Last week I moderated the Boston AMA’s blogging panel discussion. I had invited four panelists, all experts on blogging to the discussion.
Dave Austin from Intraware on the west coast had kindly flown out to Massachusetts for the event. He gave a good presentation on his company’s blog, Dave started first, and he also gave a brief overview of blogging.
Greg Brooks from the 3rd West Group. Greg thought authenticity was very important, he said, “Some of the strongest brands are defined by their authenticity rather than their crafted message”.
Tim Buntel, a product manager from Macromedia talked about his company’s use of brands as a way to communicate with their customers. How blogs have circumvented the traditional channels of communication, making it much easier for product builders to talk directly with their customers.
Lastly, Greg Jarboe discussed his work with Southwest Airlines and described how the importance of being about to build relationships with your audience has more to do with how well you work at building those relationships rather than just having a published blog.
The audience were very lively and asked lots and lots of questions. Someone asked about how you restrict people from being too open in a corporate setting. Several panel members thought that you don’t have to open up blogging to everyone in the company, you can set guidelines for your bloggers and lastly people usually have a sense of what they can and cannot say in public, so they will carry that into their publication of a blog.
As I have recently started my own corporate blog at 48hourprint.com, it was good to cover a lot of these issues again. I realize I am still struggling to find the right voice on Color Printing, but the seminar has given me a few ideas, that I hope to enact over the coming months.
