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b4b2007: podcasting and vlogs

Peter Whitehead, the Financial Time's Digital Business Editor is enthusiastically talking about Podcasts. They launched last year and thought of it as an add-on to the paper. It later became apparent that the podcast had to have it's "own content and it's own flavour and it's own colour". They decided to put some resources into it since, although it serves a small audience, it's an important one - and they expect quality.

Trevor Dann, Director of the Radio Academy, is a Bafta award winning former BBC producer. "As far as I'm considered, what Peter [FT] is making is radio... it's coming at us through different delivery systems.... on my ipod I've got bits of the Financial Times, The Guardian, the BBC... I've got the Arse Blogger... I still think of it as Radio..."

Guillaume du Gardnier, Director of Online Communications at Edelman, shows a video from MacBreak TV, a video podcast. He likes the content and the way it's presented, because he likes the "real people" voice it has, and because he can subscribe to it and watch it whenever he wants - the freedom of it.

Guillaume makes a good point - podcasting works on a model that companies and advertisers already know because it's one way. Because of this, it's much less scary than getting into blogging, which is a two way conversation. Brands keep control of the message with podcasts and video. Peter Whitehead of the FT agrees - it's not scary like doing stuff live.

b4b2007: new rules of engagement for businesses

Mark Jones, Community Editor at Reuters, is explaining his roll. Last year, the company had a rude awakening to the power of blogs, when bloggers spotted a photo that had been faked by one of it's photographers in the Middle East. He is trying to work out the rules of engagement for journalists working in social media, including Reuter's bureau in SecondLife, as well as the relationships that Reuters has struck up with Global Voices and Pluck (info on deal).

Social media consultant Euan Semple managed to get half a sentence into his presentation before mentioning that, until March of last year, he worked at the BBC. I did that a lot of times myself when I left for a bit. Anyway, Euan mostly helps businesses understand how to use social software, including blogs and wikis, to improve internal communication.

Euan, when quesitoned about the "quality" of user generated content, challenged the meaning of quality - it's different to everyone.

Mark Jones, on the same topic, says that their professional photographers who "are the best in the world are quite picky about what they include" whilst, at the same time, Reuters has a deal with Yahoo for user contributed photographs.

The panel moderator asks Mark Jones to discuss the internal conversations that took place when the faked photos were exposed.

an apology was made

a blog was set up where a photo editor explained the ins and outs of photoshopping

a "quite senior" photo editor has been appointed

they've responded to some of the most serious critics in the blogosphere

have had industry conversations to create a permanent record of any changes made to images published

"We've encouraged senior editors to just say it the way it is, no matter how uncomfortable that might feel... I see it as a necessary investment. We are nothing if not transparent and honest..."

For Reuters, the point where it became obvious that they'd need to network their professional photographers with amateurs was following the Asian Tsunami, where for days the only photos coming out were "user generated photos".

The moderator asks about the "editorial decisions journalists make all the time" about the authenticity or legality of content.

Struan Robertson, a Senior Associate at Pinsent Masons, says: As soon as you begin checking the content on your site, you become liable for that content. I don't know if they take the same approach as they did last year, but the Guardian and Times looked at this differently..." on the Times the content was moderated whereas on the Guardian it went live instantly. According to the speaker, the moderated content approach has increased legal risks (Although there is certainly some truth in this, I'm not sure I fully subscribe to this view - see my Law blog).

A member of the audience, who identifies himself as being from Reuters, asks if there will "be a big blow out defamation case involving bloggers in the UK.."

Struan Robertson: Workplace blogging can lead to problems. "We talk to a lot of companies before they start writing blogging guidelines for their staff... I don't think we'll see some massive event. As blogging grows, it will mature..." It's not the law that most companies thinking of getting into blogging should worry about, it's that most of them are rubbish. "I don't think the legal issues will be the death of blogs by any means."

Another member of the audience wants to know the legal implications of having staff blog stuff.

Struan Robertson: The problem you run when you let your staff blog is that you are inextricably linked to them... if they say something defamatory, it's quite likely that your company gets sued rather than them being sued... I don't think every post should go through the legal department. But what to do is to set up some sort of guidelines. Firstly, on when they should be blogging. Will that be their job.... a blog can take over hours of the day, you don't want the other things to suffer...." They need to understand copyright law, or be posting confidential information. "The kind of things they might right, they might crack jokes that are racial harrassment or sexual harrassment... defaming other companies, defaming other people... you don't want to give out tips on who your company might be buying because then you'd have insider dealing... it should be [the guidelines] written in understandable English..." He suggests a buddy system can be useful.

Euan Semple: Talks about the way the BBC blogging policy was created via a Wiki where bloggers and Editorial Policy and the Legal Department could all see and contribute to the policy which had the added benefits of bloggers buying into the end result.

b4b2007: social media marketing and advertising panel

social media marketing and advertising panel
Originally uploaded by robinhamman.

