My Thoughts On IIA Blogging Event
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Last night at the Shelbourne Hotel, the IIA hosted an event titled "Blogging New Media Business & The Law". One of many taking place in this town about blogging, I went along to check out the new look Shelbourne and to see what I could learn. Here's a summary for you. And you can listen to it here.
Tom Murphy, PR for Microsoft spoke first. He was well paced and had lots of good examples to demonstrate his ideas. From a PR perspective, he summed up the benefits of blogs are follows:
- Conversation starter
- Influence the debate - my thought on this: don't be afraid of them. There were a lot of people I spoke to last night who are in fear of blogs - "what if people post bad things about your service?"
- Reputation Management - but if you're not true it can damage your reputation like it did with Walmart and Edelman PR in the US. Read more about flogs here.
- Advocacy - why aren't there more not for profits bloggers?
- Feedback Loop
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Measurement
When I asked a question about how Microsoft was dealing with the Outlook 2007 problem (it's stripping out css and ruining html emails), his rather flippant response was to send plain text mails. I don't think so.
Next up was Sarah Carey who has her own mommy blog and from that landed a column at The Sunday Times. She had no slides, preferring instead to read from a long script. And yes, it sounded like reading. And boy was it long! She's quite taken with herself and her own meteoric rise to writing fame (I'd never heard of her until last night). She told us stories of people being 'really grateful' to her and finding solace from her blog. She talked for a very long time. [I can report at this stage that the ceilings in the newly renovated Shelbourne are gorgeous].
Richard Deleran, the Business Editor of the Sunday Business Post spoke next about how the failure of Irish businesses to embrace new media is costing us money. I liked the way he named names and showed up IBEC for their stupid comment last year complaining about the style that 'the kids' use for communications. He made the point that the kids have grown up with multiple devices and are used to multi-tasking in a digital environment. He made a good point that we should look to the positives of this and harness it. IBEC take note!
Some interesting stats on Ireland:
- Half of all 15-24 year olds use Bebo or MySpace. That's an awful lot of bloggers.
- We have the highest play station usage outside of Japan
- And the highest mobile penetration in Europe
Finally, TJ McIntyre of Merrion Solicitors and UCD Law Lecturer concluded by addressing the legal aspects of blogging. Given that he was the last speaker of the night and speaking about law, he did especially well because he had everyone on the edge of their seats. Put the fear of God into anyone with a blog. And as for the ones who were expressing concerns at the beginning of the evening, I'm sure they took to the hills! I won't even attempt to summarise it here - for fear of giving out misleading information - but I'd highly recommend you listen to TJ on the podcast.
2 Comments:
Hiya,
Interesting post, though I think you're being a little bit harsh on my "flippant" response :-)
The question I think you asked was did customers go to Microsoft's employee blogs when issues arose such as the issue you mention in your post. Although I don't have a in-depth knowledge of the specific issue, I know that the MS bloggers did provide guidance on it. (http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti/)
The "plain text" comment was just a suggestion that sometimes, from a communications standpoint, it's wiser (and more effective) to use plain text - not always :-) That wasn't my suggestion around the Outlook question, just a general communication comment!
Many Thanks
Tom
By Tom Murphy, at 12:45 PM
re: Microsoft and Standards
With a bit of louck Molly Holzshlag (web standards evangalist) will save Microsoft from themselves... fingers crossed (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/01/30/working-together-for-a-better-web.aspx)
re: Mommy Blogs
Should have guessed by your kitten pics that you were feeling catty!
re: The Law
I guess it's the "are bloggers journalists?" debate - but I am always VERY careful what I blog about (mostly stupid YouTube videos, but still..)