These days I find myself answering questions about online media more frequently. I was at a breakfast with Jeff Pulver in the city recently. If you're familiar with the format of those gatherings, people meet and as they talk they tag each other with context words written on sticky notes. Online social tags in the offline world.
Here are some of the tags I received during the conversations - "blog babe", "everlasting", "connector", real marketer", "conversation please". I was able to stay only for a little over one hour, but I enjoyed learning more about the format, Jeff, and the rest of the group. I've been a strong believer that relationships develop offline, especially those that lead to business and friendships.
Many businesses and companies are looking to learn more about online media. How can they leverage all of these new (free) tools to their marketing advantage? Especially now that budgets are so tight, people are paying more attention to online - to optimize, maximize, track, measure, etc.
The issue of course is scale - how do we find those who need us and our products more easily in the volumes we need to sustain the business? Many direct methods are alive today in marketing. However, there is a shift in how response works. More often than not, recency and relevance are embedded in the pixels, so to speak.
The question then becomes one of cost - how can I afford being there all the time for the opportunity that may develop in an instant? - and content - how much can I produce that is valuable in such a short period of time? Many companies will need to rethink several things for that - legal being just one of them. The most important on content is value.
The answer to all of these great questions is not tools. Learning how to navigate a completely different environment is more part of a conversation on content, value, permission, and availability/attitude. The answer is also more hands on that just attending a talk by someone who is doing it. If you want results, you need to execute.
I'm a strong believer in putting skin in the game and think the format of the Online Media Bootcamp will truly allow you to get back to your job with several items on your to do list. Especially in contracting markets, being close to your customers is a big competitive advantage and what you'll learn on April 9, will give you the ability to optimize your opportunities.
Although I am executing on several aspects of the day's events, I will be focusing our session together on the why and hows of corporate blogging. My reference point and experience is B2B, where I've always brought a B2C attitude.
Perhaps your company is considering a blog as part of their marketing strategy for customer acquisition or retention or maybe it’s as simple as your management thinks it’s the “in” thing to have one. Or, perhaps your existing corporate blog has stalled due to the time-demand of generating content. Blogs are en excellent and timely way to create valuable content that is search-friendly, too.
The key take aways from my session:
- Why start a blog and who the best corporate bloggers are
- Best practices for blogging
- 3-easy steps to set up a corporate blog and optimize it
- How to make sure your content pipeline is always filled with reader-centric material
Register before February 20 and take advantage of the early bird discount. There are only 65 seats so make sure you grab one if you want to learn and work with me and a roster of top notch teachers. Each one of us can answer pretty much any question about executing any part of the day's agenda so make sure you bring your questions and participate at breakfast and lunch.
One word of advice - get to know us before the event. You will be able to maximize the learning if you have a baseline - this is also how social media and new media work to your advantage. You will find plenty of content at our blogs and will find us all on Twitter:
- Shashi Bellamkonda, @shashib
- Li Evans, @storyspinner
- Beth Harte, @BethHarte
- Mack Collier, @MackCollier
- Valeria Maltoni, @ConversationAge
This is one of the few rare opportunities you will have to experience how all of this can be integrated and put to work for your business. Take advantage of it. Come spend the day with us and walk away with an action plan to better integrated online media.