Transparency, passion and lessons learned – all presented in a clear and entertaining fashion. How could you have a better keynote?
Toby Bloomberg is the author of the top-ranked blog Diva Marketing Blog (in the top 2,000 of Technorati), and is a self professed “Atlanta gal who is a Yankee from Boston.” She believes new media, “is a credible marketing strategy – even an industry. It can help you with branding, marketing research and public relations. But the most powerful part is building relationships with customers.” Diva Marketing Blog has literally changed her life.
It all began when she wanted a way to make marketing “not boring” so she began writing in a sassy and pithy style that maintained professional credibility while tossing in fun references to appletinis & pink boas.
To her surprise, days after launching the blog e-mails started coming in from people saying people liked what she had to say. Her website never got comments, but her blog did – this was the first sign that something was different. Weeks after launching the blog, search engines began indexing Diva Marketing Blog where it took seemingly months for Google to find her traditional website – obviously this “blog thing” was a powerful marketing tool.
Toby’s keynote was delightful because she expertly weaved in personal stories and shared her lessons learned. It was simply awe-inspiring to sit back and listen to her experience.
While I was furiously taking notes, typing as fast as my little fingers could, I was unable to capture all of the details of the stories, which are the real juice to her keynote. I was however, able to jot down a few of her lessons learned:
- Social media can be used as a credible marketing strategy that supports branding, public relations, customer service, research and other marketing and business initiatives.
- The heart of social media marketing, and the real power is in establishing relationships. Successful blogging does not occur in a vacuum.
- If the passion about a topic doesn’t exist – the blog will die on the vine.
- People interact with you. You can carry on a conversation on a blog and then take that conversation off-line if you want to pursue it further.
- Search engines and blogs go together.
- Check your blog stats. Create an ego search using key words that include: your blog title, your name, your company name. Consider adding competitors and industry trends.
- Bloggers care. Bloggers are people.
- With the ease of using blogs, podcasts, vlogs, you can’t contraol the message, but you can manage the conversation.
- You can manage user generated media conversations by listening, participating, engaging and caring.
- Social media is built on culture.
- The voice of one turns into the voices of many and changes how a company conducts business.
- Sometimes you have to go the extra mile to ensure your posts are accurate. Credibility builds trust, builds readership which can lead to relationships and community.
- It wasn’t the voice of one blogger who influenced a major research company to change their business practices – it was the community.
- Bloggers take blogger relations very seriously and believe they have a role to play in communication and information dissemination
- Mainstream media is looking at blogs and they may just look at yours.
- Blogging is not a silver bullet.
- Social Media is not like any other marketing strategy
- Do something great and you’ll be cheered.
- The culture is very demanding. Break the trust by being disingenuous and you might harm you brand…and your reputations.
- Social Media Mantra: transparency, authenticity, honesty and passion.
- You have to put something of yourself in this game.
- The rules are still being defined. No one has all the answers or all the questions.
- There is no going back – social media is here to stay.
I can’t wait to see her live in action again soon!
