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      • « Q & A: Nortel’s Social Media Strategy | Main | Nortel’s Annual Enterprise Customer Conference »

      Nortel’s Social Media Embrace: Part II

      By Mark Evans | May 30, 2008

      Yesterday, I ran the first part of an interview with Ronald Alepian, VP, corporate communications with Nortel, who talked about why and how the company is using social media tools such as blogs, podcasts and streaming video.

      Below, you’ll find part II. What’s particularly interesting is how Alepian and Nortel differentiate between journalists and bloggers - once again raising the question about whether bloggers are journalists. In Alepian’s mind, bloggers are not journalists because they mostly write opinions, while journalists stick to the facts. He’s certainly entitled to his opinion but I think Alepian is wrong to draw distinctions between the two camps given there’s more blurring of the lines every day.

      Can you talk about education and structure when it comes to social media. Do you have policies, for example, about how can blog and what they can blog about?

      We do have a blog policy within the company that basically here are the dos and don’t. It’s not rocket science or different from any other companies blog policies. One is don’t talk about forward looking projects and financial things like that because it opens whole complications for a publicly traded company. The second one is I personally hate anonymous blogging when done by employees of a corporation. It contravenes the unwritten rule. We are out there as front as we can be.

      Do you encourage internal bloggers?

      Yes, although upi will never a see a communication from us to 30,000 employees, “Ladies and gentleman start your engines and go blog”. I have no issue and quietly encourage it. We certainly can’t stop it. Good luck to the company that tries to stop it. People are aware of our policies – they’re straightforward. They are aware of the fundamental principles: don’t talk about financial and don’t pretend to be someone who you aren’t.

      As this world progressively moves forward and as we put in place programs internally to get employee be educated about the direction of the company, I hope to see that type of conversation online. If you try to impose censorship or control in that environment, it’s a losing battle so you try to guide people to do it responsibility. People in the rank and file organization, in the business that gets the product and speaks to customers are best positioned to talk about it. I think the number of people that do it will continue to grow.

      How to you reach out to bloggers and other social media people?

      There is a general premise in the blog world that is different than the media world. Journalists are bound to great extent - and we hope they remain bound - by fact. There needs to be a source or proof point of reference to what they are talking about. It needs to be based as much as possible in fact, records and sources, etc. That means there are different rules boo on how you speak to media because you can engage people based on factual conversations. In the blog word, it is an editorial world, a commentary world where people express opinion. They don’t necessary need to be based on concrete resources, they can express things an opinion. The engagement with that environment needs to be more about debate, argument and more about delivering compelling thinking than arguing fact. When we go on those sites, and people I argue whether Nortel will make it or not, or whether Nortel will be worth $50, they are expressing an opinion. We need to come to the table with compelling arguments.

      Finally, when Mike Zafirovski start blogging?

      He did blog on an internal [blog], and he did a video blog where he talked to employees that got a lot of good feedback. He did a second one when we launched our advertising campaign. Our executives are using the platform to engage employees. We are letting those folks blog internally. Externally, it will come down to commitment. We would love [Zafirovski] to blog, if only a couple times a week. His engagement with customers is very direct – he will speak to hundreds of customers in a given year, and right now, that is the best place for him to be. I don’t think you need a CEO blogging for a company to be credible if that person has embraced it internally in terms of having a dialogue.

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      Topics: Executive Suite |

      Viewing 9 Comments

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        Just catching up from being at Global Connect all week...

        To many's comment on why the need to "pitch". I agree that being up-front and factual is best (that's hopefully our policy at Nortel and on Buzzboard). But a pitch and a spin are two different things. The same news item can be interesting to different reporters for different reasons depending on what the pub focuses on, the reporter's hot buttons, etc. All a pitch does is wrap up the story into a few sentences to get that particular reporter's interest. It doesn't necessarily mean spinning it.

