www.nickhodge.com

There are vari­ous posts on the value of the first Aus­tralian Blog­ging Con­fer­ence. The con­ver­sa­tional style of broad topic areas, bounded and nutured by a chair works well.

Kudos to Peter Black for being per­sist­ent and organ­ising this event.

Des Walsh and Joanne Jac­obs are respec­ted in this rel­at­ively new industry. I dis­covered heaps, and have put some of their ideas into action.

Partly sponsored by Microsoft (spe­cific­ally the cor­por­ate and busi­ness blog­ging ses­sion, or in other words: we paid for lunch) — I missed the polit­ical blog­ging sessions.

Apart from the open­ing, where Duncan Riley lit a blow torch/flame under­neath the Aus­tralian blog­gers: to con­nect up. Obvi­ously, com­ing from Aus­tralia yet hav­ing an inter­na­tional audi­ence I grok where he is at. Think­ing on this…

Michael Rees adds to my notes, espe­cially on the Podcasting/Vidcasting side. Video con­tent, if it is the next-big-thing is an art­form that is rarely taught in schools. Not just the tech­nical feeds/bits side — also the com­pos­i­tion, inter­view­ing, mak­ing a story.

The legal ses­sion demon­strated that there are minds think­ing about the impact of this online world on a slow-to-adapt legal sys­tem. Also join­ing the con­ver­sa­tion were the Aus­tralian Law Reform Com­mis­sion. Pri­vacy, defam­a­tion, bush law­yer­ing. The think­ing that people/companies “go after” those with the cash is scary. Online, a few simple words can eas­ily des­troy the intan­gible asset of goodwill.

A theme that I don’t think I answered fully, and cer­tainly with too-little thought was the “per­sonal + cor­por­ate” blog­ging mix. Bron­wen reminds me bril­liantly of on her blog; and it’s some­thing that’s worthy of thought.

And don’t for­get: the best Uncon­fer­ences are fol­lowed by Bar­con­fer­ences.

So, my ran­dom thoughts from ran­dom notes and reading:

• Aus­tralian organ­isa­tions should be online, in a read/write sense (blog, wiki, whatever) to hear from their cus­tom­ers. Mar­kets are conversations.
• Con­tent is king. Are you adding to the world?
• A blog without com­ments is merely a website.
• Aus­tralian organ­isa­tions should remem­ber being eng­lish speak­ing, rel­at­ively stable eco­nom­ic­ally; that the world is flat — and cus­tom­ers are not restric­ted to the main­land and Tas­mania. The world is your mar­ket, con­verse with it.
• Brand­ing: what is your brand? Is it you personally?

(these are my rough notes from the discussion)

- Chair: Des Walsh (DW)
- with Joanne Jac­obs (JJ)
- and Nick Hodge (NH)

- intro and slides
- Signs Never Sleep example

- Q: CEO to blog, if they are tak­ing it ser­i­ously?
- then who should write it?
- recc: mar­ket­ing + pr: no, slow and lack of imme­di­acy
- doesn’t engage with com­ments
- blog without a com­ments is just a web site

- Blog plus News­let­ter to industry people; to build brand cred­ib­il­ity
- news­let­ter is form­ally gen­er­ated, blog to incite com­ments
- 2–3 art­icles a week
- ROI: com­pet­it­ive advant­age, first-mover. pos­i­tion on author­ity
- com­plex on blog, expert­ise in field with advanced cus­tom­ers
- 10 com­ments per art­icle; com­ments get respon­ded to with free flow­ing discussion

- secur­ity: blog spam, pass­word secur­ity: need a per­son watch­ing
- cf: wiki­pe­dia
- wordpress/ akismet
- large organ­isa­tion: employ someone to be the blog post

- Is a blog per­sonal or cor­por­ate
- self-censorship / internal censorship

- Hier­archy vs. Organic
- blog­ging policy
- policy and cor­por­ate effect
- the new pr: blog­ging policy wiki

- who should blog, in terms of com­pan­ies
- PR; pro­fes­sional ser­vice firms account­ants law­yers
- tax­girl: mak­ing account­ancy interesting

- pro­mot­ing a com­pet­it­ive product: delete or not delete
- com­ments policy
- com­ment dele­tion: good advice, send email when it deleted

- blog­ging a great tool to raise a pro­file
- blog­ging as tacit know­ledge man­age­ment
- posts to your­self; out­side in the world

- RSS feeds much more effect­ive
- Feed­burner; out to the world; using the Feed­burner RSS to email

- blog recon­struc­tion when people can no longer edit

- blog as know­ledge man­age­ment: pitched to cor­por­ates, who does it work?
- JJ: blog, as engage­ment with the com­munity; external facing
- IP held in a par­tic­u­lar
- value addi­tion: “inform the pub­lic”, ongo­ing archive of inform­a­tion. dif­fi­cult to meas­ure first up

- “what are we going to write about today?” : busi­ness, giv­ing away inform­a­tion. How to you ensure fresh­ness
- cre­at­ive writ­ing, writ­ing pro­fes­sion­als: teach­ing blog­gers to be cre­at­ive
- writ­ing as a skill
- find­ing your own voice, pro­ject­ing the voice, devel­op­ing voice
- writ­ing in a cre­at­ive fash­ion:
- 5 blog­gers, <50 word posts. learn­ing how to write, suc­cess stor­ies
- SEO/ text cre­at­ive writ­ing
- titles are abso­lutely import­ant
- writing/editing for SEO; subediting

- pod­casts: 10 minutes, http://lipsync.com/ . US$5/m for host­ing
- (cc) music license to middle http://freeplaymusic.com
- vod­casts, pod­casts
- humor: know your audi­ence (NH)

- know your audi­ence: watch your traffic.

- video vs. text: text 10,000   vs. video 50,000 unique views

- ROI: tail-end of a mar­ket­ing strategy
- blog to drive, sales, mar­ket­ing
- driv­ing pro­file
- meas­ur­ing on Return on Blog
- JJ: meas­ur­ing for NPV, express­ing the ROI on a par­tic­u­lar, based on tan­gible out­comes. Feed­back, genu­ine mar­ket research with the con­sumer base and change
CGC media mon­it­or­ing (huge growth area, as exist­ing com­pan­ies are doing to well enough)

- risk man­age­ment: ensur­ing intan­gibles. Busi­ness Con­tinu­ity plan­ning (crisis man­age­ment).
- risk is greater when doing nothing

- off­s­ite blog, cor­por­ate repu­ta­tion man­age­ment — good in a risk situation

- example: blog­ging as a mech­an­ism of a com­plex dis­cus­sions: industry changing

- hired gun: good or not good? (NH says good because he is a hired gun™ )

- Win­dows Live­Writer is good (thanks, DW!)

Slides: Busi­ness and Cor­por­ate Blogging.ppt