WordSpreadsQuickly.com

I provided an email interview to Beyond Blogging 2006 and, have posted the content below as well:

Since I previously wrote about the research report that Todd’s firm BoldMouth released and did a Podcast with him, I won’t bore you with any other background here - let’s get right to the reponses he gave us to his email interview…
Todd Tweedy, CEO
BoldMouth.com
Blog: Word Spreads Quickly
Q1 - What are the 5 Blogs you can’t live without?
Actually, I spend more time tracking what’s happening in terms of how blog content is distributed by other bloggers as well as how traditional search engines indexed, score, and rank blog content.
Here are a few blogs I follow:
• Channel 9 – great example of how to establish a corporate blogging movement across an enterprise that’s not full of corporate-speak.
• The Working Model – Back in February 2000, Ford Motor Company wanted to give their global workforce of 350,000 employees an Internet-connected computer. That didn’t go as planned for Ford. Today, imagine 60,000 product managers at Microsoft deepening customer relationship and dialoging with customers via blogs. Very interesting discussions on community and the tools that help create it.
• BrainJams – — I attended the January 30, 2006 event in DC and am hooked. The unconference series is all about co-creation and participation. It’s a great example for enterprises to mirror as they build out corporate communication plans using blogs. How an enterprise humanizes content and facilitate contributions from individuals in a community is often overlooked when creating a blog strategy. [editor’s note: no bribes were paid for the plug of my non-profit, but I will buy him a beer for the kind words at the Geek Dinner tonight]
• The Business Soul – This blog hasn’t officially launched but Black Star, the photojournalism, corporate photography and stock photo company, is going to publish a new blog with a focus on “humanity in corporate communications.” I’m definitely going to blog roll this one.
• Naked Conversations - This is Shel Israel’s blog. Shel is the co-author of Naked Conversations — How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. This is a very interactive book so buy two copies if you don’t have one already cause you’ll want to have at least one copy that isn’t filled with scribbles and underlined sections.
Q2 - Tell us a little more about you and your company.
I got my start in marketing via a stint in politics when I was only 5. My Mom would take me out canvassing neighborhoods to get-out-the-vote with my older brother. I caught the political bug and ended up working in the Legislative and Executive branches of government before spending a number of years doing public affairs marketing and grassroots mobilization – before we labeled it word-of-mouth - on the ad agency side of the isle.
My company, BoldMouth, is all about implementing word-of-mouth marketing campaigns that focus on community participation and co-creation in the development and distribution of product and service recommendations. We implement. We provide enterprises with innovative solutions to initiate, facilitate, and measure the impact of campaigns. We work with VP’s and Director’s of Sales and Marketing as well as Product Managers to integrate web presence strategies, search engine optimization, and community frameworks to support new product and service launches. We just finished a campaign for a publisher that resulted in a diet book making the #5 spot on the New York Times Best Seller List.
Q3 - What does Beyond Blogging mean to you? What does it look like?
Blogging is relatively simple. Blogging is just publishing – text, audio, video. A “blog” is just another type of website. And, when we “blog” we are simply publishing content that interests us in some personal or professional way. When we start connecting with other individuals that are publishing content that is interesting to us the possibilities are endless. I believe we’re already starting to see the first wave of what is likely to be “Beyond Blogging” as blog tool providers shift their offerings to include content management and community tool offerings. This shift is very important. I believe we’ll see a community portal model emerge in online communications as tool providers try new methods to address the challenges of scaling. The blog provider that can maintain ‘strong ties” between members across an audience, that was at one time a community, will win BIG.
Q4 - Do you have any sage advice for a communications professional trying to work with a client that wants to Blog? What are the 3 most important things they need to look out for?
I generally get asked three questions when we start working on a blog project:
1. How do we start the conversations?
2. How do we keep the conversations going?
3. How do they measure it?
I propose you start by identifying the “excellence in business strategy” success the enterprise has had whether operations, products/services or customer support. This becomes the message platform. Then build from there based on recognized interests of your audience. Be sure to get “Brand Ambassadors” engaged and, active early on too.
Here are a few more tips:
1. Make it easy to publish and, post comments.
2. Pick relevant category descriptions for structuring your content posts and use stemmed tags that map back to Top Tags on Technorati.com. Don’t forget to claim your blog.
3. Use pingbacks as a content distribution tactic and be sure use the direct URL’s for getting your content crawled quickly.
4. Incorporate permanent backlinks (permalinks) in your blog so that your content has a chance of sustained indexing over time.
5. Use RSS feeds to expand distribution.
Q5 - What’s the one trend in communications that isn’t being picked up on, or understood, by mainstream communicators?
I’m surprised that blogs aren’t viewed as a “viral marketing” mechanisms to support content distribution. I believe blogs are the ultimate “Tell-a-Friend” form. The secret to encouraging “pass-along” behavior is to focus on interest, not acquaintance, to drive distribution of content.
Q6 - What are some of your past Blog posts you would like to highlight for our audience? Why?
I actually blogged a business trip to Argentina in April 2002 and I wish I saved the content somewhere other than just on the service providers system. That ASP, of course, went out of business. Archiving blog content with a reliable third-party is likely to spawn interest in a whole new industry of service providers or perhaps expand the business models of local firms like @BackUp as well as Citrix’s GotoMyPC.com. I wish I secured the domain backupmyblog.com a long time ago! You can still get in on beta test and have your blogged backup for free. Oh, the domain IWishIDidThat.com is still available. Bottom-line, communications professionals need to have their clients archive not only the posts they publish on a blog but also the comments and link pool to the blog.
Q7 - Discuss briefly what you’ll be sharing with our audience at the Beyond Blogging event.
My company just published a study last week on Practices, Perceptions and Ethics in Word-of-Mouth Marketing with Osterman Research that has already been download more than 7,000 times. I’m sure I’ll touch on some of the key findings from the study as well as tips and techniques on how to integrate blogs into corporate communications.

TAGS: Blogging, Beyond Blogging 2006, Todd Tweedy