Great Animation

Thanks to my friends at Signals with some audio help from the podcaster at Focus Biz Sharedband has a really super flash animation that explains how it benefits customers and a simple overview of how it works.

If you find flash is choppy or poor quality then you could probably do with Sharedband service, so meanwhile best to download the exe file and view it at your leisure!

Active Conversations but no mask on me

I invited a small group of friends and colleagues to dinner back in August. As a result of reading Naked Conversations I decided we needed to discuss the impact of blogging on businesses and in particular the ramifications for marketing and communication agencies.

We had such a good “on going” conversation we decided to start a group blog to represent and continue our round table discussion on line. This meant that everyone would need to start their own individual blog, mine was already up and running – although using the dreadful Blogger software.

Bob’s company Signals kindly offered to organise the group software and hosting. I plan to migrate across to the new platform very shortly. Two of the guys have already started posting on their new blogs: “The Podcaster” and the “The Signaller” and the others “The Voice”, “Talkin’ Pictures” and “The Navigator” will all start in the next few days.

To be different and create interest beyond the content (which we hope will be top notch) we planned to develop some interesting graphics (not as you see the blogs now) and a “mother” page that portrays the interaction in the group discussion. This emphasis on presentation and structure would also help us understand how corporate blogs could evolve, without compromising authentic individual contributions.

Unlike most of the group I have come from a corporate marketing background. In general corporations are not yet decided on the true value of blogging, however since leaving my corporate role I have discovered real benefits to shareholder value and customer relationships and have set about convincing former colleagues and peers (and anyone else who wants to listen).

Nevertheless despite allegations (as per Shel's reference to another misguided blogger) – I am not Apple’s "Masked Blogger", a quick check would verify I have never worked there.

The Art of Communication

I wrote an introduction to the changes occuring in customer communications for my good friends at Signals:

How to find out what your customers really think

It’s an irony that communications technology has made it harder, not easier, to get your message heard. The problem is choice. These days, customers are unlikely to make significant buying decisions based solely on a dialogue with your sales team. Instead, they conduct research on the Internet. But even that is already changing.

Click here to discover how to be heard in an evolving virtual world.