PRSA part II

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More door prizes, a gift basket to Home-a-rama. Not me. Another set of tickets to something… not me. More museum passes, again, not me. I guess that I’m a loser today.

Oh! Corporate blogging book prizes, please, please, please. Fingers crossed. 1st copy, not me. Second copy, not me. Third copy, not me. Bummer. Oh well, I guess I could by the “Corporate Blogging Book.”

Apparently a local business rag was asking for companies that blog, eyes at my table go to me, but I haven’t been invited. Goldman & Associates, a PR firm, has been blogging, which is pretty cool. A question was asked about the books author, why it wasn’t published sooner. Publishing is slow, what can I say that’s the printing field.

Goldman blogs about “senior living industry”, which is aimed at executives in that field. They wanted to become the “thought leaders” in their niche, wanting to be the PR firm of choice. They looked at the thought of “face time”, which is genius. They could use that to push clients to the PR side of the house. Very smart. Goldman is hitting a very small niche, with over 400 hits monthly, and they have a few RSS readers and some in their podcast. They run their blog like a news organization, editorial meetings, interviews, stories.

They also podcast and found that it was cheap and easy. (Booyah, again!) They are now doing phone interviews, (Skype?) finally and they are encouraging people it is easy. Things to keep in mind:

• Pick the topic wisely. (Perfect.) They found their niche, which is great, but she is saying that she was going to say away from PR, because there are several big boys. (I disagree.)
• Software is cheap, time is not. You need to update regularly. Clients needs are important, but blogging is just as important. She indicates that it is about 2 hours of time a day. (That makes sense from a corporate sense).
• Promotion, promotion, promotion. I understand that. After talking with the presenter of the Corporate Blogging Book, she wants to link to me (holy crud!). That will be interesting.
• Do it. (that’s self explanatory.)

Introductions for the “Mona Lisa of Blogging” Debbie Weil. Corporate Blogging Book published by Penguin Press, was released this August.

Debbie starts by talking about meeting some one through the blog-o-sphere, and then you get to meet them at a conference. ( I haven’t had that experience yet…). A book for the “reluctant manager,” people to busy to do it, but they need to.

Agenda

• Why
• What
• How
• Now!

Myth #1 – “I don’t read blogs.”
Myth #2 – “I don’t have time for blogging”
Myth #3 – “If I close my eyes this blogging thing with go away.”

Whispers from my table about wishing it would.

Debbie shows a diagram about Consumer generated media verus Mainstream media. The Consumer side is larger and while not scientific, it’s very true.

Corporate blogging is as an inflection point. Everything is at 2.0, PR, Employee engagement, user generated content, everything. Inflection Point by Andy Grove (intel founder) (almost sounds like a Walt Whitman poem)

“Strategic inflection points can be caused by technology but they are more than that…. they are a change in the way business is done.”

Why? Blogs are next generation website (true, true) New social media tools are more poweful at informing/influencing/persuading that traditional PR and advertising. (again true, everyone hates corpo speak).

If you can’t be found online, you don’t exist. (Yeah… Snow and Associates). Google just bought YouTube. 1.65 billion. 100 million videos served daily (like mickey dee’s).

Youtube video from dunkin donuts. (a very good ad) Videos are passed around like crack (do you pass crack, or consume it yourself?).

Blogs are the structure, podcasts, video are just content.

Blogs are an interactive website. – A blog is not a discussion board, which requires a certain level of control, comment moderation. Blogs give you high search engine visibility and blogs put the web back in the hands of the non-technical. Blogs enable you to listen to the new “marketing conversation” as well as participate in it. Debbie then showed us pictures explaning of the blog structure, what are comments, what is a trackback, etc.

Blogs are content management systems, by category and date. Searchability on the blog is necessary. Debbie feels that is is a good idea to have a comments policy on the main page and in a corporate setting, I can’t agree with her more. I don’t need this here. I kill your comments if want to (Argh!)

RSS: 88% of people don’t know what RSS is. “RSS is not email!” You don’t go to each blog, you subscribe and get it all in one place. Feed reader! IE 7 will have RSS reader built in (has suprisingly good feed handling).

Persistent searches in your RSS feeds. Debbie showed examples of Google Reader and Bloglines.com (which I use). Use your keywords to always have it search. Genius. Some packages (meaning money) are available, but they look a little ’spensive.

Blogpulse.com looks for trends (should look for jeredb) Blogs create more search engine entries due to their frequency.