Anthony Mayfield started his introduction to the panel discussion by saying:

"Without a desk in front of me, I feel as exposed as a brand in the blogosphere"

We don't, Mayfield says, really know how to measure success in the social software space although he suggests that it has to be about "earning attention by being useful to consumers". Innovation, rather than creativity, will drive marketing and PR over the next few years.

Ian Delaney, editor of New Media Knowledge is talking about Wendy's (American burger chain) character in myspace, which proved quite popular, and Volkswagon, which used social networking for their "un-pimp my ride".

Mayfield later jumped in to say that rather than advertising on blogs, marketers should figure out how to create something that is useful for them. Another panel member (who wasn't properly introduced so I don't know his name but he's at the far right in the photo) told the story of a media buyer who told him that she was thinking of taking out some advertising in SecondLife but couldn't find the phone number of their agency.

blogging4business: social networking and brands

Michael Steckler, Business Planning and Development Director at Microsoft Advertising, is giving the afternoon keynote, which is about social networking - why people are using it, what brands can do there, etc.

Social networking includes a wide array of sites, crowds adopt to them early (big growth in beta stage), and the users don't fit the usual stereotype of spotty faced teenagers.

A huge driver of use is individuality, to be seen as creative and different. But it's also about collaboration. Being an individual if no one is looking is pointless.

"Contribution is largely driven by ego"

And what do people get out of it? They use it to create "increasing reserves" of:

1. Social capital
2. Intellectual capital
3. Cultural Capital (experiential)

It's the third of those that really plays to social networks - "if you've been on an expensive holiday to Kathmandu or wherever, you post that so people can see it"

Motivations for behaviour? Microsoft did research on UK users of MSN Spaces and found that:

1. Keep in touch with family and friends (75%) [part of this is keeping up with the joneses who already have one - eg. my mate uses it, so I'll get one too]
2. Being "nosey" - 62%
3. Express my opinions and views (55%)
4. Meet people with similar interests (49%)
5. Specific reason, documenting trip to wedding, etc (13%)
6. It's a good way to date (7%)

Microsoft also revealed the time and frequency of usage in their presentation of the study:

70% of activity between 5pm and 11pm. 52% from 8pm to 11pm. 37% visit every day and 41% a few times a week.

Preferred content on user's own blogs:

80% Photos

60% diary/blog

50% music

What they want to see on friend's pages:

80% personal expieriences

40% movies

60% family

50% trips and travel

25% (approx) Tech, Sports, Fashion, Electronics

After visiting a MSN space and seeing a product or service, 70% visited a website, 43% searched on product, and 38% sent a link to someone else.

48% visited a personal space set up by a brand

46% [check this figure] had sent the space a message

21% had added a brand as a contact or friend

So what are the rules of engagement in social networks, according to Microsoft?

1. understand consumers motivations for using social networks (ads on flickr for cameras are ok, for example, because motivation of users is photography)
2. express yourself as a brand (innocent referenced facebook from their own blog, linked to people who love innocent [1500 members] and also link to people who hate them)
3. Create and maintain good conversations (users expect a response)
4. empower participants (Fiskars: scicors that allow people to make crafts has a blog that gives users the opportunity to post their own photos of similar projects.)

Most social software sites have one or several of the following three participation types:

voting/rating (trip advisor)

people and creators (amazon reviews, etc)

comparison engines (last fm, delicious)

So how can you tap into this world (if you are a brand)?

create community

find influential bloggers

segment existing customers

attack the niche

start the gossip

reward customers

But most of all... Behave like a social networker - update content regularly, be transparent.

Update: Stephanie also has good blog coverage of this presentation.

b4b2007: monitoring conversations

Simon McDermott is first up after Mike Butcher (mBites) welcomed the panel and said his new blog publishing start-up has a name that makes people think it's a venereal disease.

Simon, the CEO of Attentio, is talking about why companies might want to blog watch:

campaign impact

Idenitfy in real time what influencers think

reputation monitoring

monitoring and understanding user behaviours

They look at an industry, like hotels, the share of buzz they generate and the topics they are discussing (value, cleanliness, etc).

Attentio monitors and analyse brands, try to understand who are the influencers, and communicate with key influentials. The last of these would scare me but he does add "for God sake, be authentic...".

When asked by Mike Butcher, the panel moderator, "what technology are you using" the Attentio guy says they are using proprietary search technology, developed over three years of experience, and they also use human gathering and filtering.

