More on McDonald’s intranet blogs

Share This!

The launch of intranet blogs by McDonald’s is significant because it’s not a high-tech company. You can talk about the likes of Sun, Microsoft, and IBM all day long, but the reaction from execs will be the same: “We’re not a high-tech organization.” But holding up McDonald’s—a fast-food company—as an example of corporations turning to internal blogging as a communication channel has the potential to make some executives sit up and take notice.

I noted Steve Crescenzo’s post on McDonald’s blogging earlier this week, but now we get a detailed report from ClickZ Networks, reporting at New York’s BlogOn conference where Steve Wilson, the burger company’s senior director of web communications, addressed the crowd:

“If your task is to move the culture of a company, you’re not going to move it by the flip of a switch,” Wilson said. “You have to show that an open dialogue can occur, and create an ongoing dialogue to move from point A to point B.”

The company has no plans yet for external blogs, Wilson said, but went into considerable detail about the planning and execution of internal blogs, which are written by executives and departments. It’ll be interesting to see, now that a major, non-high-tech mainstream corporation has launched intranet blogs—pilot program though it may be—how many others will be willing to give it a shot.

1. While reading this article I was trying to relate to my last job as the hitech kid in the corporate team of a multinational based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I was wondering how I would have tried to use this idea if I was still there.

   Some ideas that popped up are sharing successes in handling difficult customers, or building new sales teams, or how a difficult target was acheived during a slack period… eseentially knowledge sharing and internal communications.

   But I wish if Steve Wilson can share with us how they are using it, what are they posting, are the readers posting negative comments openly, and more specifically, what successes can he relate to the presence of blogs.

   Posted by Raza Jaffri  on  10/22  at  07:50 AM

2. As a leading public consumer-based blog/vlog on McDonald’s, The McChronicles would love to see a public blog from the company.

   There are many consumers who love McDonald’s.  Consumer evangelists, like us, would appreciate hearing directly from the company.

   Posted by McChronicles  on  11/17  at  09:23 AM