Corporate Podcasting Expressway

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This week we start with the definition of Knowledge Management and why some organisations are not impressed with its orginal promise. We consider how we can reawaken the value of KM to organisations using the power of Web 2.0.

For example through:
* Harvesting content with feeds by department or hubs of knowledge
* Sharing information using podcasts, wikis and social networks.

Watch out for the golfing example!

The second part of the programme includes an extract from a whitepaper on Knowledge Management frameworks from http://www.k-wiki.com . The extract focuses on what constitutes intellectual or knowledge based assets.

An extended version of this episode will soon be available in the form of a downloadable audio file from the Knowledge store.

We look forward to your feedback.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Great news from those at Skype - impending convergence between the Internet and conventional television could mean a new dawn for easier access to fresh and more interactive video (Joost). BBC Entertainment news have summarised their (Joost’s) announcement nicely.

Joost describe their service as:

a new way to watch TV, free of the schedules and restrictions that come with traditional television. Combining the best of TV with
the best of the internet, Joost™ gives you more control and freedom than ever before - control over what you watch, and freedom to watch it whenever you like. We’re providing a platform for the best television content on the planet - a platform that will bring you the biggest and best shows from the TV studios, as well as the specialist programs created by professionals and enthusiasts. It’s all overlaid with a raft of nifty features that help you find the shows you love, watch and chat with friends, and even create your own TV channels.

My first reaction to this was: What is the difference between todays Internet experience with on-demand streaming video in a separate window and what Joost hopes to achieve? I thought about this a but more. My suggestion is that it could all be about ease of access? For example,

1. For those not familiar or confident to surf to the extreme - aka having a core competency to find stuff
(this touches on the issue of social inclusion and the potential digital divide that could happen in todays society, let alone internationally)
2. Continuing the concept of grouping content, establishing outlet channels and attracting more diverse and user built and driven content.
(what I mean by driven content is: viewers having the chance to vote and decide on what to make viewable).
3. Creating a social interchange - a kind of virtual water-cooler to share common interests and happenings.

If there was ever an application more suitable for delivering corporate value this has to be it. Convergence of traditional media delivery, new media and sharing ideas could provide corporations with applications that focus on the activity of internal departments. They could be established as channels to create engaging and valuable content for existing and potential clients. Even from an internal Human Resource (HR) perspective, there could be channel just for them - argh! - It could provide an excellent means of inducting new staff or announce promotions. A different type of e-Induction. HR could even use it to announce deadlines for staff appraisals, best practice and recruitment processes. I say this as my experience with many corporate intranets and knowledge management systems is that they all start of with wonderful intent but there are lots of examples where they just become to complex to navigate.

Does this mean that we have to wait for early adopters to prove this concept before corporations can get the confidence to use it? Unfortunately, the answer has to be maybe as we really have not seen corporate podcasting coming of age. We all live in hope for some creativity and courage for managers to start understanding the value of such web 2.o functionality.

Popularity: 33% [?]

The following video is a truly inspiring film.
It shows how we have moved from paper to a learning machine.
Eventually considering that we are not all driving the machine but have become one!!

I’m especially impressed with the last part that says what I have been shouting about!

/Governance
/Family
/…

Please watch and enjoy.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Recently I had the chance to meet with the UK director of Phonecasting.
This organisation has some amazing new and practical applications for corporations (aka Corporate Podcasting)

Take for example some immediate applications or useful examples:

e.g.1. A project meeting has been conducted. Normally, someone will take the meeting minutes and distribute them via editing a document, storing/sending and awaiting a receipt on email.

e.g.2. A sales director has decided to make a special discount for a product or an important annoucement about product changes.

e.g.3. CEO’s wish to update their shareholders on what has been traditionally called a conference call - It is a time when the stock exchange will be listening hard for continued confidence in the firm in question.

e.g.4. A Sales person or Technical person is in transit without access to the Internet but urgently needs the latest news on a product sale or product fix/ support issue.

One solution is Phonecasting. This is where we see the convergence of audio and what I call ‘information reach’.

In summary, RSS can be used to ensure subscribers can get information when the want it and through a conventional route. This form of ‘push’ information is also excellent in not having to rely on extensive housekeeping of data. NB Content management disciplines can be integrated to make information available on an a set of asset life dependancies, i.e: time and associated validity (a bit like food labels - best before!)

Please watch the podcast (compressed quality through YouTube):
You can also get it from itunes and download it to your ipod (.m4v quality)!

Popularity: 57% [?]

It was interesting to see a recent article in a national daily that announced a grouping of new political bloggers.Cynics may suggest that this is an attempt to capture a growing movement of new political commentators.In 2002 approximately 100,000 bloggers toiled away at their craft. During the US election campaign (2004) it was reported the blogging (short for web log) phenomena resulted in the development of 8 Million (source: Pew Internet & America) of the 120 million adult American Internet users creating blogs, a 58% increase from the previous year.

