Madison Who’s Who Blog

Corporations have sound reasons to fear Web 2.0. The consumers voice pitches to a cyber roar when a PR misstep exposes a company’s dishonesty. Transparency and authenticity are the crowns you must wear if you are going to expose your brand on the internet. Yet, slowly but surely companies like Marriott and P&G and Ford are recognizing the necessity of having a strong online presence and stepping up to the plate. Some hit home runs and some incite that referred to roar when they keep striking out.
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According to recent networking news items, Johnson & Johnson has now entered into online global networking with their JNJ BTW blog.

“A little over a month ago J&J started a new corporate blog, written by Marc Monseau, whom Brandweek readers will recognize as one of J&J’s pr execs. It’s been given the snappy title of JNJ BTW.

This effort came shortly after J&J hosted a dinner for bloggers to pick their brains about how the blogosphere works and how J&J should deal with it.

As I reported here, one idea was to give all 120,000 J&J staffer their own blogs on which they could berate and praise their employer as they saw fit.

Instead, unsurprisingly, J&J has given only Monseau a blog. (119,999 blogs to go then!)

So, is it any good?

Short answer: John Mack, Peter Rost, Ed Silverman, Jack Friday, and the folks at Internet Drug News won’t need to worry about losing their jobs any time soon.

Long answer: Monseau’s blog is turning out to be a revealing look at those topics that J&J refuses to reveal.”
(Source)

Network strategies in rolling out your brand on the net best have contingencies for dealing with the inevitable backlash sparked from content that doesn’t meet the online standards for integrity. If a corporate blog consists of rehashed press releases and posts discussing what can’t be said, the best strategy might be to take it down.

If there is a who’s who of those who are aggressively anti-growth, they may well be found in the current majority in the Senate.

” While financial markets burn, Democratic politicians fiddle with increasingly loony anti-growth policies and attitudes. It can’t do markets or the economy any good to have to live day by day with the background drumbeat of such insanity and inanity as Elizabeth Edwards’ vow to stop eating tangerines, because importing them creates too large a “carbon footprint.”

True enough, when Hillary speaks of taxing the “excess profit” that oil companies have the audacity to earn and every other left wing politician is serving up regurgitated social engineering schemes to “save the poor”, businesses are not anticipating a friendly climate should the Democrats take the White House in ‘08.

Luskin at “Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid” quotes a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

“More worrisome is the Beltway story, which is all pointing in the direction of hostility to growth. A bipartisan cast of Senators wants to raise taxes on “carried interest,” which means on hedge funds and private equity partnerships. With this new element of political risk, no one should be surprised to see buyout deals such as the Cerberus purchase of Chrysler harder to finance. If Congress wants to dry up capital for mergers, keep it up.”

All network strategies are premised on future growth which, unfortunately, promises to be attenuated if politicians continue to embrace policies that serve none but the political and academic elite.

Business network tips in some social networks seem to approach wealth building as if it were a dirty and antiquated goal. There is much palaver circulating about economic inequalities and social justice, most of it far removed from reality, though it makes the writer look, well, “progressive”.

It is a breath of fresh air to read the rare piece that firmly refutes the popular sentiment that it is meritorious to penalize the wealthy for their success in order to achieve “economic equality” for all.

“Policies designed to lower economic inequality tend to change the incentives of both the haves and the have-nots in a way that particularly harms the have-nots. Reductions in the incentives to prosper mean fewer jobs created, less economic growth, less in tax revenues, and less charitable giving—all to the detriment of those left behind. And redistribution can, as the American welfare system has shown, turn beneficiaries into demoralized long-term dependents. As Irving Kristol put it three years before the federal welfare reform of 1996, “The problem with our current welfare programs is not that they are costly—which they are—but that they have such perverse consequences for people they are supposed to benefit.”

Further, policies to redress economic inequality hardly affect true inequality at all. Policymakers and economists rarely denounce the scandal of inequality in work effort, creativity, talent, or enthusiasm. We almost never hear about the outrage that is America’s inequality in leisure time, love, faith, or fun—even though these are things that most of us value more than money. To believe that we can redress inequality in our society by moving cash around is to have a materialistic, mechanistic, and totally unrealistic understanding of the resources that we truly care about.”
(City Journal)

Peer networking is, ultimately, about profit - or ought to be. Today’s business network strategies seem always to include some token shibboleth that it is better to give than receive. The posture is disingenuous. What is given determines the actual benevolence involved. Most people would prefer to be taught how to fish than be showered with platitudes and a few bite size morsels of fish. Crippling the fisherman by confiscating a portion of his catch will guarantee the day when he will have no catch at all.

Network strategies that employ blogs in building connections and community can provide an unanticipated boon for your personal brand. Who’s who in your online network? Are you? Do you want to be?

Darren Rowe at ProBlogger has several suggestions on how to promote your personal brand through your blog.

• build trust - increasingly marketers are finding that people want to know and be in some sort of trusting relationship with those that they buy products or services from. This is particularly true for a personal service like consulting…..
• be personal - building on the last point - one way to make a deeper connection with potential clients is to show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human injecting humor, a photo or two of yourself and showing your personality.
• use story - I find readers respond very well to story on blogs. Stories of my own experience, stories of other clients (shared with permission as case studies) etc. Using relevant stories can help build credibility in your niche.

(Source)

To read the piece in it’s entirety, follow the link above - and bookmark it if you are developing a blog. You’ll find it a good resource.