After the break:

Question: What does it take for a company to be ready for social media?

Neville Hobson: Culture. An understanding of the value of conversational communications. You have to be prepared to give up control of your message. An organization that doesn’t encourage people to talk freely about what’s going on in the organization, that requires log-ins for all types of information, is not ready for social media. If the organization is not ready for social media, its use could cause “all kinds of disruptions.”

Alan Jenkins: Even if a company is not ready for blogging, you should nevertheless pay attention and monitor what people are saying and understand why people are saying what they are saying about you. An example of a company that is blogging, but not doing it well, is Arla Foods in Europe. Their PR staff blog. However, senior executives do not. Consequently, the content of the blogs is restricted to commentary about previously reported information. The blogs are stale and uninteresting.

Question: What about portals?

Shel Hobson pointed to Pageflakes, which makes him wonder “why would people pay big money for SAP portals when they can have this for nothing?”

Question: Once you know something is going on? What do you do about it? Can you control it?

Alan Jenkins: “Once your message is out and people are starting to repeat it and manipulate it, you’ve lost control of it. … But then, you’ve never really had control of messages. The nice thing about social media is now you can be part of the conversation about this, and before you couldn’t be.”

Shel Holtz: One of the things that blogs allow is for your people to talk, not just the company. Companies have a hard time admitting mistakes. Individual people will do this more readily. And in doing so, they are humanized and more likely to benefit from good will.

“Influence is wielded through engagement and participation in the conversation. There is no opportunity to control.”

Question: As a corporation or government, would you let the CEO loose with his fingers on the keyboard? What is the role of the communications professional.

Alan Jenkins: The CEO should write for himself. That will bring authenticity. There are many examples of senior executives who do this quite well.

Shel Holtz: The two qualifications for writing a blog are passion and authority.

Alan Jenkins: If your CEO doesn’t want to write, do a podcast. Put a mic in front of them. Ask them questions.

Neville Hobson: Two must reads: Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel and Blogging for Business by Holtz and Demopoulos.

UPDATE: Neville Hobson has posted his slides for this presentation on NevilleHobson.com.

Neville Hobson led an un-conference session on Organization communication 2.0: The age of social communication. He was joined by Shel Holtz and Alan Jenkins as panelists.

Neville opened the session with a general presentation of the key concepts and elements of social media: citizen generated content; open-source software; search engines; wikis; podcasting; the Web 2.0 Meme map; the Social Customer Manifesto; MySpace; SecondLife; OhMyNews; tagging (del.icio.us); photo and video sharing (Flickr and YouTube)

Some takeaways:

The Thin Membrane between internal and external communication. “There is a blurring of the division between internal and external communications.” Consumers can speak directly to employees inside companies without intervention from traditional corporate spokespeople. “Eventually, the line between internal and external communications will disappear.”

“The social media ecosystem is primarily technology tools that fulfill something we all do as human beings anyway – which is to connect.” The social media ecosystem includes: blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, vlogs, moblogs, MMS, Internet telephony. These tools facilitate communications, engagement, transparency, trust.

Technorati is now tracking 44 million blogs tracked, with the number doubling every six months. The blogosphere is now 60 times larger than it was 3 years ago.

“Community is what this is all about. Building that sense of community is key to Organization 2.0. Whether it’s with consumers, shareholders or whoever that might be.”

Neville cited The Hobson & Holtz Report as an example of the power of social media. Using Skype, Neville and Shel are able to regularly produce their show across a 13 hour timezone difference – at virtually no cost. Today, the podcast’s Frappr map shows listeners around the globe – a community that has grown up around the hobby of two communicators. Question: Will we reach the point where citizen generated content (blogs; wikis) will become as trusted as mainstream media.Shel Holtz, “I don’t trust blogs. I trust some people. … I don’t think we need to have trust in the tools. We need to trust the tools to enable people to have these kinds of conversations. …. In the era of social computing, the power is transferred from instutions to individuals and audiences.”Shel Holtz provide a A good explanation of the Long Tail concept for communicators who speak to narrower or smaller audiences. The magic middle can have a very real impact through time.

Alan Jenkins pointed out that Steve Rubel has become a “trusted agent” for many people. Few know him personally. But many read him and have a sense of familiarity through his blog.

Shel and Neville reach much larger audiences through their blogs than they do through their podcast. Alan Jenkins began podcasting a couple weeks ago. He reported that the number of subscriptions to his blog have increased significantly since he launched the podcast.

After 1 hour and 45 minutes, Neville called for a mid-session break…

I’m planning to kick my conference off with a panel session titled Organizational communication 2.0: The age of social communication. Blogger and podcaster Neville Hobson will moderate. Unfortunately, the names of the panelists were not published in the conference program, so I’m relying on Neville and the timeliness of the topic to make this a worthwhile session.

Reality television creator Mark Burnett will deliver the keynote address. The conference program promises “a refreshing look at today’s new media. You’ll learn how reality television has revolutionized the entertainment industry and raised the bar for audience expectations and participation in television programming. We’ll discuss the impact of this shift for the way businesses communicate. And we’ll explore how we can meet our audience expectations for constant innovation and an active role in business decisions and communication.” Having never watched any of Mr. Burnett’s programs, I’m approaching this session with an open mind.

I’m looking forward to ending my first conference day with the For Immediate Release dinner being organized by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. I’m a regular listener to Shel and Neville’s podcast and a reader of their blogs. So, I’m looking forward to good conversation with other members of their/our community.