1) A blog is a website where an individual regularly posts commentary, descriptions of events, or other content like graphics or videos. Entries are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order. 2) Corporate culture focuses on hierarchy, control and formality while blog culture is participatory, informal, and community-focused. 3) Companies can engage with blogs by monitoring discussions, low-level engagement like responding, or high-level engagement through proactive and integrated marketing activities.

1. BLOG MARKETING DIGITAL Waggener Edstrom Worldwide |Ged Carroll |November 18, 2008

2. BLOG MARKETING: What is a blog? Blog culture Corporate culture Listening Blogger relations Running your own blog Case studies Questions

3. WHAT IS A BLOG?

4. WHAT IS A BLOG? A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something

5. WHAT IS A BLOG CONTINUED? A blog can be an individual site or it can be part of the ‘mainstream media Often (but not always allows interaction with the readership through a comments section Bloggers are the new columnists: taste-makers and critics

6. BLOG CULTURE

7. BLOG CULTURE Participatory Community – increasingly complex interaction across social media Independent Informal Self-referencing Meme-driven Focused Generally local rather than global Complex interconnections Trusted

8. CORPORATE CULTURE

9. CORPORATE CULTURE How flat is your organisation structure? How open and authentic is your organisation culture? Do you trust employees to talk openly about the organisation? How regulated is your organisation? Do you have a unique perspective to offer the marketplace? Is there a significant need for trust in your brands prior to purchase? Does your organisation need to build a stronger sense of loyalty and dialogue with stakeholders? Is your product/brand category is going through significant change right now? Does your product or service have a long purchasing cycle and/or significant decision criteria? Is your route to market reliant upon third parties (channel, retail partners)? Do you manage issues/crises on a frequent basis? Is your organisation high profile (frequently talked about in the media and with key stakeholders)?

10. LEVELS OF ONLINE PR ENGAGEMENT Monitoring: no engagement but active listening to what is being said about the organisation and its peers – any related issues Low-level engagement: as Monitoring plus response-led online presence High-level engagement: as low level engagement, but proactive approach, integration with other marketing and customer services activities

11. LISTENING

12. BENCHMARK RESEARCH Map out existing community discussions Your organisation Brands Locations Employees Map out competitor discussions Company Brands Key partners Individuals Look at backlinks – Google link: yoursite.com Google blog search Technorati Look at authority – Quarkbase.com is handy Map out communities, plotting blogs that are referenced to build up a picture of ‘super nodes’ in the community over time

13. MONITORING Measurement tools often don’t have the speed of near real-time updates and you have to go back to basics Google alerts: Ongoing monitoring Google news alerts Google blog search Technorati : RSS-fed buzz with authority meter Yahoo! Site Explorer : Inbound links Website analytics Radian6 – commercial offering that many major brands like Blog metrics (Feedburner is a good place to start) Pull this all together with RSS

14. A LITTLE BACKGROUND ON RSS The paradigm The tickertape (1870s - 1960s) Reuters, Telerate, Bloomberg Teletext Financial TV PointCast, BackWeb and BBC ticker RSS & Atom

15. READER CHOICE Information presentation How much information? Application, plug-in or online? Is mobile access required?

16. A quick run through setting up a Bloglines account (www.bloglines.com) Click on register at the top right of the page Complete form Complete click on confirmation mail SETTING UP A READER

17. Select which news feeds you would like Go and get an easy subscribe button for your browser from: http://www.bloglines.com/help/easysub SETTING UP A READER CONT’D

18. BLOGGER RELATIONS

19. BLOGGER RELATIONS Use benchmark studies to choose your ‘12 disciples’ Start reading their blog, occasionally providing relevant comment to posts to develop a rapport Develop an influencer panel Develop a modified approach to media outreach for the bloggers Guest bloggers on your own blog Creating collaborative content

20. RUNNING A CORPORATE BLOG

21. The right reasons: We have something to say We would like to be able to have a dialogue with our customers We’re passionate about our industry and have something to say (and folks are likely to listen) We’d like to share some of our know-how with the wider community The wrong reasons: The board says that we need a blog Someone down the golf/squash club thought that it would be a good idea PR Week said that blog is the word of 2006 We want to tell people about our latest XXX (insert client product details here) Its something I can get you guys to do Business reasons Cost effective CMS Improved market intelligence - getting closer to the customer Putting the personality in brand Attracts inbound links (if done well), a form of SEO THE WHY

22. RUNNING A CORPORATE BLOG Put your house in order Provide guidance for employees personal social media Start understanding the community that you want to engage Start thinking about editorial: not only the first few posts but longer term planning Think about ongoing resources for writing posts and responding to comments and indirect feedback What is the blog(s) designed to achieve? How will that success be measured? How will employees be incentivised to participate? Do the management team realise the long-term commitment that a blog requires? How doe the blog fit into the organisations overall web strategy? Is there a willingness to change based on the feedback received?

23. SPECIFICATION / DESIGN Brand guidelines Guidelines are not tramlines URL – Working Families for Wal-Mart Think reader: Make sure your code works Make sure it works for different sizes Test for browser compatibility MS IE 6 & 7 Mozilla 2 & 3 Safari 3.2 Opera 9.5 If you discuss mobile, allow it to be read via a mobile browser like Opera Mini and webkit-based browsers for Symbian an iPhones

24. SPECIFICATION / DESIGN SEM Submit your site to Google, Yahoo!, Live.com, Ask USABILITY - KISS Don’t go with a fixed-width One column if you can Flash is mostly evil, AJAX can be good Think navigation – archives, categories/tag clouds Make it easy to subscribe Easy to search via Rollyo or Google Co-op to name just two options 06/06/09

25. SPECIFICATION / DESIGN Choose your platform to run the blog on carefully Moveable Type WordPress MSN Spaces Blogger Microsoft Community Server Think about the posts, now and in the future Measurement, bookmarking, video enclosures, dynamic content – support for JavaScript, AJAX, RSS feeds, audio files, images, documents, blogroll, contributor pages for transparency 06/06/09

26. TOOLS Open souce – published by Six Apart Application and ISP hosted service Spam protection Comment and community management Access to hundreds of plug-ins Fully configurable permissions system Native support for multiple blogs Static pages and archiving Optional paid professional support Automatic RSS feed generation Open source – more information at wordpress.org Application, ISP and wordpress.com hosted service Spam protection Comment and community management Access to hundreds of plug-ins and themes Password protection on blog and individual posts Doesn’t need to rebuild after every posting Large support eco-system of free and paid expertise Easy RSS feed generation

27. CASE STUDIES

29. PODCASTS & VIDEO Tends to be one-way rather than two-way communications Dynamic delivery Audio is portable and flexible to consume Video requires captive attention – need to be respectful of the audiences time Content needs to be: original, interesting, humourous Two’s company – have a sidekick Succinct Audio blogs Q&A interviews Executive speeches Panel discussions Storytelling Self-guided product tour Online learning

30. © Waggener Edstrom Worldwide 2008