Marketing Roadmaps

BlogHer06

BlogHer 06 Business Blogging Unpanel

by

Well, regular readers have noted that blogging has been ultra-light recently. Reason? Burning the midnight oil on client work so I can enjoy my trip out to BlogHer at the end of the week.

I am really looking forward to the whole conference, but particularly the Saturday "Unpanel" on Business Blogging.

More than once, I’ve had a bit of angst about this, worrying that maybe nobody would step up and volunteer to share their case studies.

Well, I needn’t have worried. My fellow women bloggers have come through and we are going to have some great case studies to get us started. And I hope that EVERYONE attending the session chimes in as we go along. No experts here. Just folk figuring it out as we go along 🙂

I’ve posted a summary doc with all the links to the various case studies on my site. You should also check out the BlogHer post on the session (where this will be cross-posted.) One of the blogs is no longer active, but we have some docs and screen shots, also on my getgood.com site. Please, if you are planning to attend this session at BlogHer, take a few minutes to check out the blogs. While we will have WiFi, we will NOT have an overhead projector during the session.

And don’t forget, we have a great giveaway, thanks to Debbie Weil, who couldn’t be with us but has donated a copy of her new business blogging book. Hot off the presses!

My thanks to the wonderful women who have volunteered their case studies for this session: Stephanie Hendrick, Jody DeVere (Ask Patty), Celeste Lindell (Average Jane), Heather Sanders and Lori Taylor. And a special thank you to my co-panelists Toby Bloomberg and Yvonne DiVita who joined me in this experiment, and without whom the blogosphere would be a far less pleasant place.

Thanks! See you in San Jose.

Tags: ,

BlogHer Unpanel on Business Blogging

by

This July at BlogHer, Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita and I are doing a Business Blogging "Unpanel" on Saturday July 29th.

Here’s the scoop on the session:

This panel isn’t about us. It’s about all of us. Call it an “unpanel.” Call it a “rap session.” What we call it doesn’t matter. What we do, does. And what we are going to do is share our business blogging stories and then build a set of business blogging “best practices” based on our experiences. Everyone is part of the panel, and we’ll just do the best we can to keep up with the brilliance in the room.

Here’s the format. The first half of the session is devoted to case studies. Our goal is eight – we have three committed, so we need  BlogHers who plan to attend the session to step up and volunteer to share yours. How do you do that? Respond to this message (Please respond on the BlogHer site at this link) and tell us “I’m in” and let us know about the blog URL you plan to discuss in July.

During the session you’ll have 5 minutes to tell us the objectives of the blog, what worked, and what didn’t. Giving us the URL in advance lets us all check out the blog so you have to spend less time in exposition. And please, participants, do at least take a look at the blogs volunteered for the session. It will help us all get to the meat, which is creating our best practices deliverable.

Because what’s an unpanel without a collective product [You can see, Susan (who wrote this) really is a socialist at heart.]

The second half of our session is devoted to a group discussion. And we aren’t there just to chat. We want to leave the room with at least the shell of a best practices document –things that work become our best practices, things that didn’t are warning signs. This is the critical piece of this session. Without the deliverable, we’ve had a nice chat. When we create this document, we’ve helped ourselves and others be better business bloggers. Cool, huh.

So, please, if business blogging is your bag, and you are planning to attend this session, consider sharing your story. Yvonne, Toby and Susan can fill the time, but we don’t want to. We want to hear from and talk with you. Way more fun 🙂

Here are the case studies already on deck. Add yours in the comments. First come, first served. Five spots left, and we will do the session in the order received on the BlogHer site.

Masi Guy at http://masiguy.blogspot.com/
Know Your Bones at www.knowyourbones.com
Our Fathers Who Art in Heaven at http://murak.blogs.com/
Research from Stephanie Hendrik, a doctoral student from the University of Sweden: Stephanie will present research about when companies do inauthentic things with blogs. Things like fake blogs and fake commenters. Due to ethical considerations, she is keeping the the blogs in the study anonymous, but she is preparing a brief abstract for us which we’ll post here.

Two questions we know we’ll get:
Q. Can I talk about more than one blog?
A. Yes, but you still only have 5 minutes. Use them wisely.

Q. Will you stop taking volunteers after the 5 spots are filled?
A. Nope, keep signing up. People may decide to go to another session, or that they don’t really want to speak. Some people may take less than 5 minutes so we’ll have extra time. Who knows what will happen. Until it happens! So please sign up. We’ll go in order received until the time allotted for case studies runs out.

If you are planning to attend BlogHer, please consider joining us and sharing your blog case studies. Please sign up on the post at the BlogHer site –it is a whole lot easier if all the sign-ups are in one place. Thanks.

(cross posted to Marketing Roadmaps and MarCom Blog)

Tags: , ,

My penultimate Syndicate post… finally

by

Well, I never thought I would be so busy that it would take nearly a month to finish up my reporting on Syndicate, but so it goes.

Before I get to the final sessions, and my chats with the "bad boys of PR," I want to remember to share one observation. At and after the conference, there was a some gnashing and wailing that not more marketing and PR people attended this conference, even though the content was extremely germane to their practice areas. The reason is simple: they don’t see the value. Why? First, the conference sounds techy – syndicate, RSS, all sorts of terms that make marketing folk blanche. Second, it is expensive against the perceived value. Finally, and most important,white men may not dance, but they sure do blog and podcast. With a few exceptions, the speaker list was a list of insiders, and mostly white guys. It’s a club. No one wants to go to a club meeting when they are going to be the outsider sitting alone during the coffee break.

