In order to maintain a competitive edge, corporations are increasingly looking for opportunities to make them stand out. Although traditional media serves as a solid medium that disperses company messaging to the world, the trends of information consumption are evolving. After some initial hesitancy, corporations are slowly starting to realize that it is important to jump on the virtual bandwagon of blogging. This medium represents the missing ingredient that traditional media lacks: the ability to directly connect a company to its customers.

I encourage you to read to entire article, as I am often quoted of course; and it is also well written, thorough and comprehensive. Reem does an excellent job articulating her words of wisdom with our interview answers.  Both Tac and LaSandra are also fellow contributors to Conversations Matter.

I anticipate that it will be a great discussion as they will be sharing case studies, best practices, and other insights into corporate blogging and social media. These are people who not just theoretically talk about social media; but also execute and are held accountable for the results. My good friend and colleauge, Ken Kaplan from Intel will be presenting.

Scheduled to present are senior executives and managers from:

• Cisco Systems
• Intel
• Wells Fargo
• Walmart
• UPS
• Kaiser Permanente
• Graco
• The Home Depot

Topics up for discussion include disclosure, measuring ROI, managing teams, legal issues, BtoB, working with agencies and creating great content.

This is going to be an amazing half-day, and it’s only $200 to attend.  We hope to see you there!

If you want to attend and do something good for charity in the process, you can bid on a few conference passes they’ve put up on eBay.  100% of the proceeds (every penny!) is going to some very well-deserving causes.

The first panel, titled How to Implement Blogs & Social Media Strategies for Big Business is on Friday, September 19th from 3:30 PM to 4:45 PM, moderated by none other than Michael Rubin who works for the Blog Council. Others on the panel will be John Andrews of Walmart and Hillary Weber of Kaiser Permanente. This session particularly interests me because implementing social media in any way is definitely a challenge in corporate America; and I am pleased to be sharing my experiences with everyone.

The second panel, titled, Beyond Blogging: Stories & Social Media Lessons Learned in the Real World on September 20th from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM will be moderated by my friend and colleague Kelly Feller. Others on the panel will be Tac Anderson from Hewlett-Packard, Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations, and Anne Plese from Cisco; many of which are contributors to Conversations Matter social media blog.

If you are attending BlogWorld and read this blog, I’d love to meet you in person. You can also follow me on twitter to get to know me a little bit better, if you like. 

I also wrote a post in my other blog about making the business case for using Twitter; and cite great examples of how companies (like @Richardatdell) use twitter to build relationships, listen, and participate in meaningful conversations.  I also cite the not so good examples from HP and Yahoo; both of which are my former employers.

I was asked by Chris Heuer to be a part of the Interim Board of Directors for the Social Media Club. I humbly accepted and I am currently the lead for the Media Literacy project. It’s a collaborative effort to create a library of resources that consolidate “introduction to social media” content that will help those who are new to social media get all the information they need, in one place.  I will be working closely with Alex de Carvalho, Howard Greenstein, Richard Binhammer, Des Walsh, and Erica OGrady on this project.  So, if you have any Introduction to Social Media presentations, classes, discussions, cartoons, videos, blog posts etc…, please add it here.

I was also scheduled to participate on a panel at Cisco Systems here in Santa Clara as part of an internal education program.  The panel was about online communities. I was going to present four slides.  Slide 1 was “Why Community?” and was prepared to speak on the following points:

• It’s all about relationships
• Real people w/ real personalities that share “everything” online
• Group collaboration
• Shared participation
• Innovation and feedback – IdeaStorm example

Slide 2 and 3 were examples of how we at Intel use communities both internally and externally to communicate. Slide 4 was titled, “Best Practices and Lessons Learned”:

• Participate!  Not doing so is like being on trial without any representation from a defense lawyer
• The community owns the conversation; don’t interrupt
• Stay involved and don’t abandon the conversation
• Chime in when you need to. Listening may be the only thing you have to do
• Act. If you are getting feedback; do your best to act on that feedback (if it makes business sense)
• Be real and authentic; or it might bite you in the butt

Unfortunately though, I was called to jury duty and had to cancel at the last minute.  Thank you Norys Trevino for understanding and considering me to present; and I look forward to the Social Bookmarking and Tagging panel at Cisco on September 3rd.  I’ll make it this time, for sure.

Speaking of jury duty, this was quite an experience. I was a part of a civil case that involved a rear-end collision that resulted in alleged neck/back injuries.  The case lasted 5 days and we deliberated for about two hours on Friday afternoon. The verdict was that the defendant was not negligent in this accident. It was awesome to see the court dynamics and how the entire process worked. I even met a few new friends on the jury panel. I was the youngest out of all of them.

I am also gearing up for the launch of a new consumer blog at Intel.  I am really excited for this; but there is still a lot of work to do. The blog will be heavily integrated into the Intel “What’s Inside You” consumer web site that highlights real people who have used Intel technology to build/create something.  There are some really awesome stories there.

