BlogHer Business '07 Liveblogging: State of the Social Media World

Greetings, fellow BlogHers! Here in NYC we've just finished up a delicious lunch and are settling in for the State of the Social Media World session, led by our fearless founders Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins, and Lisa Stone. I will be liveblogging this session and trying to update it at regular intervals as we go along (keep refreshing for new content).

Elisa: Overview of the session. Let's start with "What is 'social media'"? Social media can encompass so many different things. We were tasked with discussing issues at our tables during lunch, so now Elisa is calling on folks to share.

First case study mentioned by a participant is Dove's Real Beauty campaign, not just their different approach but also advertising during the Superbowl. Next is mention of using SecondLife for business conferences.

Elisa: Any burning questions from this group? Yes, they want to know how you stay ahead of the curve, using a cutting edge technology that people want rather than something so far ahead that no one will use it.

The second table called on brought up BlogHer as a great example of social media, first, and then brought up Twitter. Elisa asked how many participants know what it is and are using it. Many participants raised hands, but then Marc Levin came up to explain Twitter as a good tool for microblogging. Elisa also pointed out that it allows for group chat/discussion.

Lisa: Points out that the BBC is now Twittering their headlines.

The third table called on asks the "burning question" about how you quantitatively evaluate the success of networking. Elisa points out that there's an entire track about metrics on Day Two.

The fourth table called on is a table of mostly non-bloggers wondering how/why to incorporate blogging. Nicole Perry (sp?) from Cosmo Girl magazine talk about their recent online launch, and says her question is now that they have the blog, how do they make it relevant for their audience and bring in the traffic... and once the audience is there, how do they boost the interact (sometimes posts get no comments, writers are becoming competitive about who gets feedback and who doesn't).

Elisa: Is post success measured by number of comments?

Karen Walrond (representing Weblogs, Inc.) says that some posts get comments due to being controversial, but that she's noticing that some posts are forwarded around a lot, for example, but don't actually have a lot of comments. (So it's a great post, but isn't generating lots of comments.) As an example she cites a post about a Japanese Penis Festival that was getting lots of traffic but not a lot of comments (perhaps because people were embarrassed).

Elisa: Did anyone hear an example of social media that they didn't realize was considered social media? No one volunteers an example, which leads Elisa to conclude that we cannot be surprised. ;)

The conversation turns back to Twitter. It's being used by high-profile businesses as well as just random people. Elisa comments that the capability there is probably larger than what the casual user typically utilizes.

Elisa: Tomorrow's break-outs will address how to be part of the social media culture without being perceived as crossing a line, and/or schilling.

Jory is taking over to discuss the history of social media.

Jory: Let's talk about commonalities between various case studies. [The slide depicts events like the launch of Wikipedia, Heather Armstrong's "doocing," Web 2.0, Sun's CEO blogging, etc.] Web 2.0 is about keeping people, making the internet more relevant for people. The chart shows that companies are warming up to having a blogging presence online. GM took on a blog and it turned things around for them so much. It's a great example of people changing their mode of relating to a company and having their perceptions changed.

In 2004 Kryptonite had to recall their locks because someone figured out they could be unlocked with a regular ballpoint pen (and then it was blogged and spread like wildfire).

In 2006 Wal-Mart had their blog which was supposedly written by "regular people" who turned out to be journalists, and WM experienced a huge backlash due to the non-disclosure.

The point is that bloggers are becoming more savvy, more accountable, as time goes on.

Audience question: Where is the line between being a "citizen journalist" vs. a professional?

Amy Gahran: There is no line, journalism is about practices. Anything online, it's common sense to disclose and not try to hide things that are going to come back and haunt you.

Elisa: Do we need a code for bloggers? PR has a code, journalists have a code.

Elisa Bauer: I get asked all the time, what is Web 2.0 and what does that mean. Do you want to address that now?

Jory: I would never dare to try to define it... I'll give my take on it.

Audience question: You have a point on the slide that says "China." Can you talk about that and blogging in other countries in general? How many people here are seeing a significant audience share from other countries?

Jory: Who here is focusing on foreign or non-U.S. connections?

Amy Gahran: We have 25 writers at Poynter and over half of them are from outside the U.S. We have a big international readership.

Another participant comments that she has maybe 30% international readership.

Jen Lemen: I work for Minti (parenting advice) and many of the users are from Australia, and others from elsewhere outside the U.S. as well.

Elisa: Now let's talk about today. This audience is more cutting edge... 65% of you (personally or your companies) have blogs. 70% of executives surveyed say that their companies don't have blogging policies but they feel like they should. A Porter Novelli survey showed that 63% of people started a blog because they felt they "needed to participate." 57% reported not having blogging guidelines; 76% noticed an increase in attention/traffic; 42% noted that at least one post affected their brand or company; 71% are not happy with the level of interaction on their blog(s).

Marc Levin: There was an interesting discussion at SXSW about Lonelygirl15... part of how they generated buzz was talking about it on other blogs. You can't sit back and wait for people to come to you, you have to participate.

Elisa: There will be a track tomorrow about blogger relations that will address this.

Participant comment: People will say they want to "be part of the conversation" by having a blog, but not participate on others' blogs or respond to comments.

Elisa: We're laughing but that's very common.

James Harris: Macy's paired young bloggers with designers in honor of Black History Month and the young bloggers were very empowered, getting to go behind the scenes and blog about it.