I may sound like a broken record, but this is why I am such a fan of BlogHer, and the truly participatory community that it has engendered. See you there!

Back to Syndicate. At this late date, a synopsis of the two final sessions seems somewhat redundant. So in reverse order, let me tackle first Doc Searls and then the PR session, and simply give you some impressions.

This was the first time I saw Doc Searls speak, and I definitely see why he is in such demand. He gives a good show. He spoke about the differences between the static web and the live web — which by the way are far more evocative for me than the terms 1.0 and 2.0. One of his concepts that I really liked was the "rolling snowball" — "if it’s a good idea, it can’t just be yours." The value chain is replaced by the value constellation. Attention has been replaced by Intention. It’s not advertising, it’s people searching for info. He also talked a bit about the gesture stuff, which is still a bit unclear to me. But that’s okay. Then he ended with a bunch of claims, just to get people thinking. Here are the ones I was able to capture.

A free market is not ‘your choice of site’

The consumer is a relic of the industrial economy

The Net is not a place where ‘consumers’ ‘access’ ‘content’ — it is about production

Branding is for cattle. Respect is for human beings

Everything and everybody is becoming unbundled (mentioned Terry Heaton as a leader on this thought)

TV as we know it is already dead (1 in 3 teens can’t name the leading networks, FCC moving TV off branded channels by 09)

Clear Channel killed commercial radio. Listeners are resurrecting it.

Hi-def will be cheap and standard by the end of the year

Email marketing is creepy. So is SEO. (My opinion: especially SEO)

Livest part of the live web is cell phones.

Everybody is already an influencer. We’re all getting networked.

Closed formats are doomed. (Ed comment: Amen) Majority of desktops and laptops in 5 years willbe LINUX (lively conversation here)

Radio is going to be fine as long as they put them in cars

On branding: it’s not brand, it’s reputation

Next post: The PR Boys at Syndicate.

Tags: ,

Powered by Qumana

It’s Springtime, Must be Showtime

by

It’s a rite of passage — that moment when you realize that the bulk of industry conferences and trade shows are scheduled in the Spring and early Autumn. Not all, mind you. There are trade shows going on all year long in the USA. But the concentration in May June September and October, at least in the US, is amazing. You could literally go from conference to conference, just returning home to get clean shirts and underwear. I suppose some people do…. At least I hope they are getting clean undies….

Anyway, here are a few conferences and events coming up over the next few months that marketing and PR folk should check out.

Next week in NYC, Syndicate (May 16-17). Everything you always wanted to know about syndication. I will be live-blogging the conference for Corante. Posts will appear here and on the Corante Marketing Hub for sure, maybe some other places too. PubSub is aggregating the blogs from speakers, sponsors and attendees.

Next month:

NYC, June 8-9, the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference, sponsored by Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership of Columbia Business School. It is a two-day event. The first day is a "CMO Summit" for CMOs and VPs of Marketing. The second day is a "Marketer’s Forum"  open to the public. I’m not attending this one, as I have a conflict, but the speaker list is fantastic, so I urge you to check it out. Somewhere in my pile of email is a note that my readers can get a discount, so if anyone is interested, drop me a note and I’ll dig it out.

Interested in bank marketing? I certainly am, thanks to my client who sells CRM systems for banks! The Boston Chapter of the AMA is getting an exclusive first look at TD Banknorth’s new marketing campaign from Tom Dyck, TD Banknorth EVP and Director of Marketing. The presentation will be held Friday June 9 from 11 am – 1:30 pm at Banners Restaurant at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston. Plus we get a special behind-the-scenes tour of the Garden, including areas not usually accessible to the public.

July:

San Jose, CA July 28-29. BlogHer. Day One is sold out, but last I heard, there was still space at the cocktail party and  for Day Two. Come be part of the Business Blogging unpanel on Day Two that I am doing with Yvonne DiVita and Toby Bloomberg. We want you to come share your stories!! The whole concept of the unpanel is that everyone participates and together we build a collective deliverable. In this case, we’ll call it best practices for business blogging. More background on the unpanel in this post. And more to come late May, early June.

Disclosures: I am a member of the Corante Marketing Hub and the Boston Chapter of the AMA, and a speaker at (and longtime fan of) BlogHer.

Tags: , , , , , , , 

BlogHer 06 Room of Your Own Update

by

Our proposal for a Business Case Studies Room of Your Own at BlogHer 06 made the cut. Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita and I will be leading a "rap session" about business blogging on Saturday July 29 from 1:30-3:00pm.

 As I’ve written here before, this is an "unpanel" (borrowing the un-nomenclature from Dave Winer’s unconference).

We’ll kick off the conversation, but the underlying concept is that everyone in the room is the panel. Our goal is both to learn from each other in the room and produce a business blogging tips set so that others can benefit from our collective wisdom (and mistakes!)

I’m really looking forward to the session. I already know that two of my favorite marketing bloggers will be in the room with me. There’s no artificial dividing line between the panel and the audience — no somebodies here, we’re all nobodies, and everybody has an equal voice. And we have the goal of a specific work product from the session, the tips. We won’t just be talking to hear our own voices, we’ll be focused, working toward delivering something of value.

On the subject of conferences, and the oft-heard complaint that it’s always the same speakers saying the same things,  you won’t find that at BlogHer. BlogHer deliberately seeks out new voices. The sessions will definitely not be the same old same old.

And, oh yeah, you will find a higher percentage of women speakers than you’ve probably experienced since Girl Scouts 🙂

Hope to see you there.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Powered by Qumana