August 2007

We’ve got a “blogging for talent” session coming up at the conference this September. Social media and recruitment is a huge deal, but it goes way beyond blogging.

Here’s a great idea from ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett about how companies can use Facebook’s platform as a recruiting mechanism.

Cool stuff!

Over the past week and a half, Steve and I have given several PRWeb sponsored Webinars on monitoring the online buzz via RSS. Toward the end of our latter two talks, I got into how you can bring your Google Reader shared items feed into Facebook with this nifty little widget by Mario Romero.

As soon as I started showing the inside of Facebook, a bunch of questions came in from participants who wanted to know all about the difference between Facebook and MySpace. I told them that they’d drilled down into one of my big biases, which is namely that Facebook kicks MySpace’s patoot.

It seems like every marketer and their mama wants to understand social networking systems. This is the main theme of the commentary on Sean Bonner’s great article responding to danah boyd’s article on the class differences between Facebook and MySpace.

[Please note that Bonner's article may not be entirely safe for work, or even open behind some office firewalls. This is because it's hosted at SuicideGirls.com, which purveys high-art pornographic images alongside social commentary and discussion.]

My short answer to our webinar attendees was that marketers are remiss not to have profiles on both sites. But I think that Facebook is stronger overall for business networking.

What do you think? Have you used MySpace or Facebook for business? What have the results been?

In this session, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress will present their enterprise social media offerings. He will speak for 25 minutes.

I effing *love* Hugh Macleod!

[Via Jake McKee with regard to our lovely impromptu chat last week.]

Steve and I are about to go into another webinar about reading RSS feeds. If you’re looking for a primer on what this feed reading stuff is all about and how it can help you monitor for mentions of your business online, tune in at 10:00 PST.

Participation means engaging with the company’s community. By participating, a company attracts customers from the community. When a company is involved in this area, the customers tell the company what they need or want, and the ensuing dialogue fosters a true relationship. Community members value the two-way relationship they have with the company, and have more loyalty to the brand, rather than simply receiving a service and being satisfied.

Discussion:

1) Design applications and content that users find valuable

2) Enable people to take the concept further and innovate

3) Encourage dialogue and contribution: Don’t control, just give

For any blogger who has ever struggled with the right topics to write about, this lightning fast session will offer many ideas you can use. Take a tour through the 25 essential styles of blogging, from “ambition blogging” where you write about something you want in order to try and get it, to “list blogging” where you publish a useful list and use it as linkbait. The techniques in each style will be discussed, and you will see examples of each in use, including how often you should use them and how much discussion you might expect from each. You’ll also leave the session with a handy presentation to refer to as you go back and apply the styles to your own blogging.

Recruiting and retaining top talent is critical to the success of any business venture. Unfortunately, this essential effort is often one of the more under-resourced components of a business. With limited budget and an imperative to locate, recruit and hire the best talent, blogs become a valuable tool for human resources professionals.

In this session, our panel of business bloggers will talk about the ways — foreseen and unforeseen — that their blogging efforts have impacted the quality and diversity of job seekers that come their way. We’ll also discuss how surfing the blogosphere may point you in the direction of your next great hire.

• How major corporations like GE and Microsoft do recruitment blogging
• Who should write the recruitment blog at your company?
• How frequently do you really have to post to have an effective recruitment blog?

If you’ll be around at Gnomedex in Seattle today, please be sure to swing by and say hello. If you’re curious what I look like here’s a really unflattering photo of me.

The rapid rise of popular web tools that facilitate conversation and interaction online by allowing millions of people to easily share ideas, insights, experiences, perspectives and media has left enterprises everywhere scrambling to come up with new strategies to leverage or limit the newly unleashed power of these new social media.

No longer do teams need to be harnessed to stuffed email in-boxes filled with irrelevant cc’s and FYIs. Critical institutional knowledge that formerly was archived into invisibility can now be accessed via enterprise search.

Inexpensive or free social media tools like blogs, forums, podcasts, wikis and social communities have given workgroups the potential to communicate essential information targeted to those who need it most.

Social media are having a profound effect on businesses everywhere. In this session, we’ll look at the current social media landscape and examine:

• The promise and potential pitfalls of unleashing blogs, wikis and social networking in business organizations
• What the first adopters have learned about how to make social media work to their advantage
• How to create a failure-proof social media strategy

All great blogs — no matter the goal of their existence — have one thing in common: a passionate blogger. In fact, that’s the most common tip that top bloggers give when asked for their suggestions for a successful blog.