Elisa: Who's reading? 24% of Gen Yers read blogs, 12% of Gen Xers, 7% of Young Boomers. Younger people are more likely to read blogs, obviously.

Jory: We're going to talk about buzzwords. Like with Web 2.0, we're talking about something more participatory. Same thing with Open Source, it's more participatory. It's all about reaching people where they want to get their technology. There's RSS, there's mobile access, etc. There's widgets. The key with widgets now is that it's a great way to virally get your content onto other sites, but it's not easily measurable. We'll be talking about what these tools don't measure. How do you know who's clicking over through Ajax or through a widget?

Elisa: There's also marketing and metrics buzzwords. What's the definition of A-list? There is no ONE A-list... it's about who you're hoping to reach. It's very inside baseball. A-list doesn't mean the same things to customers as it might to you.

Ego-feeds are when you're subscribing to being alerted when someone writes/blogs about you or your company/product.

Participant: Well, it's called ego-feed but maybe you're doing it because you want to go participate when your product is being discussed.

Elisa: Google Juice is about search engine optimization, and there will be discussion about that tomorrow, too.

Influence is another word we're talking about a lot, but there's no one good way to measure it.

Long Tail has to do with their being a head of attention, like NYT online, and then it drops pretty drastically and goes out into a long tail of people who have a ton of influence in their own little niche. So they're not going to have a huge sphere of influence, but within their niche they hold sway.

Memes, viral marketing and WOM are all about the same things, but there can be different definitions. People will ask "how do we get buzz?" or "how do I spread the word?" and what they're really asking is "How do I promote this without spending any money?"

Participant: There's nothing up there about carnivals.

Elisa: Yes, that's another traffic-spreading device.

Lisa: Let's talk about Values Buzzwords. The fundamental issue is always how you develop a new relationship with customers. It used to be that you just gave information, and now it's about having a conversation. It's a very different model. It comes down to issues of trust and respect. There is no other way to truly engage today's consumer (without blowing up) unless you have that.

You have to be very clear that your consumers know who your bloggers are and what they're doing---be clear about what they're doing and what they're NOT doing. In addition, it should be very clear about WHY they're doing what they're doing. Like with the Wal-Mart blog, if they'd just been clear that they were being paid, it would've still had readers because it was an excellent blog. The flap was about people feeling duped.

Why does this matter and how does it change our work? The bottom line is that I believe our credibility as brands, no matter what we do, is completely determined by how we appear in the new distributed media model to the consumer. How you appear in Google or on Twitter is more important than what you put on your corporate website today. How, when we're working with people real-time and technology is changing so quickly, do you keep up? I'd like to hear more about what people think is coming.

Jory: With that in mind, we want to hear from you and discuss what people see as the future here.

Elisa Bauer: The NYT recently started publishing permalinks, so people can blog about articles and no one has to register to see them. The Wall Street Journal doesn't do it yet, and that drives me crazy. You have to be a subscriber, which is nuts. From a perspective of trying to get your brands out and trying to monetize pages and build your online profile, how stupid is that? It's one of those things that I see that's happening... more major media companies are going to get it, make it easy for them to become more popular.

Jory: You're talking about not gatewaying the content, but getting people there.

Participant: If I can't permalink back to an article, I don't link it. You want people to talk about you, make it easy.

Yvonne Divito: I'll say things like "I'd be happy to permalink this for you but apparently they don't care about that, so I won't put it in my blog."

Participant: USA Today just made a huge effort to get the whole paper online. WSJ isn't there yet. But if we get too far ahead of our audience, we're going to lose them. Some are getting it, and some aren't.

Participant: One of the trends that striking me is the changing face of learning in organizations. Now with all this information out there, people are taking learning into their own hands; they can go online and learn about Movable Type rather than getting a book or taking a course. I think it's going to change how companies do their training.

Jory: Things get done by referral.

Participant: Last year at a conference, the same people who had no idea what blogging was all had Smart Phones.

Jory: How do you translate things like magazines into a mobile experience?

Jillian from Redbook: We did a lot of experimenting and just launched mobile. We took what seemed to have a lot of emotion and bite and will have to wait and see what people like. Our fiction blogs are very popular, so we're hoping people might enjoy reading that on the train or whatever, that it will lend itself to portability.

Elisa: I'm intrigued by the comment about technology changing the way we learn. I'm curious how it's changing how our brains work.

Sue Thomas: I'm a professor of new media and a blogger. We're working on a notion of transliteracy, which is literacy across ALL media, even back to scratching pictures in the sand and talking around a campfire. It's really divisive to say certain technology is different; we think it's all pretty much the same. Socrates couldn't read or write, he just talked. Transliteracy is about stripping away the domination of fixed-type print. This is a huge cultural shift, and I'm hoping it will help us connect across cultures, languages, continents, etc.

Participant: The exciting part about technology is this unification of content, and spreading it out. The hesitation that I have is that we shouldn't be looking to change what the consumer is doing, but looking at how to work with what they're already doing.

Lisa: Many of the people here are on the front lines with their customers, and you'll be hearing about that during the case studies.

Participant: I was at a conference where the subject of copyright laws came up. You're giving people the right to take your content and remix it, too.

We'll be taking a break now and then moving on to case study labs.

My apologies to anyone I listed as "Participant" because I didn't catch a name! (Come introduce yourself and let me know I missed you and I'll fix it.)

Be sure to check out Jen Lemen's coverage of the case studies we'll be discussing next!