Recently Brad Howarth (lagrangepoint.typepad.com) profiled Australia’s top marketing (activemagazine.smedia.com.au) and business blogs (www.smartcompany.com.au). In both stories nowwearetalking was recognised for its lead in Australian corporate blogging.
Everyone on our team was happy to see colleagues publicly recognised for their hard work. Although there was a quiet recognition the positive publicity was also based on standing tallest among the few Australian corporations actively blogging.
Almost a month ago I asked the Australian blogosphere to provide their thoughts if nowwearetalking was hitting the mark? We had a lot of feedback that set off a storm of internal discussions about what nowwearetalking needs to do to be considered best in class.
The discussion revolved around the following recommendations:
Recommendation One:
Both Gavin Heaton (www.servantofchaos.com), Stephen Collins (www.acidlabs.org) and Cameron Reilly identified the nowwearetalking subscription process to be a barrier for first time users to offer comment.
Action: We will simplify the process and request only basic information. We’ll work with our website designers to implement the change.
nowwearetalking will keep the subscription process in place as it is considered a useful tool to facilitate considered conversation and to protect the identities of participants.
Recommendation Two:
Gavin also recommended allowing names in the comment section to link to an author’s blog.
Action: This is currently being added to our list of projects to tackle in the near future.
Recommendation Three:
Our terms and conditions were criticised as lacking transparency.
Action: We will be simplifying our terms and conditions to make it easier to understand.
Recommendation Four & Five:
Cameron suggested opening nowwearetalking up to all employees and offering employee safeguards that reduces the risk for the employer and the employee.
Action: All Telstra employees were always able to participate in nowwearetalking. No change is required.
Upon conducting the following podcast with Cameron Reilly (www.telstraenterprise.com), I learned employees interested in blogging start by posting content in the opinions section. If they demonstrate an ongoing interest in blogging, they’ll be given their own blog.
The only other stipulation is the proposed blog doesn’t duplicate a topic covered by one of our 15 bloggers.
We are currently producing employee blogging guidelines for the same reasons indicated by Cameron.
Next steps:
Two additional recommendations to be addressed in the near future includes blog, video or podcast genuine debates and introducing a Community Manager to lead outreach efforts. Both are good points and are important to address as future priorities.
As always, we remain open and willing to hear more feedback and ideas, so please don’t hesitate to comment or contact me via Twitter (twitter.com/M_Hickinbotham).