During the 2005 UK election campaign it was reported that even Michael Howard’s (opposition contender) wife was blogging daily while she was escorted him on his election trail.The growth in blogging statistics is also true for the United Kingdom - with the current number of bloggers reaching 30Million. The Guardian noted that they had achieved 2Million page prints in their first 2-3 weeks.

Knowledge Hemispheres (their brand is known as KH-2 or Knowing How2) Managing Director Dr Savi S Arora also noticed in January 2005, the Financial Times ran a special section on the growth of Blogging and wiki’ing. ‘I couldn’t go to sleep for consecutive nights as I knew that something new was brewing for the Internet. The scope of what is now known a Web 2.0 was hidden and difficult to size’. I wanted my company to pioneer in this field, its still early days though’. The result is that KH-2 are one of the few company’s that offer corporate podcasting solutions and understand the potential targeted penetration potential of technologies such as Real Simple Syndication (RSS - feeds). KH-2 also have the unique ability to build custom feeds and also aggregate specific content. The technology of Web 2.0 offers the ability to control content deliver for standard newsreader systems.

Is there a place for Corporate Blogging?

With the current growth of those reliant on RSS technology running at 6Million per week, the question to ask is whether there is sufficient interest with corporations to pursue web-blogs / blogs. One of the constraints is the potential breach of confidentiality.There is some good news, www.backbonemedia.com suggests that there are many positives to be achieved by corporations adopting the ‘art of blogging’. Their report was written by Stephen Turcotte. They asked hundreds of companies to participate in an online survey and also conducted in-depth interviews with leading individuals from six corporate blogs - that were selected as representative of the diverse spectrum of the corporate blogging world. What we discovered was that for the majority of our survey sample, corporate blogs are living up to all the hype. We discovered that corporate blogs are giving established corporations and obscure brands the ability to connect with their audiences on a personal level, build trust, collect valuable feedback and foster strengthened relationships while and at the same time benefiting in ways that are tangible to the sales and marketing side of the business. Just like in other aspects of life, success breeds success. What we see with successful blogs is a chain reaction that starts with a sincere interest on the part of the bloggers to provide their audience with great value in terms of useful and engaging content in the form of information, help, discussion and ideas. If a company can harness their customers’ knowledge and ideas, a company will find better ways to satisfy their customer’s needs and wants.

Listening to customers and acting on their suggestions is one of the best ways to build a group of customers who are committed to expressing their goodwill to their community. It is a common practice in blogging to provide a link back to a thought originator, which is valuable because backlinks are a way that search engines distinguish the order of the editorial rankings. When customers start commenting, posting or tracking back to their blogging community it can have a viral effect - spreading the word through other blogs. We discovered that it is a company’s blogging strategy that will produce the strongest community goodwill, and that goodwill brings the most marketing and sales returns.

Can Marketing companies even those already active with the Internet gain any advantages?

Forester Research, in its RSS 101 (One to One) Market report suggest that RSS is a powerful tool, albeit for the technologically advanced today. They also suggest that marketers should test and deploy to proactively maintain relationships with their customers. It currently appears that RSS is morphing into an individually targeted marketing channel capable of off-setting many of the downsides of other channels. This technology allows companies to target, segment and personalise communications, much as the way email does today. Individualised RSS recipients receive text, images and promotional offers uniquely matched to their interests and desires. The individualised feeds enable marketers to communicate with subscribers based on demographics, past behaviour or any other segmenting attributes.Recently it has been suggested that podcasting could be a useful tool, effectively contributing to an ‘attention economy’. Audio on the move that is subscriber based is a powerful ‘tuned’ medium.With the next-generation solutions each recipient gets his or her own unique feed, enabling marketers to understand how many and which recipients are picking up their messages. In addition, because each feed is unique to the individual recipient, marketers can track and measure subscriber actions all the way down to an individual, facilitating the same behavioural targeting and testing possible in other personalised media. This can also provide the potential to create a unique message for each user based upon demographic or behavioural data. Best of all these feeds, once set-up do not require any changes on the part of the recipient - they can use the same reader they use today to get their blogs or news feeds to access a company’s promotional messages. What next ?

Forester’s research reveals that 57% of marketers are interested in adding RSS to their marketing mix. A related reason may be the demographics of those who are online today. Marketers are excited by the possibility of a 100% message deliverability to a desktop via an RSS feed rather than email. There are no email maintenance issues with RSS.

Maybe the potential of RSS is only restricted by our imagination to apply it to commercial contexts.

This article is also available from k-wiki (http://www.k-wiki.com) the free online encylopedia / Wiki for Business.

Popularity: 24% [?]