loops in the fabric of his trousers. In that moment he decided to design a two-sided fastener, one side with stiff hooks like burrs and the other side with soft loops like the fabric of his trousers and Velcro™ was born.

Taking a tip from Mestral’s book, my advice for any blogger looking for ideas is clear your head. Go for a walk. Get away from your computer, let your mind wander and see what comes up.

Experiencing something new, whether it be listening to different music, changing radio channels, or exploring an unknown part of your city, can all lead to you having fresh ideas. Just the other day I picked up a copy of Harper’s Bazaar for the first time. At first, flicking through the pages of beautiful people and society gossip, I felt like an alien newly acquainted with the species. Everything was so unlike my usual reading tastes – I have a fondness for .net magazine and Gardens Monthly. I wasn’t necessarily looking for ideas, but before I knew it, I had reached for pen and paper and was writing down idea after idea for blog posts. Posts I never even knew I wanted to write.

How observant are you? It’s so easy to switch off as we go about our day, talking on the mobile or plugged into an iPod. When was the last time you noticed a flower blooming in your garden? Or looked at a plaque or engraving on a building as you pass by on the bus? The more you notice in the world around you, the more you will find to comment on. And ideas for blog posts will arise.

As you go about your day, ask yourself questions about the people you encounter, the situations you take for granted. Why are things the way they are? Who is the person serving you? Curiosity starts with the question, “I wonder why…?”

Remember, the world is full of ideas and creativity. It’s a matter of how receptive you are to the ordinary that can lead to blog posts full of interest and vitality. It only takes a bit of imagination to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel in need of a walk.

Photo: thanks to underconsideration.com

I’ve brought together the blogs of friends, colleagues, associates and clients of ZenGuide in one place - The ZenGuide Network at www.zenguidenetwork.tumblr.com. I hope you’ll enjoy browsing through this eclectic range of articles and photos - and to read more from each of the contributors, you can always click through from there to the original blogs.

The contributors include:

Bridget Grenvill-Cleave, a management consultant and executive coach at 10 Consulting, who is passionate about the benefits of Positive Psychology. She blogs about the measurable impact of applying positive psychology techniques in the workplace and importance of employee wellbeing in contributing to business success.

Melanie Crowe is a massage therapist whose skills range from relaxation massage to sports and no-hands techniques. She offers tips to deal with stress as well as writing about getting the most out of massage for your wellbeing.

Steven Lee is a Malaysian-born photographer based in London. He offers commercial photography services to private clients as well as to fashion and lifestyle magazines. He is about to launch his second photography book on Malaysian faces. He writes about his photo shoots and gives tips about photography.

Silvia Cambie, a business communications expert, blogs about her cross-cultural experiences in Eastern Europe, Italy, the US and UK as well as on communications issues.

The criteria I have chosen for including these contributors is that I know them personally and they are blogging in the context of their business or profession - and they have great content that’s lively and interesting.

If you enjoy their posts and visit their original blogs, do leave them a comment to let them know that you came via the ZenGuide Network!

You might also like to know something about the application that I’ve used to create the network - Tumblr. You can sign up for a free account within minutes and choose from a selection of customisable templates. You can then aggregate feeds from different sources - eg if you have a Flickr account for your photos, and you “tweet” using Twitter, and you blog etc - as well as adding individual written posts or photos and videos direct onto your Tumblr page. It’s not a blog in that it doesn’t have useful sorting tools like Archives or Categories but it’s a fun way to bring together a range of different web presences all into one place.

From time to time I’ll be posting a selection of articles from all over the web that I’ve found interesting and useful - and hopefully, you will, too.

This reading list is permanently lodged in my sidebar and is updated as I come across new articles but I’ll be highlighting it in a post every so often for those of you who read your blogs in a blog reader (and so don’t often see my sidebar).

Elton John recently ranted against the internet and social media, according to Neowin.net and other news sources. He is quoted as saying:

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there — communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

It reminded me that there are still many people out there who don’t know much about online social culture and who for some reason don’t want to know about it. I think it’s a shame for them - there is so much creativity and experimentation online in terms of self-expression and artistic expression as well as increased communications between people and cultures.

Here are some examples:

Music

There are a number of virtual recording studios like Net Studio where musicians can collaborate with other musicians anywhere in the world, not just those who are in the same town as they are.