        Regarding Roese and Phil's blogs. Not every blog can be run like Buzzboard and AAN. Roese and Phil have "real jobs" to attend to. That said - thousands of people (including you probably) care enough about what they think to read their posts. That they don't always respond immediately to every blog comment is a reflection of their broader responsibilities, not their reluctance to engage...as they are two of the most vocal, interactive, and frequent speakers/spokespeople we have at Nortel.
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        Bo,

        Thanks for the response. I understand the distinction you make. I have gotten the feeling in the past that Nortel often "knee jerks" reactions to bad press, rather than 1) coming clean 2) finding humor when there is irony. It seems overly defensive and a bit paranoid sometimes.

        I don't cut John Roese and Phil Edholm too much slack on their blogs. They started them and if they don't intend to stay engaged they should bow out gracefully. They have never been very engaged and it seems to me to be a random set of postings and presentations rather than discourse or conversation. To me, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the medium and the audience.
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        Many/Bo,

        Good dialog. It amuses me to watch old-world companies attempt to use blogs as cheap marketing channels. It almost always backfires because a visible forum for opinion is created and in that kind of channel the credibility of the dialog has a lot more impact than the original posting. That's why I'm lost to understand the Roese and Edholm strategy of post-and-run. They introduce a topic for discussion and then they abandon it and leave it to the commenters to control the main messages. Makes no sense to me. Phil used to engage but lately he's as bad as Roese.
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        Bo,

        I agree with your statement about two-way interactivity, I only wish your executives shared that feeling. One more comment on interactivity; the tone of each posting is often set by the original poster. It can be resonant or dissonant to the reader. However no response is worse in the world of blogging that challenges or disagreement. For example, when compared with Roese's early attempts, Rybchinski's postings are dissonant and do not receive much in the way of responses even though he is a much more prolific poster.

        I dispute the accuracy of tools that measure "tone" in an article. Very often the spin is far too subtle. I use lightreading as an example. Further, articles are often turned on their heads by the comments, does your tool measure the comments as well?

        All that said, I have to ask why is there a "pitch" at all? I mean the most trouble companies (and anyone else) seem to get in is when there is a real or perceived difference between the facts and what they are saying. Of course mistakes happen, and the best way to deal with is an immediate mea culpa with a factual accounting. Additionally, n this business it is very hard to get past the product. Telecom/Datacom is a smaller and more tightly knit community of users/operators today. We talk a lot more amongst ourselves. Word spreads quickly about who responds and who does not, what works and what does not, where there is useful documentation, why products fit and how to solve problems. We also flag bullshit and FUD when we see it, so why put it out in the first place?

        I will never understand why this posture seems so difficult for Nortel to understand. Nortel has a good story, why does it need to be dressed up, twisted, spun and "pitched" to suit marketing's perception of what the audience is thinking or wants?
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        With so much time spent talking about blogging here, is it time to rename this blog from 'all about nortel' to 'all about bloggers who blog about nortel'? :)
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        Yes there is a blurring of the lines between "journalists" and "bloggers." In fact I can say that a good deal of the influential blogs we target are maintained by "traditional journalists" (or analysts/consultants) that have a blog on the side.

        But I think the point Ronald was trying to make is that you can't always pitch the same story to a blogger that you would pitch to a traditional reporter. And here's why...

        As a reporter, your main goal is to write an article that your readers will find interesting. Sure there's room for some opinion, but in general the vast majority of journalists are bound by the notion of "report the news" (Mark you can correct me on anything I missed there).

        Bloggers, on the other hand, have a different goal -- which is to write an article that stimulates debate and conversation. Many blogs, including Buzzboard, are seen as more attractive and successful when there's an active 2-way conversation going. And we all know that neutral, factual articles don't do that...by default a blogger has to be more opinionated, controversial, edgy.

        You can see this through tools that measure "tone" of articles -- 75% of "traditional" articles are considered "neutral." Compare that with blogs, which almost by definition can't be neutral.
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        I think Alepian is referring to reporting and reporters when he uses the overly broad term of journalism and journalists. I sense, perhaps correctly or perhaps not, a negative bias towards blogging and bloggers. If so, I can understand why. It's much more difficult for corporate communications people to maintain control over messaging.
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        "He’s certainly entitled to his opinion but I think Alepian is wrong to draw distinctions between the two camps given there’s more blurring of the lines every day."


        Haven't you just confirmed his point by posting your personal opinion?
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        Fair point but I think you'll find plenty of opinion made by journalists as well.
       
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