Max Gladwell

Observations and commentary on the BlogWorld Expo 2008, as it unfolds.

The the extent that Max Gladwell covers social media, we’ll be blogging the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. We’ll be adding to this post throughout the next two days in a “live blog” fashion.

Photos will be streamed through our Flickr.

Technorati presented some highlights from its state of the blogosphere research, and we look forward to getting the five-part series to go through it in more detail. Otherwise, not too much enlightening there.

Six Apart, the maker of the Movable Type blog platform, came next. It’s more high-level commentary on why we blog, where it came from, and the state of the blogosphere. One of the things that both spoke about is whether blogs are mainstream media and which ones. Technorati and Six Apart cited Huffington Post and TechCrunch as example of full-fledged, blog-based media companies. But there’s no clear line, and no one is willing to say, “This blog is a media company and this one is not.”

Uh-oh. Now we’re talking about Blogging 2.0: where should blogging go? How do we move forward?

This is interesting, because we’re talking about social blogging, which implies the nexus of blogging and social networking. They started together in 1999, diverged apart over the past 10 years, and now it’s coming back together. If you look to our sidebar and see our MG Networks, it would seem that they’re spot on.

“Today’s mainstream social networks are like yesterday’s mainstream media.”

“Bloggers will transform social networking.”

Social networking: There is no one winner. Every one can survive. It will look like a long tail. And blogs will become social publishing platforms. It’s going to be a dramatic change for social networks and represent big change for the biggest companies.

You should basically be able to have the tools that FriendFeed and other aggregators provide on your blog and transform your blog into a much more social experience. Six Apart seems to want to give bloggers more tools to keep the conversations on their blogs as opposed to migrating off into social networks, social news sites, and aggregators.

Blog It iPhone blogging application from Six Apart will update a central blog that will update all of your other social networks e.g. Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc.

First Session: Beyond Blogging, Stories & Social Media Lessons with Tac Anderson, Rohit Bhargava, Michael Brito, Kelly Feller, and Anne Plese

This will focus on corporate blogging. We’ve got HP, Intel, and Cisco represented.

Intro: Social media consultants have proliferated like crazy. We’re blogging proof that this is the case. But we’re also focused on certain markets and types of companies.

Lenovo case study on Olympic athletes blogging from Bejing from Bhargava:

Day Two

First Session: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Business Bloggers with Lionel Menchaca, Dell; Nicki Dugan, Yahoo!; Carolyn Abram, Facebok; Thomas Hoehn, Kodak. Moderated by Mario Sundar, LinkedIn.

The perception of the corporate blog is that they’re trivial, despite widespread adoption.

1. Status: It’s a Relationship & It’s Complicated: Humanizing your company or brand by creating a dialog between the customers and the people of that company or brand.

2. Tell Honest, Current Stories: The tone should speak to the customers or users, not in some third-person tense. Put yourself into a post and avoid the jargon.

3. Know Your Limits: Important to know when your lawyers are your friends. Write guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not in comments. Anything that’s safety related has to go through legal. If a comparison is made to a competitor’s product, those posts go through legal. Any time it’s an issue that impacts hundreds of thousands of customers, it will typically go through legal.

4. Make Lemonade: Don’t launch a blog with posts that don’t have outbound links. Turn around crises by responding quickly and honestly. Address the issues and engage customers on the solutions.

5. One Size Doesn’t Fit All: It’s a judgment call on allowing comments. Facebook does not, primarily due to bandwidth issues with personel and the fact that most comments should actually be directed to customer service.

6. Learn As You Go: Make this your mantra: it’s not about us (Dell). Learn as you go is the lesson. Keep going and push things. Adapt to visitor needs. You can always change (Kodak). Never be afraid to change your direction completely (Facebook). Be real. Shouldn’t be a re-purposed press room (Yahoo!).

7. It’s Not Just Words: Video has been the most popular types of posts (Yahoo!). Used the Where the Hell is Matt guy in an original video. Kodak is obviously focused on using photos in posts. Dell switched over to using YouTube as opposed to its own video player for the built-in groups and community that it affords. Opened it up to a more global market, where users are using cell phones to access content and the Web. Also enables users to share and embed your content (Dell).

This was an excellent session. The panelists explained the challenges and successes of corporate blogging for huge companies, three of which are publicly traded. These channels tend to be focused on customer service and CRM. Corporate blogs serve these needs in excellent ways. However, our focus with our consulting clients is using corporate blogs as marketing and PR channels through creating top-notch content. Which brings us to the next session.

Second Session: How to Track, Measure & Adjust Corporate Blogs for Maximum ROI with Chris Baggott

Adjustment #1: Google is a content lottery. Increase your exposure to search traffic.

“You can’t make bloggers. You can only free bloggers.”

Strategize your corporate blog content and titles based on keywords and things people search for.

Price out the keyword traffic based on their market value on Google.

Session Three: Establishing Blogger Cred: How to Be Taken Seriously with Daniel Gray, Scott Monty, Michelle Naranjo, Joe Neuberger, and Muhammad Saleem

Three out of four of this panel are automotive related, including Ford and A&M Specialists. We’ve done our fair share of print automotive writing, so it should be familiar.

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