Heather Hopkins, from Hitwise, says they don't compete with Attentio. She's a data geek. The fastest growing category of websites they are tracking are net communities and chat, which are the social networks = about 6% of UK internet visits. Blogs are smaller. She asks how many people are familiar with the Sony Rootkit CDs. Few have. It did, however, really catch fire in chat rooms and on blogs - even if it didn't resonate with the CD buying community. It's something to keep in mind - yes, it's important to listen, but it's also important to know who it is you're responding to. In the Rootkit example, it was the tech community, rather than the CD buying community, who was upset and required a response. How do they know if the blog is "successful"? They look at hitwise to see where people come from and go to in order to try to understand the influence of their posts. They also use delicious, technorati and other tools available to bloggers. They are less concerned with shear numbers of visitors to the blogs or sites, it's more about how their info spreads.

Kris Hoet, from Microsoft, is also using different tools to generate blogger buzz. They go to technology and blog conferences but also use technorati, delicious, comment tracking to ensure that they can return to discussions they join. "But the best way of tracking is reading all these blogs." Key to it all is, for Hoet, getting to know the people by putting yourself out there - so when influencers do have questions or problems, they know where to come to get it fixed, which is exactly what his roll is.

Scott Thomson, Analytics Director of Starcom says his clients want to get a lead, a jump ahead, on what people think of their messages. That's why they watch blogs - to give them contextual information. Like Microsoft, Starcom uses Attentio to do this.

Summary? There are blogs and online discussions. Some brands want to know what they are saying about them. They hire companies like those on the stage right now to do that. Those companies use tools like technorati and repackage the results. This probably costs lots of money except for, in the case of Hitwise, where some information is made available on their blog for free.

b4b2007: social software in business (internal comms)

blogging4business - london
Originally uploaded by robinhamman.

Lee Bryant from social software consultancy Headshift is leading the second panel of the morning, which includes Olivier Creiche from Six Apart.

Olivier's first slide quotes Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman, GM:

"To blog or not to blog? The answer, simply enough, is to blog. No better opportunity exists to engage in an open dialog and exhcnage of ideas with customers and potential customers"

What are companies using blogs for?

Web Publishing - apparently the UK media is way ahead of those elsewhere

Internal Communication - Olivier's case study is Cirtix, a fast moving technology company with new employees coming in and out the door all the time. They needed a way to "protect the intellectual property of the company" and found that using a blog is a much better way to do that then people's inboxes. AEP, a much larger company, did the same - "The goal is to get to the point when every employee has their own blog".

Marketing and Community - case study Arcelor/Mittal blog to communicate outside the organisation, in an open and transparent way, with their employees, investors and other stakeholders in and outside the merging companies.

We later hear from a lawyer whose large (2000+ staff) firm uses blogs for corporate communication and even gets lawyers using more advanced tools like RSS and from a representative from Reed Business Publishing Information which is also using blogs internally.

Might, the panel is asked, these tools lead to cliques or the Balkanisation of the corporation? Lee Bryant doesn't think so. It actually helps people organise around ideas, themes and projects.

Mike Butcher from mBites asked if the move from intranet pages and databases to blogs and wikis means that all that old content is lost. The lawyer responds that, yes, his organisation had 33,000 pages of unstructured information that no one could find. People will have to go back and get the good content, the stuff that's useable. But as they move, the benefit is that the users of the systems, lawyers, are able to meet and work with each other in new ways. And that outweighs the time and effort that it's taken.

Update: Just spotted this good live blogged roundup of the session.

start of blogging4business

I managed to find the bloggers corner with little difficulty.

The bloggers always seek out power pionts and, in this particular instance, it's at the back left corner of the venue. The wifi is costly rather than free. Well, I blagged my access but others haven't been so lucky. Spotted so far are Oliver Luft (journalism.co.uk) and Robert Andrews who is writing the official conference blog. I'll do a round up of who's blogging once their posts start to appear...

I missed the opening remarks and morning keynote due to the joy that is London transport, so first up for me is the "Massaging the Message" panel with Darren Strange (Microsoft), Tamara Littleton (eModeration) and some other guy I have yet to identify.

According to Darren Strange, 4500 Microsoft employees are bloggers - that's around 1 in 15 of their employees and, in his view, Microsoft has one of the best corporate blogging policies there is.

Tamara, from eModeration, is talking about one of the client communities that they manage - a heavily branded Budweiser community for Nascar racing fans. "They have some control issues over images that depict their brand in a bad way, but as far as language... they're much more relaxed... we've seen an industry trend towards this anyway... towards allowing and encouraging a more open dialogue..."

The third guy, who must, through process of elimination, be Paul Munford from Player X is saying that within any organisation of more than about 10 people there must be someone who can engage openly, with the right tone of voice, and act as a brand evangelist. "Passion needs to be authentic... they need to be able to hold their hand up when, for example, a question about moderation comes in, and to say 'I don't know the answer to this, but I'll find out who does'." Of his clients, quite a few have bloggers whilst others aren't allowed to do so because they do business in highly regulated markets BUT "it is certainly becoming the norm." One issue that will need to be dealt with is people blogging stuff from within the organisation that other members of staff wouldn't want them to.

