Archive for the 'Blogs' Category
Posted by Ted Hopton on November 11, 2008
A former colleague, Keith Dawson, was the editor at Call Center Magazine for years. Sadly, Call Center Magazine fell victim to digital fever and died, but I still remember the phrase Keith coined: Super Empowered Angry Customers.
Super Empowered Angry Customers describes the shift in power that has taken place with the popularity of blogs, video sites such as YouTube, and websites such as “______CompanySucks.com” Companies have always claimed to listen to customers, but in practice many companies have routinely ignored many customers — and when this happened customers had little option beyond taking their business elsewhere.
Now they can take their business elsewhere AND cause a public relations disaster for the company that disappointed them. This has completely changed the dynamic between customers and companies, shifting the balance of power toward the customer to a never-before-seen degree.
So how shall we use our power, people? Will we use it for good or for evil? Every customer is not always right, and not every complaint is justified. It can be a very good thing to have more power, yet history is full of lessons about power being abused. Let’s try to use our power for good.
Posted in Blogs, Customer Sat, Customer Service, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Tagged: call center magazine, keith dawson, super empowered angry customers | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on October 18, 2008
Sorry, WordPress, but I’m fed up with your ham-handed restrictions on what I can do with my blog. I like the layout choices you give me. I like the design and look.
But when are we going to be able to use the cool javascript widgets and gadgets that other blogging platforms permit? I just wasted 20 minutes trying to add a little FriendFeed widget to this site, so people could post to their FriendFeed from here. Nope, you blocked it over and over. I had to settle for the little chiclet link, instead.
I have friends who know I blog, and when they want to get started blogging they ask me what platform they should choose. I used to say WordPress, but now I plan to send them elsewhere. You’re holding us back, as well as yourselves, WordPress.
Posted in Blogs | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on July 19, 2008
Perfect clip for me to post and share, since I am now a Wiki Community Manager, which is another name for online community organizer. Not only is this Fast Wonder Blog post useful, but Seth Godin is always worth reading. If you want to learn more about this emerging role/career, both posts are good places to start.
Over time, I hope this blog will become another good resource for learning about the online community organizer role, as I will be posting about my experience, and my learning curve, going forward.
| Seth Godin recently called the Online Community Organizer role a Job of the Future. This brings me to the most common question: “What exactly do you do?” I see the online community manager role as having several key elements: ongoing facilitation, content creation, evangelism, and community evolution. There are certainly many more tasks, but I suspect that 90% of the work falls into one of these four very broad categories. |
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Posted in Blogs, Career, Social Media, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on July 19, 2008
I started this blog just to get started blogging. I had wanted to blog for years, but one thing after another held me back, not the least of which was fear that I would not keep up with it. Blogs that aren’t updated regularly aren’t really blogs, IMHO. I didn’t want to set something up that I could not commit to and write in frequently.
So, one decision I made was to let this blog include any and all content I felt like blogging about. I know people who have different blogs for different kinds of content. That makes sense, and if you’re trying to build traffic to your blog it’s probably best to be targeted in what you write about, so readers interested in that content will find your blog valuable.
But I’m not doing this for the website traffic and I couldn’t commit to keeping up with more than one blogs, such as one about work topics and one about things of personal interest to me. So I made this blog a blend that reflects all of me — all of my interests, whether professional or personal, the serious and the silly, the carefully considered and the random tidbits. I’ve decided I like it this way.
Now, my career has changed direction and blogging is suddenly part of my official job, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs, Call Centers, Career, Social Media | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on July 18, 2008
I liked this story, Summer Wind. It’s calming, peaceful, and evokes images of the rural lifestyle it describes. It’s a vignette, really, not a story, article or column. Just a quick view of a place in time, nicely-written and conveying the appeal that the rural lifestyle has for the author.
Here’s a glimpse:
For the past few hours, the wind has been rising and falling, the precursor of a storm coming in from the west. When the wind climbs, a kind of elation blows through the house — it’s the hushing sound of the leaves outside and the way the breeze sweeps the floors and lifts the curtains and slams the doors. The dogs snap to and look around when it gusts. And when the wind drops, it seems to drop us — the dogs and me — into the trough of an ordinary summer day.
I’m loving the rural lifestyle, myself, here in my cottage on a horse farm. It’s nice out here 
Posted in Animals, Blogs, Human Interest | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on July 17, 2008
Sorry I have not been posting much here recently. I’ve plunged into my new job, and that includes blogging for my company internally. I’ve lost track of how many posts I have created there, but the last thing I really want to do at the moment is blog here, too, at the end of a very long day.
So, apology and excuse offered, I’m shutting down and getting out of the house.
Posted in Blogs, Career | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 16, 2008
More interesting stats about blogs’ growth from eMarketer. Nothing terribly new, but the news reinforces the perception that blogs are rapidly growing and should not be ignored in your marketing plans.
Posted in Blogs, Marketing, Media, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
OK, I constantly have to remind myself that perfect is the enemy of good (if you haven’t heard that before, give it some thought). So, I’ve just finished 56 new posts to this blog and each one is about something I’ve read, heard or seen that I want to recommend to others. I completely cleaned out my backlog of articles I had been meaning to link to from this blog.
Since I find far more of such items than I have time to write about, I just slapped these into the blog. In fact, the fastest way to post them Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs, Recommended Reading | Tagged: articles, news, Recommended Reading | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new research has found.
read more | digg story
Posted in Blogs, Health | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
Mark Cuban wrote that newspapers, and The New York Times in particular, are making a mistake by publishing blogs. But blogs are really an extension of newspaper reporting.
read more | digg story
Posted in Blogs, Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
A former colleague, Keith Dawson, was the editor at Call Center Magazine for years. Sadly, Call Center Magazine fell victim to digital fever and died, but I still remember the phrase Keith coined: Super Empowered Angry Customers.
