Scott Pantall » Business

My Quest for Education Continues

Scott Pantall — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:00:44 +0000

Sunday morning I took my last test of the semester. This was a long semester. I was taking Small Business Management, Principles of Sales and Business Communications, and I took them all as online classes. If you think it’s easy to procrastinate in a regular class, try taking them online!

I’ve successfully completed 2 semesters and I only have 4 classes left to take until I have my Small Business Management Certificate. But why stop there? I still have 14 months and 22 days left of my GI Bill and that’s if I go to school full time (I only go 3/4 time). I also have to use my GI Bill before 2012, so why not make sure I use all of it?

So I’m going to work towards an A.A.S. in Business Administration with an emphasis in Small Business Management. This means I’ll have to take 15 more classes and test out of 1 course. If I continue to take 3 courses per semester, I’ll be done in just over 2 years. This means I’ll use up all of my GI Bill, but I should have enough in savings to finish my degree. I should also have enough confidence and capital to run my own business full time by then.

There’s nothing like putting your goals out for the whole world to see to make sure you follow through on them! Wish me luck!

The Up-To-$15,000 homebuyer credit

Business Communication (pt 3): Two Examples of Corporate Blogs

Scott Pantall — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:10:16 +0000

This is part 3 of 3 in a series of blog posts talking about corporate use of blogs. It’s a way for me to get extra credit for my Business Communication course and add what is hopefully valuable content to the Internet.

This third and final part of my assignment asks me to research and identify two companies that are effectively using blogs to communicate with their employees or with their customers.

While looking through different blogs, the one constant I noticed in all good blogs is enthusiasm. The two blogs I’ve decided to highlight show great enthusiasm for their company.

Randy’s Journal, Boeing – http://boeingblogs.com/randy/

Randy’s Journal is a blog written by Randy Tinseth, Vice President of Marketing for Boeing. He posts a blog about twice a week, but he only posts about subjects that are relevant to Boeing’s newest planes. The site has a very simple layout with the a column to the right of the posts with a calendar to show when the latest blogs were posted, a search field and a welcome section with a link to a page that tells you about Randy. I cannot understate the importance of telling your readers about the author! People read blogs, not only because of the content, but also because of the people who write them. There is also sections with site navigation links, links to Boeing sites, links to aviation interests and a section to make subscribing to the blog easy.

Randy’s audience consists of prospective clients, current clients, others in the airline industry, as well as aviation enthusiasts. His conversational style appeals to the aviation enthusiasts, but is not too casual to worry clients and others in the industry. He doesn’t just talk about what is new and exciting at Boeing. He mentions his travels and makes the reader feel like they are traveling with him to the different Boeing marketing events. There are also pictures and/or video in every post. The pictures and video aren’t just the professional marketing images, they are also candid pictures of the author at the events. This makes the blog more personal, which makes it more interesting. Very few people would want to read his this blog if it was just a copy of Boeing’s press releases. His enthusiasm and writing style make this blog worth reading.

Comcast Voices, Comcast – http://blog.comcast.com/

Comcast Voices is a blog that allows Comcast employees to announce and talk about Comcast products and services as well as news that affects Comcast and their customers. The timing of the posts vary because it is authored by many different Comcast employees. The site has a simple navigation bar at the top with links to the blog’s home page, archives, about page, media gallery and help. The column to the right of the posts has a lot of information and is, understandably, a little cluttered. The color scheme of the site helps keep most of the reader’s focus on the actual blog postings though. At the top of the column is a link for customer and reader feedback. Below that is a link to Comcast’s customer support page and links to subscribe to the site. Following that is sections for featured media, and lists of authors, categories, key words, previous posts and other sites the reader may be interested in.There is also a gadget that shows the latest tweets by Comcast’s Twitter account which you can follow at http://twitter.com/ComcastCares.

One of the things I like best about this blog is that at the beginning of every post it shows the name of the author with a link to their page, the author’s title in the company and the topic that is being covered in the post. The author pages are written by the authors and have a short professional history as well as personal information and a picture. This is great because it makes it feel more personal! As a Comcast employee, this blog would be a great way to highlight products, issues and news that affects your department, your company and especially your customers. It’s also a great way to show your knowledge and enthusiasm for your job, which is never a bad thing for a supervisor to see. As a customer, this blog shows that Comcast is run by people and not just by policies. It’s also a great way to talk with Comcast employees about general issues. The blog does a good job at making sure customers know where to go if they have a specific problem with their account.

