I was back on JetBlue yesterday on a trip to New York to a conference about Blogging. BlogOn, held at the historic Copacabana cabaret, is an in-depth examination of the business of social media. Social media is changing the way companies interact with customers and employees.
Much of the first day of the conference focused on how a company and its executives should treat blogging – and in a much bigger sense, how they should deal with unsolicited feedback and online publishing from its customers, employees, etc.
As a leader of a company, - your customers, your employees, your fans and your critics may be blogging about your products, services and company – are you prepared? You can choose to ignore this market feedback or you can join this conversation.
Several discussions ensued about this topic. I would say the majority at this conference concluded that you must embrace this community, because it will exist whether you like it or not.
Take for example a blog by Jeff Jarvis where he described his own personal Dell Hell I have known Jeff since 1999 when I met him when he ran Advance.net. Jeff is a seasoned journalist, has a great sense of humor and also writes about social media on www.buzzmachine.com. I would think Jeff would be a customer that most companies would love to have. Jeff was frustrated with his experience with Dell’s customer service and he wrote about it in a blog. Come to find out he was not alone in his vitriol for Dell and several people linked to Dell Hell. Just type “Dell Hell” or “Dell Sucks” into Google to see how pervasive this community has become.
Dell had a choice, ignore Jeff and the community that rose up together to voice its disdain for Dell’s customer service, or listen and engage this community and see how they can improve their customer service. As Dell found out, the impact of one customer getting frustrated in the world of social media has far-reaching effect.
As a leader you have the same choice. Can you stop talking long enough to listen? Are you interested in hearing what your customers are saying even if it is critical? How about your employees? Listening is a leadership trait.
As I noted, JetBlue CEO Dave Neeleman gets this. JetBlue doesn’t have a blog but Neeleman walks his planes and he listens. Bill Gates gets it. Microsoft has more than 1,500 blogs written by its employees. At the conference, a presentation by McDonalds noted that they have cautiously entered the blogosphere and have an internal blog where employees, franchisees and its crews can speak up.
As a leader, take note and do the same.
Listen. Learn. Respond. Lead.
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