AMA - Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website - Seattle
12/21/2004
Thoughts and a Few Snippetts from the Workshop
-Highlights were meeting blog buddies (without a doubt they all qualify for Divo status) talking blogs with participants & speakers, and of course, Ben's Marketing Wonk dinner.
-Diva Deb Franke, e-Marketing Manager, Emerson, felt the speakers were real and passionate about sharing knowledge and experiences e.g., no sales pitches here. [Sidebar: AMA would never allow that to happen anyway.]
- Kicked off by asking what 3 words describe blogs. Most words fell into two categories: communication and expertise. What 3 words would you use?
-Robert's easy, down-to-earth manner immediately engaged the attendees. He was slotted for 45-minutes but generously stayed for over an hour and a half. We were impressed by his kindness and sense of joy about life.
-Want to blog? First read blogs. Read 20 blogs.
-Blogs are rapid fire conversations.
-It's about creating conversational marketing - new world vs. old world
-Consumers control the marketing message filter. You need be relevant and on target to even get noticed.
-RSS helps consume a lot of information quickly.
-Watch for more blog ads and ads within RSS feeds.
-Great information about blogging basics from what is a blog to tools to use to create a blog.
-Blog Must Haves: a name, a description, an about me (yes!), a full feed
-Consumers are shaping products. King Kong movie site; producers are taking direction from prospective audience members. Though not a blog it's still an interesting example of social marketing.
Sidebar: If a man gets points for the toys he has, Ben wins the prize!
-5 P's of Blogging: Personal, Peramlink, Publish, Ping, Participate. Move over Professor Kotler this is new world marketing.
-Blogs are promotions of ideas and less about a particular product or pricing strategy.
-Bloggers become the voice of the company. [Sidebar: Deb asked if that holds true, do companies need an exit strategy when a blogger leaves? Which lead us to wonder what Microsoft would do if Robert left. He *is* Microsoft for many people.]
-WIth a new blog created every 5.76 seconds using blogs to pull high search rankings is getting more competitive.
-Blogs should be optimized for search similar to website search strategy.
-Use key words in content to increase rankngs on relevant pages.
Dana has some wonderful overviews of the sessions. He's much better at note taking than me...guess that's why we'll soon be calling him Doc.
Next Stops: Manhattan January 21 and Chicago February 18. Find Out More About the AMA Hot Topic Blog Workshop
