American Marketing Association - AMA - HotTopic Blogging Seminar Weblog

Shout Out For AMA Attendee's Blogs

December 2005, AMA offered the first, in what was to become a coast-to-coast series, on marketing blogs. It was appropriate that the Hot Topic Workshop Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website kicked off in the heart of the blog world - Seattle. During the next 10 months the program was presented in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Atlanta. Over 260 marketers came to learn and network.

Ken Bernhardt, Regents Professor of Marketing, Georgia State University, gave the workshop high praises. "This was a terrific workshop - - informative, cutting edge, and extremely useful. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to really understand what's happening in the marketing communications environment." However, the best reward was that we ("we" as in all of the presenters!) had the opportunity to help and encourage people to explore the uses and benefits of marketing blogs.

At year's anniversary, I wanted to offer a special  "shot out" and say congrats! to the marketers who courageously launched  or tweaked  blogs as a result of the program.  Corporate and personal blogs were created and we even inspired a citizen journalist blog - McChronicles! If I've left out your blog  please let me know.

External Blogs

-Company: Indium Corporation
Participant: Rick Short
Blogs: Dr. Lasky's Blog and Rick Short's Blog

-Company: Microsoft
Participant: Kevin Brody
Blogs: MSDN Student Flash (in the process of relaunch) & Windows Live Team Blog & Seattle Duck (personal)

-Company: Quality Service Marketing
Participant: Sybil Stershic
Blog: Quality Service Marketing Blog

-Company: Sterling International
Participant: Stephanie Cates
Blog: Rescue Bug Blog

-Company: Boston Test Prep
Participant: Ben Carcio
Blog: BTP Blog

-Company: Better Management
Participant: Chas Martin
Blog: Management Speak

-Company: Revolution Communications 
Participant: J. William Seccombe
Blog: Communication Revolutions and All The Buzz About Travel

-Company: Cincom
Participant: Dale Wolfe
Blogs: Simplicity Blog and Context Rules Marketing

-Company:Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry
Participant: Kathy Woolver
Blog: Current

-Company: Versant
Participant: Jason Whitman
Blog: Versant Blog Center

-Company: Symmetricom
Blogs: It's About Time and Perfect Timing

-Company: JWT Specialized Communications
Participant: Sean Mulholland
Blog: JWT Specialized Communications Blog

-Company: Clif Bar
Participant: Stephen Houghton
Blog: Clif Bar Blah Blah Blog

-Company: Zip Realty
Particpant: Myron Lo
Blogs:  Zip Realty Corporate Blog and Real Estate Market Conditions Blog

-Company: Emerson
Participants: Jim Cahill and Deborah Franke
Blog: DeltaVNews

-Company: IBM On Demand
Participant: Sher Taton
Blog: Corporate Blogging (personal) and IBM On Demand Blogs

Internal Blogs 
-Company: Akron-Canton Airport
Participant: Kristie VanAuken

-Company: Emerson
Participants: Jim Cahill and Deborah Franke

Technorati Tags: AMA, Marketing_Blogs, Blogs, American_Marketing_Association

Indium Launches A Corporate Blog

Congrats! to Rick  Short, Director of Communication, Indium. After attending AMA's Blog: Beyond the Website in New York City, Rick launched 3 blogs. One corporate and two personal.

How do you give a company that manufactures solder pastes, fluxes and underfill materials a softer, kinder image? For Rick it was to develope a blog strategy. He sought the help of highly, visible leader in his company, and within the industry, to author a blog.  Visit  Dr. Lasky's Blog and you'll find a man who is passionate about technology, excited about sharing his knowledge and vision.

After reading Dr. Lasky's posts, if I were in the business of buying solder pastes, Indium would be on my short list! Why? If Dr. Lasky is that enthusiatic about his work, I would assume that the firm would be committed to producing a high-quality product. Why? Because passionate people would demand nothing less. 

The blog incorporates some interesting features like a weekly quiz. This week's Dr. Lasky Quiz -  If the probability that it will rain tomorrow is 10% and the probability that it will rain the next two days is 20% and 30% respectively, what is the probability that it will rain at least once in the next three days?

Corporate blogs are being used to give customers, prospects and stakeholders a look into the heart & soul of an organization. BB (before blogs) it was no easy task especially when the product or service wasn't warm and fuzzy. Robert Scoble showed the world that a high tech giant (Microsoft) could be a cuddly teddy bear...well sometimes! Perhaps Dr. Lasky will acheive something similar for Indium.

Rick's other blogs are worth a surf to also. McChronicles (a customer evangelist's (Rick) musings about McDonald's)  and Snowfari (Itica NY's largest winter festival).

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.