American Marketing Association - AMA - HotTopic Blogging Seminar Weblog

An Attendee's Account of the Day - Thanks!

Randal Moss, from the Futuring & Innovation Center of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta blogged the AMA NY conference in terrific style with an eye for summarization.  Check out his comments on the days' speakers here:

http://como.typepad.com/community_mobilization/2005/01/ama_blog_event.html

Thanks Randal!

Dave Williams - 360i - Searching for Blogs - 2:00PM

While not a 'blogger by trade', Dave is phenomenal resource for search & how it plays into the weblog space. 

One of the major issues that we're plagued with in the blog space is the comment spam that's clogging up the blogosphere.  However, thanks to some work on behalf of the search engines, there is now a concerted effort to nix the benefits of comment spamming in all of the major engines.

NewsFactor - Three major search engines have partnered with blog software developers to combat spam that is placed in the comment sections of blogs.

In reality, what the engines are doing is just applying something similar to the commands in the Robots.txt file construct.  SixApart is wholly on board.

Dave's presentation takes an in-depth look at one particular blogger's success with the search engine, namely, Jason Kotke.

Steve Rubel!

Ben, taking a picture of Steve, taking a picture of Ben.  We really do love blogging, and technology!

Steve Rubel - CooperKatz & Company - Blogging's Impact on Marketing - 11:00AM

Before you continue reading, Steve would like you to please observe a moment of silence for the death of Ye Old Media Ecosystem.

[Silence Please!]

Consider this - the people that you are trying to reach through the media ARE now the media (Consumer generated media, open source marketing, Brand Hijacking, etc...)

As a PR guru, it's refreshing to see Steve at the forefront of blog evangelism.

Maytag is blogging.  Did you know this?  They're actually blogging about this new product they have called the Skybox, which is this awesome fridge for men.  Great stuff, great blog DONE BY THE TEAM behind the product.  Passion, exuberance, knowledge, integrity.

Some photos of the NYC Event

A shot of the group from Ben McConnell's camera & Bill Flitter diagraming the finer points of RSS.

Bill Flitter - Pheedo - RSS: The Marketer's Next Big Thing - 10:00AM

Bill's presentation come's at a timely moment, on the heels of Rok's monumental book release on RSS, which Bill and I contributed to.

RSS, or the Right Spam Solution, as Bill calls it could quite easily be considered

What do you need to know in this new 'blog marketing' medium?  The three R's, of course!
Writing
Reading
RSS

Henry Copeland of Blogads.com is Here Blogging

Check out Henry's comments on the AMA Blog Seminar over at the Blogads weblog.

Henry talks about lattice.  Here's a visual.  Akin to 'hyperlinks subverting heirarchy'.  Keen eye!

Ben McConnell - Church of the Customer - Blogging 101 - 9:00AM

Ben is one of the most entertaining speakers I've seen - ever.  The rest of kind of funny, I'm not funny at all, but Ben interjects a great sense of humor into the blog seminar - something we need, as we don't want to take ourselves too seriously here ;)

The Blogging 101 presentation is an imperative here.  Many of the questions that the attendees have come to answer are some of the most fundamental issues that we need to wrestle with before marketers start blogging.  Some of the questions that Ben, and the rest of us are trying to answer during the day:

- Top do's / dont's of blogging - especially in a corporate context
- What IS RSS?
- How do I choose a writer inside my company for the blog?
- How do you contol all of the negative interaction that I hear about?
- How can I determine which bloggers are credible and which aren't?

Blogging 101 covers almost all of the "questions you wanted to ask about blogging but were afraid you wouldn't look like a proper blogger if you asked."  The funny thing is, we as bloggers, and marketers, are still asking and re-asking the fundamental questions about blogging.

Ben highlights a case example from the airline industry that correlates the 'volume of discussion that people are having about you' (WOM marketing) to the corporate revenues.  The more discussion & WOM, the better the revenues.   Simple, but hard to achieve.  Blogs are helping to bridge that gap.

In true blogging 101 fashion, Ben just created a blog for the group using Blogger, in under 2 minutes!

Toby Bloomberg - Bloomberg Marketing - Setting the Blog Stage - 8:30AM

As the uber connected blog steward that she is, Toby  opened the day with level-setting discussion on how blogs are chaning marketing, and how blogs are bring us back in history to the proverbial 'corner grocery store' types of relationships that we're all familiar with. (or, at least we used to be familiary with!)

Aside from Toby's kickoff, the New York seminar is particularly interesting in that there are nearly 100 people here, making it one of the largest AMA HotTopic events ever, or so we've been told.  A nerve has been struck with marketers and they're hot on the heels of the blogging trend.

Last night we were discussing that many of the rules and structures that are growing up around blogging are coming from the marketers.  Guidelines, strategies, best practices for blogging, and a myriad of other 'blogging framework'  initiatives are being led, in large part, by those who seek to use blogs for marketing purposes.

The Second AMA HotTopic Weblog Seminar is Today!

We're here today for the New York HotTopic Blog event!  Stay tuned for posts throughout the day as each speaker roles through.