But beyond passion, what do great bloggers bring to the table? What tools do they use? What do they do when they can’t think of anything to post about? How do they avoid the echo chamber?

In this session, our panel of top bloggers will share tips and tricks for:

• What to do when the creativity well runs dry.
• How to keep your readers engaged.
• What are the great tools for finding information Google doesn’t even know about?

Jake Mckee — a.k.a. the Community Guy — is one of my favorite people I’ve met since I got into this blogging thing. He’s graciously accepted our request that he speak at the conference this September. I had a nice chat with him via AOL Instant Messenger this morning. We talked about how traditional marketers approach communities, how they should approach communities, and why the Web changed everything.

Jake articulates some of the most important ideas in online community building so very well. I’m really looking forward to his sessions at BBS07. Transcript of the conversation after the jump.
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Most organizations would like to engage with a robust, thriving and receptive online community. Many have launched blogs, wikis or social networks to in an effort to build community around their brand.

Successful online community builders know that these initiatives take time, patience, an open mind and a willingness to listen and grow as an organization. They also understand that the most important interactions are often initiated outside their carefully crafted networks, on other people’s blogs.

These initiatives can be tricky even when everyone speaks the same language and comes from the same basic culture. But international cultural concerns make global execution trickier still. In this session, you’ll hear firsthand how major corporations with a lot to lose have won praise as effective community builders.

You’ll learn:

• How Unilever’s willingness to listen and respond to the blogosphere at large has reinforced and improved brand loyalty
• How Intel launched a successful domestic and international social media campaign
• What all companies with successful community building initiatives have in common

Just a quick post this morning to say that Mack Collier of the Viral Garden has a great list of ways you can make your blog better with Feedburner.

Steve and I are headed into a webinar in 15 minutes covering the basics of RSS and feed reading. It was organized by our good friends and sponsors at PR Web.

In the world of blogging for dollars, not all forms of content are created equally. And while your text-based content is searchable, you can’t overlook the power of video to sell advertising.

In this session, successful gadget blogger Andru Edwards will explain how adding video content to your commercial blog property will increase your advertising revenue and create better ROI for your advertisers and affiliates.

• Optimal video length
• How should your video blog’s editorial relate to that of your text-based blog?
• How much should you invest in equipment and editing software?
• How to engage with advertisers and get your video content sponsored

Advertising isn’t the only way to make money as a blogger. Many bloggers draw considerable income from the wide range of affiliate programs offered by online retailers. But just as with advertising, the sheer number of different affiliate programs can be dizzying. Each has its own upsides and downsides.

And while the beauty of affiliate programs is that they allow bloggers to blog about products they truly believe in while still earning money, readers may be put off by too many affiliate posts and too much selling.

In this session, our panel of experts will share their tips and techniques for maximizing revenue from affiliate programs while maintaining a strong relationship with the core reader base.

• At what point does trying to drive affiliate revenue cloud your editorial and drive away readers?
• Which affiliate programs offer the best deals for bloggers?
• How to work with multiple affiliate programs without running afoul of restrictions.

There are a number of options for bloggers who want to host ads. Some blogs belong to advertising networks like BlogAds and Federated Media, while others host contextual ads driven by Google.

With the myriad options, it’s challenging to know whether you are truly meeting your blog’s revenue potential. In this session, our panel of experienced pro-bloggers will explain how they chose their advertising partners and demonstrate how they meet their revenue goals each month.

• What advertising network is best for your blog?
• How to place ads prominently without overwhelming your audience
• The optimal blog layouts and designs for optimizing reader attention to your advertising

You’ve got a successful blog. Your PageRank is high. You get lots of comments and your readers keep coming back for more. Advertising revenues are strong. You’re on a roll.

Then someone offers you money to post about their products. And you’re tempted.

There’s been much back-and-forth in the blogosphere about whether it’s really right to get paid for posting. But your choice as a blogger depends a great deal on what you know about your audience. If you accept the money, will your readers stop trusting you?

In this session, our panel of experts will discuss their perspectives on so-called “blogola” and will provide guidelines for entrepreneurial bloggers seeking an answer to this thorniest of questions.

• The different kinds of deals offered to bloggers
• How to explain payblogging to your readers
• The potential consequences of accepting money to post
• The potential consequences of not accepting money to post

Wired’s Scott Gilbertson has an excellent point about Facebook: it’s a walled garden. Personal data goes in, and it doesn’t come out.

He’s not the first to complain, nor is he the first person to propose a solution. But I liked the way he articulated the next step in the process of opening the Web:
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