No don’t change the channel…the Geneva Communicators Blog has tranformed into the Geneva Communicators Network! Due to popular demand we have enlarged our team, partners, the events we will offer – and our look with a smashing logo designed by Yona Lee…
.. stay tuned for more news on our offical launch on 8 December in Geneva.
Interesting article about social networks: ‘Not a Site, but a Concept’: Tapping the Power of Social Networking from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm
Li was a speaker at the recent Supernova conference, an annual technology event in San Francisco organized by Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach in collaboration with Wharton. Li and Forrester colleague Josh Bernoff have co-authored a book on the subject, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.
“The more you know and understand the individuals who make up the groundswell around your brand and your company, the more you can use the new social networking phenomenon to your advantage,” she said.
Such understanding comes from going well beyond traditional user surveys, however. According to Li and other speakers at the conference, too few companies study how people actually interact with the web and utilize online collaborative tools, yet much of today’s Internet revolves around individual users, the content they create, the communities they form and the transactions they choose.
“People’s lives are rich and complex, so you need to get data both in the large and in the small,” said Elizabeth Churchill, principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research whose work focuses on user Internet experiences. “That means quantitative data from large groups to answer the ‘who, what, where and how’ questions, and qualitative data to answer the ‘why’ questions. For example, we know from research done by [photo sharing website] Flickr that while Americans are big sharers of photos, Scandinavians are not. Why? What is the cultural impact on photo sharing?”
New jobs are up on our careers page. See below!
Web assistant ITC Geneva
Head of Media and Communication, BG Group
Communications Consultancy, UN in Liberia
Internal Communication and Intranet Advisor, Nestlé Vevey
If your interested in web communications and new technology, then you may be interested in attending the Lift Conference 09, 25-27 February 2009 taking place right here in Geneva. A brief description:
Where did the future go?
We were told the future would be about mechanization, computerization, 3D
flying virtual assistants, 1984-like nightmares or Asimov-inspired robots. The long-praised
“21st century” itself was meant to be futuristic according to researchers and sci-fi writers.
What did and did not happen? What can we learn from the predictions that never materialized to better look at the future?Lift09 (Geneva, 25-27 Feb. 09) will look back to look ahead, exploring topics like change, solidarity, love, or design, during three days of intense networking and inspiration
The International Association of Business Communicators has announced its annual conference for Europe and the Middle East – and it’s taking place in Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland.
It’s scheduled for 9-10 February 2009 and will take place at the Università della Svizzera italiana.
New jobs have been posted on our Careers page:
Good luck!
For those working in web communications, Telono, a European user experience consultancy specialising in usability engineering and web accessibility is organising a conference presenting perspectives by experts on usability.
The conference will be held on Thursday, 13 November 2008 at 17h at the Swissôtel Métropole, downtown Geneva. Entrance is free of charge but registration is necessary.
More information about this event is available on their webiste.
The Communication Director, a magazine for European corporate communications and public relations has published a list of what it considers to be the top 12 blogs on communications and PR in Europe – and the Geneva Communicators Blog made the list! Here are the blogs selected (in no particular order):
An interesting post on Corporate Blogging from Pro Blogger, including 13 Steps Fortune 500 companies take to Create a Blog.
In order to maintain a competitive edge, corporations are increasingly looking for opportunities to make them stand out. Although traditional media serves as a solid medium that disperses company messaging to the world, the trends of information consumption are evolving. After some initial hesitancy, corporations are slowly starting to realize that it is important to jump on the virtual bandwagon of blogging. This medium represents the missing ingredient that traditional media lacks: the ability to directly connect a company to its customers.
What is the first image your mind conjures up when a brand is mentioned? Is it the logo, the jingle on the advertisement or the experience you previously had with the brand? Blogging allows current and potential consumers to associate the brand with a face and a personality. It bridges the distant gap that has existed between the “inaccessible” company and the “average” consumer. Brito said, “It’s a way for us to appear less corporate and put a human face when we interact online. We believe people relate more effectively to other people instead of a logo or corporate brand.”
Additionally, the blog is a representation of the company’s values, beliefs, philosophy and direction. If they are involved in a medium that encourages a two-way conversation, it shows their consumers that they care about their opinions. Brill noted, “Blogging lets us communicate with our customers in a more personal and direct way. But more importantly, blogging gives us a much needed way for customers to communicate with us. Customers are able to interact with comments and potentially provide valuable feedback or insight that can be brought back into the business.”
Although direct interaction with customers is an incredible incentive, there are many other benefits to blogging. It has the power to position employees as thought-leaders in their industry, to assist in reputation management during crises; to build brand awareness and loyalty; and to increase brand visibility, traffic and links.
Read full article here
Last friday lunch, over 50 people attended the Geneva Communicators Blog and CSR Geneva event on “Effective Corporate Social Responsibility Communications”. Many thanks to our speaker Per Grankvis editor-in-chief of online magazine CSR i Praktiken.se who provided very interesting insights into this subject.
The sun was shining and we were able to enjoy it a little as can be seen in the photos of the event>>
And here is a report/commentary on the event from GenevaLunch, the online community newspaper.