Locating and Participating in the Online
Conversations that Matter
a PRWebinar with Teresa Valdez Klein
February 19-20, 2008

Conversations

Finding Them
✦ Keyword Monitoring via RSS (Google,
Technorati)
✦ Keyword monitoring via RSS on social news
sites and social bookmarking sites (Digg,
Del.icio.us)
✦ Subscribing to general, category-specific, and
comment RSS feeds from key blogs in your
space.

Monitoring Them
✦ If you find a particularly interesting piece of
content, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed of
comments, if one is available.
✦ Subscribe to an RSS feed of all the responses -
posts and sites that link to the article - from
Technorati.
✦ Use Firefox plugin Update Scanner to monitor
comments if no RSS feed is available.

But what about non-
blog conversations?

Channels

Blog Posts
Chunks of Content

Blog Post
Facebook Note
Facebook News Feed

Due props to: http://scagozo.com/

Outsource
Keyword
Monitoring

Look at People
Instead

Old “A-List” Model
✦ Make a list of key bloggers and pitch them.
✦ Hope that by reaching a few key influencers,
you can start a word-of-mouth epidemic.
✦ Still top-down, command and control.

Everyone is
Influential

Everyone is A-List
✦ Read “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” in Fast
Company.
✦ Assuming that that everyone is influential
means that you need to have a conversation
with as many of the influencers as possible.

So,What’s the A-
List Good For?

Follow Them!
✦ Twitter
✦ Facebook
✦ Google Reader Shared Items
✦ Digg

Andru Edwards

Participating

Simple Rules
✦ Transparency - never hide who you are or who
you work for
✦ Make friends - e.g. on Twitter, Tweet at people
when they mention anything you find
interesting, not just when they mention your
product
✦ Connect across platforms

Community

Recap
✦ Use RSS feeds from blog search to monitor for
certain keywords.
✦ Use Update Scanner to monitor for updates to
pages that don’t use RSS.
✦ Use social media tools to keep track of what the
A-listers in your space are paying attention to.
✦ Participate in the relevant conversations
transparently, personably and across platforms.