capio 2009 employee blogging final
TRANSCRIPT
Don’t be afraid of employee bloggers
An Ambassablog Update
CAPIO 2009 Conference San Diego, CA Friday, April 17, 2009
Steven Shultz, M.S.
Deputy Director, PR
San Diego County Regional Airport Authority
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Presentation Outline1. San Diego International Airport2. Advent of employee blogging3. Ambassablog Update4. Making employee blogging work for you5. Building blocks of an employee blog6. Meet an employee blogger
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
San Diego International Airport
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
San Diego International Airport• Nation’s
smallest major airport
– 661 acres
• Busiest single-runway airport in USA
– 18.1 million passengers in 2008 CommuterCommuter
TerminalTerminal
Single Single 9,400-foot 9,400-foot
runwayrunway
Terminal Terminal 11
Terminal Terminal 22
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
San Diego International Airport• Operated by San Diego County Regional
Airport Authority
• Created in 2003 by California State Legislature
• 320 Airport Authority employees
• 10,000 airport employees
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Advent of Employee Blogging
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
blogsouthwest.com
Southwest Airlines:Wal-Mart: checkoutblog.com
tsa.gov/blogTSA:
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Obama will
integrate citizens
into the actual business of government by … employing technologies – including blogs, wikis & social
networking tools – to modernize internal, cross-agency & public
communication … in order to
improve government decision-making.
”“From official Barack
Obama campaign position paper
www.whitehouse.gov/blog
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
The Ambassablog model
• Blog proposed to suppport existing program
• Three employee bloggers initially selected
• Bloggers free to write what they want
• All posts pre-reviewed by PR staff
• All comments pre-reviewed by PR staff
• Totally in-house: PR maintains & updates the blog
• Very little legal & IT involvement
• Open source building blocks / near-zero cost
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Growth of the Ambassablog• June 2008 – Ambassablog YouTube page launched;
employee bloggers increased from 3 to 5• August 2008 – Award in Creative
Innovations/Technology Category from Airports Council International-North America
• October 2008 – complete redesign; shift from Blogger to WordPress blogging platform
• February 2009 – visitor count reaches 10,000
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Ambassablog Walk-Around
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Visitor Statistics
Ambassablog Site Summary
Visits Total ....................... 11,196 Average per Day .............. 19 Average Visit Length .......... 1:10 This Week ...................... 130
Page Views Total ............. 19,904 Average per Day ................. 29 Average per Visit .............. 1.6 This Week ...................... 206
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Global Reach
• Locations
of last 100
visitors as
of April 14,
2009
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
The Ambassablog in action• Strengthening partnerships with peer agencies
• Sharing good news about the agency
• Addressing bad news forthrightly
• Publicizing agency support for worthy social causes
• Highlighting agency programs & initiatives
• Making a big public agency seem … human
• Promoting sustainability
• Shedding light on history
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Future projects
• Integration into:
• Employee photo contest
• Recruitment of new employee bloggers
• Viewership survey
• Blog to book: lulu.com, blog2print.com
Agency Web site
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Making employee blogging work for you
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Success factors for an employee blog• Culture – have particular traits to highlight or bad reputation to
repudiate
• Transparency – be willing to engage in real dialogue & present
multiple sides of an issue
• Time – devote adequate time and identify dedicated staff resources
• Dialogue – be willing to interact with customers & peer organizations in
the blogosphere
• Personalization – use appropriate writing style to build personal
connections with the audience
Northeastern University & Backbone Media, Blogging Success Study, 2006
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Technical issues
• Bandwidth usage• Multimedia needs• Subscription/RSS firewall issues• Web 2.0 unfamiliarity
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Keeping costs to almost zero
• Utilize internal staff• Use team blogging approach to minimize time
demand on individual bloggers• Use reader contests to acquire content • Take advantage of open source software
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
FREE/LOW-COSTbuilding blocks of an employee blog
(www.expertcounter.com)
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Making an impact
• It is great learning about the operation of my hometown airport and how the people there are working hard on making it better every day. I look forward to seeing and utilizing some of the future improvements to the airport so that my next travel experience will be a lot easier. Thanks SAN!
– Michael Rivera, Ambassablog YouTube page viewer
Making an impact
Don’t be afraidof employee bloggers
Meet an employee blogger!