The moderator of the panel discussion asks Darren Strange if he's ever made any mistakes on his blog. "Microsoft has the view that we do far more good than damage... I've got to try to find something to write about everyday that will be of interest to my readers, it's like a daily column... If something comes across the desk that would be interesting, I might blog it. One or two times I've said stuff that maybe should have been kept confidential and the head of corporate communications pops up on my messenger within about 30 minutes... the great thing about blogs is that you can correct it... a lot of employees already talk to journalists, to friends down at the pub, but stuff that's marked confidential should stay confidential... Microsoft doesn't have a blogging policy... i don't think there will ever be one and if there is I think a lot of us will just leave.... the best way to train good bloggers is to train good bloggers..."

Darren Strange, Microsoft: "What is slightly annoying is when journalists try to hijack my blog... I see my blog as my house... I've had journalists... this one instance an analyst was trying to get ahold of a free copy of the new MS office. Instead of just emailing me, he posted a comment on a post about something entirely different... that's very rude. He's doing that because he hopes it will make me send it faster. I didn't even respond... it's a very strange dynamic now... journalists who see themselvs as technologists will go off and complain about our products, now I can reply. I go off at night, read on technorati what they say about me and my products and I turn up on their blog and respond. It's a very helpful thing. The journalists don't always like that now we can say something back. Now I can put my commen to what they said directly on what they said."

Tamara (eModeration) points to the Times Online's recent redesign, where comments were enabled on every piece of content, as an example of how being open and honest with audience members can turn out well - there were problems, the Times linked out to blogs that criticised the Times relaunch and engaged with that criticism.

Darren is complaining that this isn't a blog. "A blog has to be personal... comments isn't the same as having feeds... another thing I object to is having to give them all sorts of information before I post a comment... this should be about the debate first..."

Kryptonite locks being opened with a pen used as an example - how do you respond?>

Paul: Kryptonite did all the right things at the start - the were monitoring the blogs, the noticed what had been said, saw the film and replicated the problem in house. They also came up with the solution and communicated that to their factory. Unfortunately, they didn't tell people what they were doing, didn't keep the dialogue open and they were hung out to dry by people who thought they were unresponsive.

Darren Strange: If they would have had bloggers, then the response from Kryptonite would have got lots of hits and links, which helps with the way the results are displayed in google. "Search is a lot to do with how many sites are linking to you... if lots of people are linking to you, it's probably good content... it's worth investing in that to have it as an almost defense mechanism".

Tamara: "It's more to do with getting the sport more talked about, visiting the site... the use ambassadors and reward people with merchandise, carrying on that sponsorship theme..." It's all about brand reinforcement through the social software site, and by creating evangelists off the site itself, rather than getting people to go out and blog about Budweiser.

Paul: Sun Microsystems, particularly the work Jonathon Schwartz has done to give credibility back to the company... a lot of people are using it to engage further with audiences they already have... to encourage dialogue, feedback on new products or builds, etc.

Tamara: "Hijacking blogs can be a real faux paux... I personally see it more and more that our clients are putting their mesages onto social networking sites..."

Darren: "On a weekly basis I have PRs and others who want to send me things... lots of those things are very good things... if I were to do that, I'd look like a PR spin machine... I welcome people sending me things but I have to look at it and ask if I'm interested in it, if my audience will be interested in it...lots of other times I just [don't]..."

index of stuff tagged b4b2007

The following is a list of content tagged with b4b2007 to help people attending Blogging4Business 2007, which takes place in London on Wednesday, more easily track the back channel conversation:

Technorati: blog posts tagged with b4b2007
Flickr: photos tagged with b4b2007
del.icio.us: bookmarks tagged with b4b2007
YouTube: video tagged with b4b2007

Any others? Please add the link as a comment and I'll pull it back into this post...

tag it with b4b2007

Last week at the European Broadcasting Union's Multimedia Meets Radio conference in Geneva I met Guillaume du Gardier, Director Online Communications Europe at Edelman (see Edelman's blogging brief). He's giving a presentation at the end of Blogging4Business and offered me a free ticket - thanks Guillaume.

It turns out there are lots of people I know or am acquainted with speaking - Tamara Littleton from eModeration.com , Lee Bryant from Headshift, Olivier Creiche of Six Apart Europe, Euan Semple (ex-BBC, now a consultant) and Ian Delany from New Media Knowledge (who recently wrote a review of an article about whether corporations should blog) and probably a few of the others.

I will be live blogging and twittering and bookmarking and flickring and perhaps even youtubing...

If you're doing the same, why not tag it (what?) with b4b2007 so we can get that back channel going.

The official conference blog, authored by Robert Andrews, is here.