AMA HotTopic Weblog Event Moves Attendee to Blog Immediately!

Sarah of the Massini Group attended the AMA HotTopic Blog event in Seattle. Sarah has already published her 10 steps for getting on the blog bandwagon! Sarah says she has a personal blog, but didn't send the URL. Sarah, please send the URL :)

[Originally a comment from Toby Bloomberg's weblog]
Attending the AMA blog event was worth the trip. Don't blog, don't know what RSS is? Neither did I. Now I'm a convert. Here are the 10 steps Massini Group plans to take as a result.

1. Will check out (read and subscribe) blog sites.

2. Determine how a blog maps to our marketing objectives. Possibilities:
improve search placement, show that we are market leaders, new channel to reach customers/prospects and drive them to our resource center, establish Massini Group as an authority in our niche, and give campaign manager’s outlet to show expertise.

3. Consider the risks. Biggest one being now we’d have something more to maintain. Choose someone or group of people to write the blog.

4. Set guidelines. Can be as simple as, "Make your mother proud, don’t
lie, write to inform." Thanks Ben.

5. Map the process. Wow will the blog be sustained? Who will do the
updates? How frequently? Who will review? Who will respond to comments? Who will manage a calendar?

6. Brainstorm content topic areas (event promotion, new whitepaper,
marketing news).

7. Determine key words we want associated with Massini Group and look for a domain name that might contain those words. Pick a title that describes what we do and why people would want to visit our site.

8. Build a personal blog, test it out. (DONE!)

9. Build a company blog, populate with enough stuff to start promoting.

10. Begin promoting. Syndicate (RSS, XML feeds). Put link on main site, in resource center. Promote to customers (maybe by letter). Promote blog in Massini Group signatures. Register weblog with weblogs.com and others.

This is a great example of the speed of the web...and one more person joins the blog parade! Bloggers are the friendliest people.