Podsafe music is music that can be used for podcasting without paying a royalty. Podsafe networks allow musicians to distribute their music globally over the internet and there are internet stations like Accident Hash that specialise in playing podsafe music. And a lot of it is really good stuff, too.

Individuals doing funky things with music for themselves and their friends and in the process becoming music legends online - like this young Korean guy playing Pachelbel’s Cannon like you’ve never heard it before.

Books and Blogging

Bhagdad Burning was a blog by a young Iraqi girl which was subsequently turned into a prize-winning book of the same name.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is a book that was compiled by the blog of a London Ambulance driver, Random Acts of Reality

The Blooker Prize is an annual prize for the best blog, modelled on the Booker Prize for books.

Photography

Andrew Losowksy started a collection of photographs of doorbells in Florence, Italy on Flickr, the photo-sharing site. He would write stories to accompany the pictures. He gained a huge following online for his stories and the photos and stories have now been transformed into a book The Doorbells of Florence that has won the Blooker prize.

There’s a whole genre of photography around the theme of a daily photo from your city eg City Daily Photo Blog, Santiago de Chile Daily Photo Blog, Brighton Daily Photo etc

There is a group on Flickr that creates short stories using a series of five photos.

Art

I love this web installation by filmmaker and artist Miranda July - it’s filmic, witty and a commentary on websites all at the same time: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Rhizome is a site that posts news about new media art and the intersection of technology and art, with great links to a vast range of different art websites and blogs.

Social Networks

As for making connections, blogging and social networks like Facebook help people connect so much more easily than in the days of snail mail. I’ve personally made some great new friends in Malaysia through the litbloggers network there and I enjoy using the online telephony service Skype to connect with my family. Facebook and Twitter has enabled me to keep in contact with a range of friends in the UK and Malaysia that I might otherwise not keep in contact with. In many ways, I feel I have a much richer social life through both offline connections with my regular local friends and online connections with those who are further away or in another country.

In my view, the things that are going to “change the world and change the way people listen to music” - and for that matter, change how we relate, connect and create - are already happening online with great energy and creativity. With or without the likes of Elton John.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

“Emoticons, the smiling, winking and frowning faces that inhabit the computer world, have not only hung around long past their youth faddishness of the 1990s, but they have grown up. Twenty-five years after they were invented as a form of shorthand for computer-geeks, emoticons - an open-source form of pop art that has evolved into a quasi-accepted form of punctuation - are now ubiquitous.

“Applied appropriately, users say, emoticons can no longer be dismissed as juvenile because they offer a degree of insurance for a variety of adult social interactions, and help avoid serious miscommunications.”

I can see all the good reasons in a rushed and pressured world to use a shorthand like emoticons. But as someone who loves language - with all its variety, nuances and potential for precise and beautiful communication - I find it rather sad that we are losing our ability to use complex language and ditching the beauty of words for a few punctuation marks.

Back in the days when society was much less technologically sophisticated, the elite had stresses of their own - like assassination plots and the threat of beheadings for treason etc - yet, they managed to use language in a way that has an undoubted clarity of meaning and nuance. Here is a letter written by Queen Elizabeth I to Mary Queen of Scots on the eve of the latter’s trial for treason - which I’ve punctuated with emoticons just to make sure that Mary gets the message.

October I586.

You have in various ways and manners attempted to take my life and to bring my kingdom to destruction by bloodshed. I have never proceeded so harshly against you, but have, on the contrary, protected and maintained you like myself. These treasons will be proved to you and all made manifest. Yet it is my will, that you answer the nobles and peers of the kingdom as if I were myself present. I therefore require, charge, and command that you make answer for I have been well informed of your arrogance.
Act plainly without reserve, and you will sooner be able to obtain favour of me.

ELIZABETH.

Ah, yes, that’s so much clearer, isn’t it?

Continuing my Beginner’s Guide to blogs and blogging - for those of you who’d like to explore blogs but are not sure where to start, blog portals or directories are a good way in. I am fond of the London Bloggers directory that lists blogs around London by the tube line their authors are on or their nearest suburban station. You can check out whose blogging along the Victoria Line, for example.

I found the blog of a usability expert who is a colleague of my cousin’s near my suburban station - yup, it’s a small world. And there are blogs by local people in my area discussing the neighbourhood restaurants and local politics - all very useful info about where I live.

If you know of any other interesting or quirky blog directories or listings, please do share them by adding a comment or emailing me via the Contact form.