Why you should have a corporate blog?

I guess this is one of the most blogged about topic. But I guess, I'll post my comments too here which I incidentally sent to my colleagues urging them to blog on our corporate blog

Now why blog and what you can blog.

First, the Whys

1. A blog is our company profile out in the world-wide-web, not the lengthy text we write in the content.

2. A blog reflects our company’s attitude and work-culture.

3. A blog creates a better first impression with prospective clients.

4. Blogging compels you to be more creative, at all times.

5. Blogging changes you. It changes you by letting you introspect when you look at your own posts.

6. Blogging makes you a better communicator . It forces you to be clear. If you write something that's confusing, you failed to communicate to your visitors.

7. Blogging is documenting your ideas and opinions. In other words, blogs give rise to new ideas that can be built as products !

8. A blog is a better tool to find customers and employees.

9. Blogging lets you be more open , so it lets you collaborate better with your team.

Then, the Whats

If the above reasons are compelling enough, blog about the following

1. New technology or new development in the technology you work on.

2. Limitations and issues in any tool/framework/language you use.

3. Tips and tricks in any tool/framework/language.

4. How to improve Design and Application Usability

5. Customer Behaviour.

6. Day-to-day issues and how to solve them

7. Learnings from different aspects(anecdotes, project implementations, client interactions etc)

8. New ideas

9. Everything else not listed above

Policies and Guidelines

I have come across various establishments that drive a customer crazy(me being one of them) by uttering the words "it's not our policy to.."

Policies are created to guide any action taken by an organization and avert any outcomes not in favor of the company. They are essential too. But there's the catch. Policies look good when you are aiding the customer or for a better example, protecting a customer's information like the privacy policies of websites that ask for your personal info. But they are dreadful when policies rather than helping a customer , irritate him.

I remember when I had an issue with customer care for my cell phone. It suddenly stopped functioning and as it was under warranty I gave it for repair at the service center. They said it was a bit complex and sent my phone to their head office in another city. Even after 3 weeks, I got nothing, not even a response after continuously calling the service center. Irritated, I took my case with the cell phone company's customer care. They escalated it 6 times but nothing happened. Finally, I asked the cust care lady to let me talk to some senior personnel to enquire what's wrong. But she wouldn't let me. ,All she said was that it's not their policy to provide contact information of required personnel and gave the same recorded reply that my cell was not working(which as if I didn't know).
She didn't know the root cause nor she let me know it. Whoaa! If you don't know the issue and you can't let me deal with it, who is going to solve it??
As a last resort, I had to threaten to sue them to get a new phone as they couldn't repair it.

I guess some policies are meant to be more of a guideline rather than a strict adherence to the book. One cannot have irate customers and think of doing good business.

Partners and Associates

When it comes to startups, your partners shouldn't your subordinates or your superiors. There is bound be an unknown , unacknowledged gap that neither can fill in. It again may boil to a situation similar to your old office where one passes the decisions and the other does it without question.

But startups need conflicts. Conflicting ideas, conflicting ways of implementation but the same principles and passion and urge to be successful. Conflicts that will weed out the unwanted stuff and let only the most wanted and most useful things remain.
And those conflicts will be less discomforting when the people involved have a camaraderie and less ego over those conflicts like friends, colleagues, classmates or even a mentor-mentee but if you've shared a boss-assisstant relation, it could get pretty difficult.

Frustration

A piece of advice about frustration

"Frustration is ambivalent.It can be good and bad at the same time. It is good in letting you find new ways out provided you channel it effectively and it is bad when you take too much of it to your mind and allow yourself to be stressed adversely affecting your physical and mental health.There are numerous cases where frustration has led to devastating results in peoples' lives.

Frustration is caused by many things, frustation on your boss, your wife, the government , in fact everything that can be named on the planet.People try to find ways not to fight the things that cause frustration but to escape from them, but the key to letting it out is to use the energy wasted in the frequent fearful thoughts caused by frustration to do something useful for your own personal good."

So , Confront and Fight, don't escape or oblige !!

