Naked Bloggers in the Trenches
Tuesday’s panel by top bloggers started with some early references to nudity, which for them unfortunately was not a pleasant thought. Mentions of working from bed - mostly naked - and “open kimonos” aside, the panel did make a great point that to create a strong personal brand is openness. The panel consisted of four experienced bloggers and a tag-along moderator. Perhaps I was expecting too much after my previous experience. You had Steve Hall of AdRants (and the official ad:tech blog) fame, Karl Long of Nokia’s N-Gage Web/Social Media area, co-creator of AskANinja.com Kent Nichols, and Jeremiah Owyang from Podtech who streamed the panel live and followed the online chat from those watching remotely.
When asked where their brand identity came from, Steve said that it basically came from who he was. From his experience in the industry he could see through the cracks and read through the BS of a press release. While he may be a bit snarky online, many have observed that he is much nicer in person than the publisher of Adrants. Karl also tried out a podcast and noted that the intimacy of having your voice go into someone’s head made him more approachable than the typed word. Kent said that when they started AskANinja they did not have a plan. It all evolved through a dialog with the audience, but once you do figure it out, you have to know your brand better than they do. He said that it is like the Simpsons. If you go back and watch the first season, the characters are one dimensional, badly drawn, and the voices are not quite right.
There are risks from opening yourself up, but Kent emphasized that you should not try to control the process, and definitely don’t Astroturf. Karl used the Dell Hell example of how Dell used this to change how they operated and encouraged interaction with customers. Jeremiah added that real employees can connect with customers and even create better products through real-time feedback, and that customers will actually support other customers.
Something that most in the audience wanted to learn was how to become as popular as the panelists. Kent said that consistency and quality were paramount. No one specific feature, link, or article will do it. They key is that you deliver the next time, the time after that, and the time after that. It has to be good - eventually. Jeremiah likened it to anti-marketing marketing, advising to be a resource. He noted that one of the keys for him was actually including links to the competition. This gave him not only praise, but built trust with the community. Karl likened posts to micro-content and said that all of this is linkable, building equity and a long tail. Steve agreed, saying that blogging is the easiest and cheapest way to do search engine marketing.
The panel was asked to provide examples of who got it right, and who got it wrong. They ignored the second half and all gave their examples of the former. Steve liked GM’s Fastlane, saying that when it came out a few years ago it was a surprise to see posts from high level executives in such a big corporation. Karl liked the Nikon Blogger Ambassador Program noting that Nikon found a great way to get product in the hand of bloggers the right way. The terms of the deal called for complete transparency about how they got it. Kent really liked Prom Queen TV because it has a sensible ad model. He called it a hybrid between old Hollywood and new media. Jeremiah thought that John Edwards was “everywhere.”
There were a few audience questions, and even one from the online chat room. The best question asked was about how to approach a blogger. The answers varied about press releases, but in general email seemed to be a pretty favorable way to get in touch with them - but you better know what the blog is about when you write. Jeremiah got total agreement when he said that if you have a blog, write about them and link to them. Most likely a Google Alert will catch it and they will notice you!
