BlogHer Business Live-blogging: Should You Blog?
I headed to New York for the BlogHer Business conference. The conference will answer the question: How can Businesses Succeed in a Social Media World? I live-blogged three sessions of the Day Two track : How Do I Get It Right the First Time? Please also check out the full list of live-blog posts as well as the other two sessions in this track on Techmamas.com: How to Keep Out of Trouble and How to Embrace the Social Media Culture.
The session is called Should You Blog?: If so, how do you set objectives and integrate social media strategy into corporate strategy? How do you measure your results? What does success look like? Can your corporate culture integrate with the social media culture? If not, how do you stay in the social media game, even as a spectator? What should you be monitoring and tracking? Featuring Remi Adams, Toby Bloomberg, Roxanne Darling and Boston Globe columnist Penelope Trunk.
Some interesting pre-sessions interviews are on the BlogHer site. Toby Bloomberg "Business blog evangelist" is president of Bloomberg Marketing, her blog is called Diva Marketing Blog. She interviewed Remi Adams, director of public relations for Homestead Technologies. And Penelope Trunk, who writes career advice for the Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance, has a blog called Brazen Careerist. Roxanne is co-owner of Bare Feet Studios and has a vlog called "Beach Walks With Rox".
Here are my apologies in advance (thanks Jen Lemen for the idea): for misspelling, missed names and other tragedies of being in a rush. Everything is a serious approximation of what was said.
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Toby Bloomberg: This is a small group, it seems as though
most of the participants have already decided to blog. This session will discuss the nuts and
bolts of blogging. This session will drill down a level and tell how to put
this whole thing together.
(Speaker and Audience Introduction)
Audience members introduce themselves and tell what they want out of the class:
- An audience member from the UK: I am interested to hear about the challenges in the US for blogging.
- How blogs fit into the overall idea of a community?
- Ideas on how I can help company’s traditional company’s transition websites to blogs?
- How to help my CEO develop a blog?
- How are people guiding their clients to or away from blogging?
- I am here to learn and meet a great group of people.
- I just left the corporate world and want to learn about blogs.
- Two employees from Pay for Post are at the session because they try to work with WOMA and make sure they follow the guidelines of blogging. They are also open for dialogue, controversy or not.
- A PR rep was here to learn more about blogs to help a client (who is writing a book) build one.
- A blogger from Israel
uses her blog to have conversations with a friend who is Palestinian.
Toby: Thank you for joining in this conversation. We have a
series of topics that we think are helpful. Our format is casual. I invite
the audience to join in the discussion from the topic. There are two sides of a
blog: internal and external. Our first question is on culture. Why go forward
in a social media strategy? Is your company ready to blog in this culture?
Roxanne Darling: Speakers will be publishing their notes on their
blogs.
Remi Adams: You should ask yourself what is the business challenge
you want to solve? I want to create thought leadership. Why do you want to
do it? Is it the right medium? Is your culture ready for you to blog? How is
going to the spokesperson. How frequently will they blog, what is their focus?
What is the voice of the blog?
Toby: Let’s step back and look at blogging as a strategy. What medium do you want to use? Roxanne, do you want to talk about the choices?
Toby: Has anyone thought of using something other then text?
Audience member: How does the audience want to be
reached? If someone is more comfortable speaking they should do a podcast. You
can have the same material that is posted a couple of different way.
Toby: Marriot blog is going to be a great blog. He talks
about his personal experiences. He text and audio’s each blog post. It may seem
odd for someone to read a blog post, but he is a storyteller so it is
interesting.
Toby: Does anyone have any questions on Video’s?
Audience member: I have been running online community since
1995. I just recently suggested a blog. People that were used to using email
discussion groups, can they use blogs in the same way. They did not know how to
do it.
Roxanne: It is not fair to compare text, audio, and video to
each other. Video blogging takes more technology. I have done a video blog
every single day for 365 days. But it is certainly not for everyone. Text
blogging is fast and easy, you can even do it from your phone. Audio is in
between.
Remi: I use social media in a different way, per campaign. I
did a campaign about the platform of entrepreneurship. She worked with
about.com to do some research to see what were the hot business trends of 2007. I
wanted to push the word out. They did a podcast with the press release- and it
came alive. The press release being the sole channel has changed. I use
video, podcasts, with free services. Don’t be dissuaded from using the other
forms of social media.
Toby: The medium has to support the goals and objectives.
Penelope Trunk: I noticed that people have varying degree of
abilities. Some people will say “This is the first comment I have done”. How
will the audience relate to my social media? I just used a wiki at SXSW and
found it challenging. It is not about how comfortable are you video-blogging,
it is important how comfortable your audience.