I found both of these blogs from a list on the Fortune 500 Blog Wiki on Socialtext.net. This wiki is a great resource listing blogs by Fortune 500 companies as well as reviews about those blogs.

Business Communication (pt 2): Advantages and Disadvantages of Corporate Blogs

Scott Pantall — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:35:32 +0000

This is part 2 of 3 in a series of blog posts talking about corporate use of blogs. It’s a way for me to get extra credit for my Business Communication course and add what is hopefully valuable content to the internet.

This part of the assignment asks me to locate information and report about the advantages and disadvantages of using blogs for business purposes.

A blog by itself is mostly pointless. Blogging for the sake of blogging is like driving without a destination. It may feel good to just drive, but without a destination you’re basically wasting gas and time. You can get away with this kind of blogging on a personal blog. I don’t really have a purpose for my blog. so if I want to write about hockey today, international politics tomorrow, then video games the next day that’s perfectly acceptable. A business blog, on the other hand, needs to have some sort of purpose. Is blogging part of your marketing and promotion plan? Are you blogging to gain credibility? What do you hope to gain from your blog?

Advantages

As with just about anything in a business, a blog benefits from a clear vision and purpose. Once you figure out that purpose, you can start reaping the rewards of your blog. Some of the rewards of blogging are:

Cheap, Easy Publicity - Without spending gobs of money on ad space and Public Relations your brand and your company can easily become well known because of your blog. I would’ve never known about Duct Tape Marketing, a company that creates products and workshops to help small businesses market themselves, without their Small Business Marketing Blog.
Instant Feedback – Want to know what current and prospective customers want from your business? Encourage feedback and interaction in your blog posts and the feedback will start coming in. People are more likely to respond to blog posts because of the casual nature of blogs.
Personality – The larger the company, the more people are going to think of it as buildings and products and policies and not as people. One of the easiest ways to do this is by allowing trusted employees to start blogs. Sun Microsystems has taken this idea further by allowing ANY Sun employee to create a blog on http://blogs.sun.com.
Community – Creating content on your blog and commenting on others’ blogs is a great way to build an online community that shares your interests. As a business blog, it’s a great way to start and build on relationships with prospective and current clients and partners.

Disadvantages

A blog is a very public entity. Care must be taken to ensure the blog reflects well on your company. A poorly written or maintained blog may be the only impression some people have of your company.

Cheap, Easy Publicity – Yes, this was also listed as an advantage. How can this be both? Imagine everything you say can be heard by anyone with a computer. Imagine everything you say is also archived in detail. Now remember that everything you say isn’t intelligent and insightful. Sometimes what you say can be incorrect, offensive or insensitive. Due to the conversational tone of most blogs, this can be an easy thing to trip over.
Constant Maintenance - When a blog is not updated correctly and constantly, it doesn’t reflect well on the author or on the company that sponsors the blog. A blog is not something you can just set up once, then forget about. Blog readers expect timely and informative posts.
Dealing with Private Information – A blog is a great way for a company to let everyone know what is going on. And I mean EVERYONE: Customers, employees, partners, investors, regulators, competitors, etc. While a blog does a great job at making your company seem more transparent and open, you don’t want to be too transparent. It could get your company into a lot of trouble.
Poor Public Perception - Gaining credibility takes time and effort while losing that credibility can happen almost instantaneously and takes little or no effort. The only thing blog readers have to judge you are your words. Using proper grammar, punctuation and spelling can go a long ways in building your credibility. Too many misspelled words, non-working links or accidental offensiveness can easily take a toll on your company’s public perception.

Business Communication (pt 1): How Many Companies Use Blogs?

Scott Pantall — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:37:43 +0000

This is part 1 of 3 in a series of blog posts talking about corporate use of blogs. It’s a way for me to get extra credit for my Business Communication course and add what is hopefully valuable content to the internet.