Customer Hype

I guess I need to introduce the background before I start this post. I work for a start-up and am trying to generate some for my company through a few projects.

Lately, I've been noticing a trend in customers' behavior(at least among those I meet). Most of the customers that I reach out to for a project proposal ,presentation or initial discussions, seems to create a lot of hype about his knowledge of the internet and web and the technologies involved to develop a web application. He/She boasts about their knowledge of web much before Google started or how they've learnt using email much before I knew it or how even with a lack of programming skills or experience with a technology firm , they understand the intricacies involved in developing a functionality. Then there's another kind that simply thinks software isn't real estate or a factory, so it should be pretty cheap. As cheap as his monthly electricity bill.

All they want to say is - "We've seen it all"

All this seems to me as a ploy to indirectly tell me that - "Hey, I know what the hell you are trying to do and I very well know how much time it takes and how much it costs. So , beware, don't fool around with me".

Now, how do I get a customer out of this mindset and tell him that I'm there to help him and not milk him? Iam struggling at that.
Tough thing aye !!

Over to LinkedIn Apps

Though Iam posting this a bit late, but LinkedIn Apps have arrived and How..
It did stand up to it's need - professional networking.

As the LinkedIn blog says - "The nine applications that you see live today on LinkedIn include productivity enhancing applications from Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit, and WordPress as well a Company Buzz application developed by LinkedIn"

As you might get from the list of applications and their apparent use , LinkedIn does not look like it gave in to the pressure it feels from Facebook. Contrary to the apps on Facebook(a wild guess of about 20K+), Twitter and other social networks, I dont think LinkedIn is giving access to anyone for adding any application into it. It needs the developer to explain what his or her application is going to do and how it will help users on LinkedIn to accomplish a task. So no silly, funny apps, or games. LinkedIn means Business.
Just 100% useful applications that we could use on a professional level.


Checkout what mashable has to say about new apps that would enrich a users experience on LinkedIn . Looks like we could get updates and work done on LinkedIn itself without the need to open 10 different websites.
Let's see how users will react. Needless to say, Iam thrilled !!

Pricing does change things

These are my musings on the post by Seth Godin on his blog.

I guess change in pricing really changes everything. A friend of mine running a entertainment/gaming lounge has a multitude of games(along with food n drinks) to play but few customers chose to play for longer hours as it was priced on an hourly basis. Interestingly, his earnings were divided almost equally between the games and food because the longer time a customer stayed, the more he ordered. So, he offered a monthly&yearly membership to recurring customers and there were quite a no. of people who signed up.

Coming back to the post by Seth, he suggests a ticket auctioning system by airlines so that people can trade tickets, which to me, seems to be more of an eBay kind of system with all the features of time constraint, minimum consecutive bid, have-to-buy on winning bid etc etc.
But there's more to airline tickets than simply item auctioning. The products that you sell on eBay might not be available after a period of time but they aren't perishable or rendered useless.The seller can again put it up for sale with a renewed price structure. Tickets aren't that way.

It may seem plausible to auction Cricket or Football world cup tickets or Superbowl tickets(for Americans) on eBay, but to have a site just to auction travel tickets is going to be disruptive and destructive.
Imagine spammers buying tickets from LA to NY during Thanksgiving in multiples of 10s and just trying to sell it at double the regular price. You wouldn't have an option of buying one a bit later on at a seemingly affordable price if you are not an early bird. You could say there's a downside of doing so - if the tickets aren't sold, the auctioner will lose.At the price ratio I mentioned, he would break even if half are sold and sell the other at a lower price at the end. But I don't know who would want to fly to meet his family on the other coast and wait till the last day looking at a auction-site to get a cheaper price.

Instead, customers should be able to trade tickets online. Someone who wants to cancel his trip shouldn't end up losing his money when there are a lot others looking for a ticket. He can put his ticket for sale (at the same price he bought or at the current price) and let others buy it. The airlines can charge a nominal transaction fee from the seller and make it up. That way I guess there would be no need to put up unnecessary rules and regulations(that users wont even read completely) and put up an auction site