Audience member: In my opinion there are two different types
of audience, and sometimes management tries to blend the two. I worked with a
news organization and everyone wanted to have their own blog. But the audience
may have not been there. And the audience had to sign up which is a barrier to
entry.
Audience member: I may be a purist, but “if you can take that first step, be the one to bring them online”.
Toby: We have three
different people with completely different experiences. How should a blogger
use social media to reach a reporter?
Penelope: I like to help bloggers move to print. Many people
may not know how to find bloggers. If I got a press release from Remi that has
a blog, I would go look at that blog. It
is newsworthy to get a press release that has a link to a blog.
Remi: Companies say a lot of things that may not be true,
but a blog is the real thing. The blog has months or two years of material that
supports my PR claims.
Penelope: There is also a better story for the reporter if
there is a blog. With just a press release there is a hugh risk to look into
the details. If there is a blog that has the details through a link, then that
has more information that makes a story. I am happy to publish the URL for
bloggers as a reward for contacting media. When publicists see that I will
write about bloggers, they will pitch their clients to me. Reporters do not
know how to find bloggers. Reporters contact me to ask about the blog they see
in my columns.
Roxanne: I find it irritating that some bloggers do not have
their contact information in their blog. Pre-packaged software may not have
that information default.
Penelope: A “press” button/link will tell me that that
blogger is easy to contact.
Remi: My CEO’s personal blog links to our company blog. So,
how many times have you had a service issues and you could not get anyone. You
did not get anyone. With a CEO blog, especially mine, if you put your issue on
the blog he will respond.
Penelope: I will rarely go to someones blog to pull out a quote. I really need to talk to
the blogger. I need someone who is going to pick up the phone and get the
blogger.
Toby: How do reporters find you?
Audience member: I contacted a reporter with a story that
was relevant to him. The article was accepted. They forwarded viewers of the
article to my website. I use social media to also research my story.
Angela LaSasso (Web Content Manager for HP): HP participated in the Sundance Festival, we got press because we did something unique: launching a HP blog that discussed the entertainment industry. We also added video performances, which were the most popular posts. They discovered HP did more then printers, and that they are in the Web 2.0 space.
Roxanne: You raise two good points. HP had some bad press at that time, and that blog pointed them in a positive direction. Text is easy to get up, but users leave quickly. Video allows you to build a relationship with the viewer and they stay on the site longer.
Audience member: Technorati is the most popular blog
directory. It is important to include Technorati tags in your posts so people
can search using the Technorati sites.
Penelope: I just got a call from a reporter that asked if I
know any life coach blogs. It seems that
reporters are not going to Technorati.
Remi: I don’t think that they are not adopting technology, I
think they are just be cautious.
Audience member: Is anyone suing any bloggers for something
that happens on a blog?
Penelope: I think it is the eccentrics of the world that
sue.
Roxanne: I have read of a couple cases recently for bloggers
being sued for what they write. Off the record, I have heard that the lawyers
have to file the suit to protect the intellectual property. Lawyers have to
take the legal action to make sure if they want to sell the company then they
have defended the right to ownership.
Penelope: TechCrunch gets letters saying some of their
material were illegal use of an IP.
Sue Thomas (Audience member): I appointed Harold Rheingold to our University as a visiting professor (De Montfort University, Leicester – Bedford). The press covered him but had no mention of our university. So we spent a lot of time on that publicity and got nothing back. Until I blogged about it, then we got attention.
Roxanne: One of our clients has a large database, someone
scraped data and created their own site.
They took all the locations in that database and created an Google API, then
contacted us and say “see what I did”. Our first reaction was “how dare he”. He
created a business on our clients backbone. Our clients decided to work
together: they can give your their data in an XML files – but we need to make
sure this is only a small business and not a company business.
Audience member: A friend of mine said be careful of libel. I talked to the general counsel of the New York Times and put that in my blog. I got many hits from that, including from Asia.
Stephanie Bergman (AOL Senior Product Manager): Once you get to a certain size you are a target. That is why we have blogger guidelines.
Remi: The biggest take away is from a marketing perspective, don’t be afraid to dabble in many types of social media. But there needs to be an end goal.
Roxanne: One of the things we find common with our clients
is that they all wonder if they have anything to say. It is not a small matter,
I find the less pressure we put on them, the best. Don’t tell everyone that you are
cool, just be cool. That law of attraction will kick in naturally.
Toby: Specific purpose, specific objective. Blogs may not be
the silver bullet of marketing, but it is the gold coin.