Tactical Transparency

Stephanie Rogers of PARTNERS + Simons

I spoke with Stephanie Rogers today about transparency.  She is the Director of Interactive Strategy at PARTNERS + Simons and was extremely helpful in providing specific, pragmatic ways to help clients understand the need for transparency in their communications.  We recorded the interview via BlogTalkRadio and you can hear it here:

Interview with Stephanie Rogers of PARTNERS + Simons regarding Transparency.

Some of the pragmatic initiatives she mentioned involved creating a corporate blogging policy for a company, along with a code of conduct.  I've heard of other folks using the blogging policy (rules for employees; what they can/can't blog about, netiquette, etc.) but the code of conduct was a newish idea for me.  Stephanie's point for creating this was that you could post this code of conduct (a call to act in a civil manner, no abusive/harsh language) and if people transgressed it, you had fair reason to yank their posting privileges. 

In terms of good case studies, re: transparency, Stephanie mentioned Homegoods.com and how she had helped train five new bloggers (folks who hadn't blogged before).  Over 20,000 people had tried to get these five slots, and Homegoods inspires huge brand loyalty.  These "passionistas" point out the value of letting your customers speak for you/your brand when you give them an avenue to do so. 

Thanks to Stephanie for a great interview and I highly recommend her/her firm for great ideas on how to successfully build/market your brand.  Her personal site, The Culture Junkie, is also a great read and provides more insights into marketing from a more personal point of view.

-John C. Havens

Robert Scoble Interview on BlogTalkRadio

I had the great good fortune to have Robert Scoble be the first guest on my new BlogTalkRadio show about Transparency in Business. It's called, Media 2.Open and I've created it with new media maven, Shel Holtz to talk about issues we'll be writing about in our book. You can listen to the episode by clicking on the flash player below, and if you click on the other BTR button you can see where we'll be posting archives for other shows we create via our BlogTalkRadio Transparency Show.

Needless to say, Robert's a great interview, especially about transparency as many would say he quite literally wrote the book on the subject with co-author Shel Israel and Naked Conversations. I quoted the book a number of times in asking Robert questions about transparency, and we went off on a couple of related tangents thanks to the folks who were also contributing via the text chat we had up during the show.

Texting brought up a good conversation, re: Twitter, Pownce, and how people are learning to communicate differently via different mediums. As Twitter only allows you a limited number of characters (120) you have to say what you need to say very briefly. If you can be pithy as well, all the better.  Initially I wasn't a big texting fan but now I can't live without it, especially when I'm on an important call and my wife texts me with info about the kids, etc.  It's also invaluable when you're at a conference and want to keep tabs on your buddies whether or not you're in a place you can talk on the phone. 

Robert said he's up for a follow up interview so more on that soon.

You can also hear an interview with Anil Dash I did for this series.

Please note: The flash audio player below plays the latest episode of our Transparency show; click on the BTR button below the player to access archives for past shows.