The first section of my assignment asks me to locate and report statistical data about how many companies have blogs and use blogs. You would think with all the social media gurus out there, this information would be everywhere! Not so. Finding out how many companies use blogs has turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

According to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki on Socialtext.net, only 78 companies that make up the Fortune 500 have used blogs to communicate with their customers. That’s only 15.6%! With the rising popularity of companies using other forms of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, I’m surprised that the number of Fortune 500 companies with blogs is so low.

Technocrati’s (http://www.technocrati.com) State of the Blogosphere 2009 does a great job of analyzing the different reasons people and business use blogs, but trying to figure out out the number of blogs is, well, impossible. Their data comes from a survey of 2,828 bloggers as well as data from Lijit’s (http://www.lijit.com) 11,000 active bloggers and those bloggers’ 2.5 million connections. From what Technocrati found, only 13% of blogs are for the purpose of benefiting a business. Out of that 13%, only 4% of those blogs are for businesses other than the self-employed.

Blogging is still primarily done by people, such as myself, who blog only for the purpose of getting our thoughts and ideas into the public realm.

Finding the Truth About Healthcare Reform

Scott Pantall — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:08:52 +0000

With all the hoopla in the news about protests over proposed health care plans, I thought I would try to find the truth for myself. These plans could affect EVERYONE in the country, so it’s important to know what is in these plans.

When I first started searching, I found nothing but opinions: The Fear! The Praise! The Need! That’s all well and good, but I wanted to know what is really in these plans. I wanted to know what would happen if any of these plans were put into operation. I finally found the sites with the information straight from the horse’s (or donkey’s or elephant’s) mouth. I give you…

The Plans!

WARNING: These are not summarized lists of pros and cons of the plans. These are the ACTUAL PLANS being proposed. There is a combined 1633 pages of legislatural verbage to comb through. This is not light reading!

‘‘Affordable Health Choices Act’’ – http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf

Brought to you by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions.

‘‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009’’ – http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Also known as the “House Tri-Committee Plan” named so because it is brought to you by the House Committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor.

The House Republican Health Care Solutions Group Outline - http://blunt.house.gov/Read.aspx?ID=1140

Brought to you by the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group. This is still an outline and not a proposed bill. There is some controversy whether the group will turn their outline into a bill.

If you feel passionately enough about these plans to interrupt town hall meetings with shouting, chanting and pushing, you should feel passionately enough to READ THE PLANS. Otherwise, you’re just allowing others to use you.

Yawn, Blink …. Oh Hi!

Scott Pantall — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:05:22 +0000

After a long stretch of ignoring my blog, I’ve finally decided to get back on the wagon. I feel like I did when I was a kid and I found that toy that I really liked, but for some reason left in the bottom of my toy box for months. My blog is like my old GI Joes with their rubber banded torsos. This is not the best comparison I’ve ever made.

So why, oh why did I neglect my blog? I blame….. my wife! I have one of those now. That’s what wives are for, right?

“Why don’t you come to the bar anymore?”

“The wife”

“How come you’re always doing yard work?”

“The wife”

“How did you get that limp?”

“The wife”

“What did you do last night?”

….

In all honesty though, having a wife is great. It’s much easier to say than long-term-girlfriend-mother-of-my-child-all-around-great-gal-that-I-love. She probably wouldn’t care if I went to bar with friends or neglected the yard work. She also has nothing to do with me neglecting my blog. I love my wife!

I’ve tweaked a couple things visually on my website. I’ve also found a purpose for my blog: I’m going to start my own business! Why does this give my blog purpose? I’ll get to use it as a sounding board for my ideas, to facilitate answers from those who know more about entrepreneurship than I do, and to hopefully help others who, like me, are starting down the unlit path of starting a business for the first time. Because that’s what it feels like to me:

Becoming a first-time entrepreneur is like walking down a dark, unlit path with no idea where it’s heading or what obstacles are in the way. You can ask for advice. You can gather as much information as possible. But it’s still up to you to take those steps that lead down that unknown path.

Don’t worry too much though. My new purpose won’t completely rid this blog of the randomness and pointlessness that is me.