As discussed in one of my earlier posts that the Blog is a type of website or part of a website and it’s short for “web log” which is a web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual such as WordPress application. In addition, Microblogging is web service that allows users to broadcast and exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images and video links. The best example of microblogging is Twitter application. The blogging / micro-blogging strategies benefit the organizations’ marketing and communications for both internal and external.
The organization that my team chose to examine its case study is International Geological Congress (IGC). IGC is the leading global forum for the earth sciences which holds once every four years. The 34th IGC is hosted by Australian Geoscience Council (AGC) and it will be held in Brisbane in August 2012. Some of the 34th IGC major stakeholders are AGC, VALE, bhpbillition and UNESCO.
As the IGC organization has an important event coming in the 5-10 August 2012 and they expect around 5000-7000 delegates to attend from over 100 countries. They are facing some important issues and challenges which will lead to decrease the number of delegates’ attendance. The issues and challenges are:
- The increase of the Australian dollar.
- The increase of the cost living, accommodation and transportation in Australia (Brisbane)
One of the best strategies that will benefit the 34th IGC is using blogging for both advertising the event and improving the communication between the stakeholders and delegates. The best social space for implementing this strategy is in the IGC website www.34igc.org by creating new page called “34th IGC blogs” as a core communication channel for this event. However, before starting this strategy, the IGC should form a blogging team, train the bloggers and establish a comment policy to avoid blogging implications.
The strategy should be implemented in two ways. Firstly, blogging about the event itself such as what the event is about, who are the stakeholders, how many delegates will attend etc. Secondly, blogging about general information such as accommodations, transportations etc. Also, in both ways IGC should post and reply the readers’ comments frequently which will make more interaction with the readers and leads to improve the event’s branding. IGC also should link the blog with social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to build its reputation quickly and to encourage younger delegates to attend.
My question for this post is; what do you think about my blogging / micro-blogging strategy that I chose for IGC and the tactics for implementing this strategy?
You’re the first person I’ve seen that’s considered facing the challenge of the increase of the Australian dollar! I think blogging general information and replying to readers comments frequently to increase interaction is very important, interaction with the community can be very beneficial for painting the IGC as a friendly company and Australia as a nice place to be! I think the idea of using YouTube is also a fantastic idea, as the IGC doesn’t have a YouTube page yet! Great Post!
Thanks David!!! I have considered the increase of the Australia dollar because I’m foreign student and I’m facing this issue now. Also, the delegates of the IGC are coming from over 100 countries so I thought this is one of the important challenges.
I agree with you that interaction with the community is very beneficial.
Good post!!! I like that you are having clear plan in implementing your strategy with aim of increase sharing among percipients and this is what blogging is about. Moreover, using different social media network increase the possibility joining your network and increase number of percipients. However, you have to think to deliver the main ideas that you want to deliver in way the suite the social network approach and meet your business needs .
Thanks Naif, I agree that each social network site has a different approach and to meet the business goals and deliver my idea I need to choose the way that suite these social networks.
Hi Muaath, great post and great strategy. One question in regards to IGC’s blog privacy settings, can other users like me post blogs on the website? Because you have to set settings on which authors can post blogs on IGC’s blog site.
Great post and keep up the good work mate.
Thanks Abdullah, good question. Users like me and you can only post a blog about general information to help others such as transportations etc, and 34th IGC should set up privacy policies for that. However, for posting blogs about the event itself can only be done by the 34th IGC employees.
I hope I have answered your question in a clear way!
Good post mate….
I saw that you have mentioned about increasing the Australian dollar! That would be most important fact to the delegates…
However, I think reply comments frequently is another way of interact with wider community.
Cheers..