From David Meerman Scott's blog, on The Business Value Behind Social Media, both good and bad.
Martin Giles, U.S. Technology Correspondent, The Economist who served as moderator.
Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, popular blogger and co-author of Trust Agents and author of Social Media 101.
Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of two books: Groundswell and Open Leadership.
Interesting, at points, discussion about how some businesses are using social media correctly. For example, Rackspace who uses Twitter to replace its customer service, when your server is down, twit it to Rackspace who knows who you are and so can reboot your server.
What opportunities are there here for franchisees?
Michael,
There was a very good 1/2 hour workshop on this topic at the recent Ontario Bar Association's 10th Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada.
The consensus was that a more sophisticated and nuanced approach was needed to balance the needs of rights of copyright and trademark owners with franchisees' rights to associate and freedom of speech.
A very important area and one in which franchisees and their associations should be contributing. Yielding to unilateral control demands is contrary to the long-term creation of a credible suite of digital information sharing mechanisms.
Open communicate and time are prerequisites to any effective collective action. Oftentimes, it is one individual who starts off a weblog that gets others thinking of innovative ways to co-operate for their legitimate business objectives.
A weblog of "franchisee weblogs" maybe the next step. Not just a links page but tips, traps, examples, contributors, etc.
Les; I have said this a number of times. The hardest thing for the franchisor will be to let go of control - which is what has to happen if social media is going to work in your favour. How they let go of control and still benefit will be up to them.
Hello Michael!
I did not realise that you were so much involved in the franchise business. Good for you. Take care and check my blog out
www.jitneyhack.blogspot.com
Asafo, will do so. In the meantime, you might think about how much taxi cab drivers are like franchisees and what we might be able to do to help you organize a convention for your association which makes a profit.