HOW

Debbie conveyed that the best way to learn about corporate bloggin is to learn from effective corporate blogs. Gartner’s 2006 emerging technology hype cycle Corporate blogging in the trough of disillusionment, but is set to be in the adoption phase in less than 2 years. Fortune 500 blogging wiki shows that only about 30 Fortune 500 companies are blogging externally (which is very suprising, but I do have more of a Silcon Valley eye). Some examples given were Chevy Tahoe Ad contest (fastlane Blog) (which bombed!) A Youtube video from it and it was obviously not what Chevy wanted. Chevy PR people spun it and there response was lame. Chevy VP writes for the blog and is very informal, it works for them. Intelli-seek found 45% of the comments were negative. GM doesn’t care. That’s what they want. it is the direct connection they wanted. They get to listen to the consumer. They are taking the comments and using them in product development. That’s what should happen.

Blogs can be divided into multiple and single author (that makes good sense). “you tend to think that the blog is a single person entitiy, but that can be achieved with an editor.”

In working with or using the blogosphere, the back channel communications are key! (I was actually talking to a woman during the break about the back channel communication)

Wells Fargo has a blog and they maintain an internal blog on “blogging best practices.” They launched an event specific, limited time blog, which is a safe way to start. You can let the clock run out and not pick it up, which is something that we might have to consider.

Dell’s blog as an example – They had poor customer service, the “dell hell.” Jeff Jarvis started ragging on Dell and got a huge response, which created an issue. In response Dell created their own blog but it started off as very corporate. Dell was able to adapt and was better able to to react to the exploding dell laptops through their blog. The blog was more effective in the response that a traditional press release.

QuickBooks community blog includes discussion boards, FAQs and Tips and Tricks. They create a community around the product. Quickbooks Community gets 40% spam, 40% customer service related, and 20% were real comments. This comes back around to the comments policy.

Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. He “gets” blogging, “Blogging DNA”. He uses the blog to get more information out the publc, it creates a human feel with the CEO. Schwartz is petitioning the SEC to use blogs for RegFD financial stuff. Which I think just got a tacit approval.

Ghost bloggers. Are they a good idea? A middle ground has to be found, podcasting possibly. Come out and say that there is a blog by proxy.

When you get to meet the person in the flesh, after you have been reading their blog, there is a “real” connection.

Before we started, we decided to break for lunch. I had a member of the University Alumni board come and ask about a gesture I had made when Debbie suggested CEO dont’ ghost blog, but podcast. Terror! She said that she thought it was a good idea, but still, the tentacles of work reach far and wide.

Lunch. Mmm. Taragon chicken and a nice pilaf, served with a good caesar and some nice little cookies and a killer pumpkin/carrot roll.

As I am waiting in line, I spoke with Debbie about Schwartz has gotten tacit approval and how the internet and blogs really meet the SEC’s criteria for reaching a broad audience. She also told me that Mark Cuban was a difficult man to work with in writing her book. She said that she can’t stand a poorly written blog ( which now makes me very nervous ), and that while he’s cool, he doesn’t write very well. I found that really interesting. I’m talking to a woman who has had direct contact with the big ones of the blogging world.

As we are getting back to the presentation, some announcements. Take the little mugs and decorations. Carolyn won the center piece. Now on to the last of the door prizes, more tickets to museums, some tickets to Busch Gardens, again. big loser.

NOW!

Debbie is suggesting a typepad.com, not a bad system. Pick a name, which is the most difficult thing and can’t be changed. If you’re afraid, get over it. RSS is a new best friend, but remember the consumers are in control.

Blogger relations. Find your target bloggers, check out to see if they are bonafide. Read the Blog, that’s super, infact the most important. Make a relevant pitch. Technorati can be used to check out the ranking of a blog.

Micro Persuassian is the example. Steve Rubel’s site is really good. He’s got alot of information about hdimself (as an example of what to do). The Bad Pitch Blog If you make a gaff to a well known blog, they’ll post it to the bad pitch blog. They’ll make you look like an idiot. Everything is fair game.

Question Time

Blog frequency updating, how often? – RSS! Don’t worry, they’ll get it. People generally don’t blog for a living. They do it for other reasons. Become and thought leader. Blog at a minimum 1 time a week, but you have to have quality. Should you let your reader know that it is weekly, daily? – Sure! don’t tie yourself into daily stuff.

How do you develop a comments policy? - Develop one. “we reserve the right…” GM blog doesn’t have comments edited. You have decide how far you are going with grammatical corrections. Political blogs are dangerous (the asker is from a city government), even non-political blogs will get political comments (in her case). – School districts have the same problem.

Bloggers and emails: How do you stop them from using emails? – Ya can’t!

Comments and linkage? Will they smell a pitch? How do I get to them? – Comments are critical. You can put links in your comments and it’s important, put up microsite, your blog etc. Is there a trade association? – Nah! That’s the nature of the beast.

Corporate peons blogging, how can you control them? – You can write it into an employment contract. You have to watch them, ask them…

How do I find what I want in blogging? – Technorati, Google Blog Search. It’s out there.

www.debbieweil.com

Wrap ups and goodbyes.

I’m pointed out that I’m going to have photos and blogs linked. EEEK!!! Oh crud! Maybe I should self censor… nope.

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