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DC Bloggers Gather for Blog Potomac – Engagement, Measurement and Ethics Seen as Keys

by Michael Hackmer / Friday, 20 June 2008 / Published in Conferences, Events And Contests, Digital Media, Marketing, Social Media, Upcoming Events

Last Friday, June 13th (yes, Friday the 13th), I ventured to Blog Potomac, where Geoff Livingston and his team at Livingston Communications, the folks at Viget Labs, WordBiz.com, Inc., and others put together a premiere social media marketing event for the greater Washington DC area at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA.

First of all, I should probably change the title of this blog entry to read “DC Marketing and Communications Professionals Gather for Blog Potomac”. When asked who was in marketing, communications or PR, close to 200 hands went up, prompting the emcee, Josh Hallett, to say, “Holy shit!”

But true to its form, Blog Potomac was exactly what marketing and communications professionals needed – a solid event geared around social media.

THE STARTING POINT

One topic discussed over and over again during Blog Potomac was about starting a blog at the corporate level. For anyone who has tried to get their company more engaged in using social media, writing a blog has been the logical starting point. With bloggers permeating mass media and popular culture, the chances your corporate executives have heard about and even read a blog or two is pretty high. Whereas, going to the CEO or division head about initiating a company Twitter account might get a more skeptical response.

Before your blog initiative gets underway, there are some important factors you need to take into account, which the speakers discussed during Blog Potomac.

  • As Maggie Fox noted during her presentation, people have to want to do it. As Fox notes, “often the leaders you want to get involved are the ones with the least amount of time.” This means, as a marketing and communications professional, you need to find those individuals who not only want to blog, but are able to write and have something to say that is going to be of value to your audience.
  • To get executives and other busy professionals engaged, you sometimes need to offer a “carrot”. This is typically something that is unique to the individual whom you want to blog. In some cases, it could be their gaining name recognition in their industry, joining a community and building new relationships (the right people in business development and customer service are natural fits for this), or perhaps there is some measurable statistic or case study from a similar organization you can point to that can be a compelling force. At the end of the day, the “carrot” cannot replace individual motivation – it can only help to whet someone’s appetite and spur them on.
  • Perhaps most important component to any social media or public relations initiative is building the strategy behind the activity, and the ability to measure before, during and after. Whether it is launching a blog, holding regional press meetings, creating a corporate presence on social networks like Facebook, or using Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Plurk), you need to know what you want to accomplish and establish some sort of baseline from which to measure. You also need to think about how the program is going to run over the long haul, what happens if it should end, and to remember through out that it is not about the “eyeballs” but rather the relationships you are starting to build.
  • ONCE YOU ARE ROLLING

    Assuming you have built an initial strategy, have your team assembled and everyone is ready, willing and able to contribute (no small task in itself), another critical component is measurement.

    If your organization is remotely skeptical about the value of blogging, being able to identify some return is going to be critical to continued support and future development. To that end, no one’s presentation was more anticipated than KD Paine’s talk on measurement and value.

    One of the most important things Paine discussed was how measurement to many marketing and communications professionals is equated with monitoring. Paine noted that “measurement says, I’ve done something over here… I’ve started to listen and as a result something over here is happening…” Marketers certainly monitor web traffic, PPC advertising campaigns, and the like, but the key is not watching results as much as it is measuring how something has happened based on some other action that took place earlier – and evaluating those results against the goals you have set.

    It all starts, according to Paine, with identifying what return you want from your marketing initiatives, what investment you want to put in, and start with some kind of benchmark for evaluating your success.

    An important point Paine stressed in this context was that you “cannot measure via eyeballs.”

    Measuring the amount of eyeballs, Paine said, was one of the most common mistakes people make. For example, if you developed a website or launched a widget and measured strictly on eyeballs, what are you gaining? In business, eyeballs are never the most important factor; leads and business opportunities are. Items such as downloads of a white paper, purchases of a publication or software solution, clicks on advertising, and the like are all specific results stemming from goals your team sets. At the end of the day, it all comes down identifying your goals and then measuring based on that criteria.

    KD Paine’s points were all about getting back to what you and your business / organization want to do, and making sure you are keeping track and measure the right things.

    Some questions for consideration along this line are:

  • How are you currently engaging the customer?
  • What is the value of this engagement to your business?
  • What about your corporate reputation? Is this positioning your company the way you want to be positioned?
  • Are you out there with people who are paying attention to you? To your message?
  • What are people saying about you, your company, your product line?
  • What is your goal in reaching out to a specific community?
  • Are you actively listening and engaging the community?
  • LET’S MORALIZE

    Lastly, Kami Huse, MyPrPro, gave a very solid presentation on blogging ethics. As with many of the presenters, Kami was quick to point out that “blogging is not a sales channel. It’s a conversation channel.” If you treat your blog as just another sales tool, you are going to miss the point of blogging altogether.

    Kami included a number of examples in her presentation, but the main take away, from my perspective, is that when managing a blog you need to stay away from manufacturing things (ie, fake outrage or a fake persona or online identity), and stick to building an honest identity and honest relationships.

    If we accept that social media, and blogging as a subset of that, are about building relationships online, trust is such an important factor. Misleading people online is deadly, because it can destroy your company’s credibility in ways you cannot calculate. Huse suggested that we become anthropologists of social media – in the sense that we study the culture of the communities we are participating in, so we know what is acceptable online behavior and what is not acceptable. The same holds true of the standards you create for your own company and its blog initiative.

    IN CONCLUSION

    As with any one-day conference or un-conference, a lot of material tends to get rolled into the various presentations, experiments take place with speakers, topics, and formats, and challenges occur (the lack of wireless was the only real frustrating element). But as this was the inaugural Blog Potomac event, it was an exciting start to what I, and many others in the DC region hope will be an annual event for many years to come.

    Though the focus was overwhelmingly on blogging, everyone recognizes that there is more to social media than just a blog. However, taking that first step in using social media for your company or organization is not easy, and blogging can represent the easiest way to step forward. In that regard, Blog Potomac accomplished a valuable service – stressing the fundamentals marketing and communications professionals all need to consider.

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    Tagged under: anthropolgists of social media, blog measurement, Blog Potomac, building relationships online, Debbie Weil, engagement, Geoff Livingston, Kami Huse, KD Paine, Livingston Communications, Maggie Fox, Michael Hackmer, Social Media, unconference, Viget Labs, WordBiz.com

    About Michael Hackmer

    Michael Hackmer is the founder of Social Web Tactics (www.socialwebtactics.com), a digital marketing and sales agency focused on providing businesses and organizations the ability to connect with their audience using the latest and most effective digital technologies and tools. He has been a speaker, consultant and marketing strategist for over 15 years. He also has worked in federal and state government relations, and managed industry affairs and association membership. He has developed digital and strategic marketing campaigns for companies including: Adobe, Deltek, HP, K12, Red Hat, Strayer University and more. He has helped non-profits and corporations with marketing automation solutions. He is originally born in Boston, MA. Graduated Phillips Academy, Andover in 1994. Received his B.A. in Politics from The Catholic University of America in 1998. Michael lives in Ashburn, Virginia with his wife and daughter. He loves to run, swim and travel throughout South America.

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