Lastly, I was able to attend Chris and Kristie’s one year wedding anniversary this past weekend. My wife and I had a great time and I met a lot of cool new peeps, one being Chris Saad, who is also on the interim board.

Event tags: ck888

So please take a moment and click around the blog and tell me what you think. Do you like it? Hate it? Envy it? And, please be specific; if something doesn’t work, please tell me. So far I tested it in IE.6, IE.7 and Firefox. And, if you like what I have to say, you can always subscribe to my RSS feed and receive all future posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Now that I am up and running … let the posts begin!

In the news this week it is reported that hgtv.com is launching a social networking site for their target consumer group.  Users of the site will have the capability of writing ratings and reviews, post to various forums, and upload photos of their living rooms, bathrooms, or other rooms that have either been recently designed or need remodeling.

According to Adweek, Sony and video-sharing site Grouper, in an effort to increase customer engagement and excitement are holding a contest to look for two people to be the “Face of the Fan” and report on movie news. 

Chairman and CEO of Marriott International Bill Marriott is already yielding positive results from a blog he launched last month. In fact, one of the first posts, “Uncharted Territory,” has already received over 80 comments. According to Three Minds, the blog summarizes what blogging is all about – and what it can ultimately do for a brand by telling stories, listening and learning from customers, and putting a face to the brand.

And lastly, our lovely Democratic Party is finally catching on to Social Media.  Mr. Obama’s website allows users to create profiles, find nearby supporters, plan and attend events, network with friends, become a fundraiser and set up a blog.  On the Clinton’s side, the Team Hillary Action Center wants users to help build the supporter list, host and attend Hillary events, set goals for “Hillraisers” or registered users and become a guest blogger.

These are just a few examples of how big brands/politicians are adopting social media in a way to engage with customers; a difficult yet rewarding task, if done right.

Technorati Tags: social media optimization, measuring social media, SMO, socialmediaoptimization, social media marketing

Mention the word “blog” to some folks and they immediately begin thinking of gossip, slander, or politically motivated weblogs to name a few. Certainly, these types of blogs are a significant part of what is called the blogosphere, but they are far from the only types of blogs out there. Today, everyone from stay-at-home moms, to entrepreneurs, to political action committees, and all the way up to executive for some Fortune 500 corporations are operating blogs, oftentimes as a part of their company’s website. Yes, along with tabbed pages to sections for News, Contacts, and Links, and so forth you can find a Blog tab on many business websites.

So, why would a company even consider operating a blog? For several reasons including:

To allow executives, employees and marketers to have access to their customers and vice versa – You could pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for expensive market research – don’t get me wrong, there is a place for all of that – but if you want to get instant feedback from customers, by simply crafting a thoughtful 100 or 200 word statement, posting it to your blog, and awaiting for responses, your input can go very far too. Visitors to your site who read your blog will be allowed to read and comment on your entry, but you can control what is ultimately published. This means that if the criticism isn’t particularly constructive, or is too harsh, or is even inaccurate, you can always delete that comment. Otherwise, you could allow comments to be posted for all to see, as is.

To strengthen your company’s visibility – The internet is powered by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN who determine what web pages will be indexed for their respective engines. Optimizing your site -– increasing its visibility -– is critical toward just how much exposure to potential customers your site receives. Blogs are favored by search engines because they are frequently updated and are considered to be a very important communication tool. So, if you are considering an upgrade to your site, don’t forget to include a blog. It may even pay to just add the blog for now before making the other changes.

Of course, blogging does take time and someone needs to oversee the process. Remember, what you say on the blog will represent you, your company, your philosophy, and more. Take great care to only allow trusted and select company representatives to have access to the blog and to oversee its operation. With these things in mind your blog can build corporate credibility and bring in that all-important intangible “goodwill” that is sought by companies everywhere.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, business, marketing, marketing strategy, marketing strategies

Technorati Tags: social media, social media optimization, social media marketing, socialmediaoptimizaion, social bookmarking, add this, addthis

The biggest no-no in executing an article marketing strategy is to post the same article on your blog that you do in a directory.  Not only is this considered duplicate content but its proven to be a horrible customer experience. As a user, the last thing I want to do after reading an article somewhere is click through to the blog and see the same exact article.

What I normally do when I write an article is submit it only to a few select directories like (Associated Content, Buzzle, Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Web Pro News, Site Pro News, etc.). Then, I will write a paragraph or two about the article in my blog (perhaps why I wrote it) and then link to it on Associated Content (AC). The reason I choose AC is that they allow readers on their site to easily add content (articles) to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Newsvine, Netscape, De.licio.us, etc.

Lastly, and keeping in mind Social Media Optimization, I would also add the ability for the readers of your blog to easily link to it, subscribe to it, tag it, post a comment; and then add it their favorite social bookmarking site(s).

Technorati Tags: article marketing, article syndication, article distribution, article submission, blogging, blog marketing, social media optimization, socialmediaoptimization