It depends…

Funny how many questions have answer that start with those two words. This tends to be exceptionally true of the coporatization of social media.

  • What if I call my boss a jerk on Twitter? It depends…
  • What if we find bloggers defacing our product images?  It depends…
  • What if my company finds me posting on Facebook when I’m home sick? It depends…
  • How do we monitor the blogosphere for our multiple brands? It depends…

The complexities of the requirements for big business and their employees is not as clear cut as it is for small, aggressive start-ups. In the end, the reality is that discretion is required on both sides; by the people who post or create media, and the people who read or consume media.

Undiscovered Opportunities of the C-Suite

Sometimes you don’t know what you have in front of you. The opportunity to change.

That’s what lies before today’s C-Suite executives if they choose to explore it. What I’m talking about here, of course, is really about relationships. With the advent of social computing in the second half of this decade, the power has shifted from producers and marketers to people.

The challenge, of course, is for today’s executives to leap into the deep end of the pool and embrace these new relationships. To build new loyalty into their customer base, by demonstrating the ability to listen, learn, share and improve.

This is a great opportunity that current executives and VPs have that their predecessors didn’t have.  The ability to change the relationship and make it one built on the trust and respect of quality products and honest interactivity.  This goes equally for internal communications.  The opportunity to use these same open and trust building methods within an organization is huge.  Especially with organizations that are struggling with employee engagement and moral in these trouble economic times.

It goes beyond displaying good will, however.  Any effort in using social computing for building new relationships requires a commitment to open dialog, acceptance of public feedback (both good and bad), and the willingness to discuss this in a public venue.

The point here, is that our current executives have this powerful new option that their ancestors did not.  The question is, how many are of strong enough to take that bold step?

Image credit: Envios

Lots of talk about social media and corporations

Must be because of some of the news coming out of TechCrunch40, or just a coincidence.  There seems to be two current conversations, one on corporate involvement in social media, and one on social media in the enterprise.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking on the idea of what I call the corporatization of society.  I’m hoping to get that finished yet tonight and posted for tomorrow, because I’ve got a few ideas on the previous two conversations I mentioned above.

Hmm, almost too much thinking… 🙂

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CompUSA Closing Stores

CompUSA Logo According to this post over at jkOnTheRun, CompUSA is closing up to half of its brick and mortar stores.  While customers should be able to clean up with discounts starting around 20% off, the big question to me is why.

Personally, I think this is a natural cycle for the computer industry.  The consumer base has gotten comfortable with Internet purchasing of big-ticket items like computers and HD TVs among other things.  At the same time, more and more technology products have been comoditized to the point that you can find almost everything you need at Wal-Mart, Target, or K-Mart.  Not to mention long-time technology chains like BestBuy and Circuit City carrying everything from laptops, to cell phones, to car stereos, to HD TVs, to refrigerators, to… you get the point.

Trying to be a computer superstore when computing products are as common as toasters is a tough business.  I’m not surprised that they are reducing the number of retail outlets when you factor it all in.  Of course, this is my opinion of what’s happening, and did not contact CompUSA for any information on the topic, so take it for what its worth.

Via: jkOnTheRunCompUSA’s closing stores- good deals to be found

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Rick Mahn
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