BlogHer is presenting at this session.

Blogging a daily part of life, blogs are mainstream. BloHer – people are spending less time watching TV and reading blogs, instead.

Definstion of a Blogger is changing and Social Media has fundamentally changed the way we communicate.

Why are people “there”? Social Media, which used to be just a set of tools, now have changed how we communicate.

Also, most people in the Blogosphere consider their online friends as real friends. Many BlogHer bloggers blog for their children, to record the story.

If you look at most bloggers that are successful they are “driven” and they feel need to say what they are saying regardless of what they are paid, or not, and they’d write anyway; Heather Gold added, that is why people are interested ( Boing Boing, TechCrunch, Beth Kantor – who I recent met at Emetrics Summit DC ).

The Power to be Heard; The Evolution of Community. We still trust People.

How can you be TrustWorthy?

How you can represent youself as a person and still represent your Brand.

Fleishman Hillard – Blog Relations Case Studies

– Tamiflu case study – a blogger who was also a contending for American Idol, came down with the Flu and was offered TamiFlu and blogged about it. Target person who already had the flu.

– David Beckham RAZR2 Campaign – you need to offer not just the blogger, material, but their readers, too, so they can particapate and voice their opinions.

– Purdue Perfect Portions case study. 1.5 million consumer impressions, 59% of interested bloggers requested coupons, 50% wrote positive reviews. One blogger produced 2 videosinvolving cooking Perfect Portions with 2000 views on YouTube.

My Takeaways – this is another good session suggesting you need to think about bloggers readers, indentifying influential bloggers for a subject first, but thinking about the end goal, all the while.

What criteria do you use to identify influntials?

I came up with an idea of a method by which you identify a community where the blogger is in, then do additional research to find out how influential a blogger/blog are in that community (that might require offline data).

Fleishman Hillard uses Collective Intellect, Radian6, one other tool I can’t recall the name of, and a inhouse tool that rates a keyword against it’s use in an online community.

While writing this post, my thoughts go back to Radian6. I got an email on Sunday, that was very untransparent, not well explained, offering to cleanup free accounts, including mine. No reason or advanced warning was given, though one could guess, the reasons might be tied to new partnerships Radian6 just entered into, which might suggest they no longer wanted or needed blogger feedback …. But they did not explain any if that (the real story, in my opinion).

So, until this week, I had access to Radian6, and while it was a good product, Radian6 didn’t really provide data to me in structured way that could be most useful to a Web Anslyst.

Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the 6 months, I had use of it.

Yet, one thing does bother me about the Radian6 “cleanup” of accounts, and to me, it’s somewhat representative of many Social Media firms, who, while they claim to provide excellent tools, including Radian6, still don’t communicate well, openly, honestly and are not as transparent.

In the case of my “account” and their “cleanup”, Radian6 didn’t explain why they were doing it, if it applied to all of the free trials they set up, or just some of them, or what the criteria was, in order to make those choices. That bothers me.

It means, as far as I can tell, Radian6 failed to practice openness, that they designed their tool to “monitor”.

I’m my case, Radian6 allowed me to use their platform to monitor other people’s conversation, but did not
have time or organizational will, to have a conversation, with me. I see that as an unfortunate oversight, a mistake.

Compete.com made a similar mistake, several months ago, but once they realized it, quickly changed course.

Compete engaged in conversation, and, they listened.

Providers of the new social media platforms and tools, sometimes they fall into talking the talk, without “walking the walk”, they are not transparent about motivations or communications (with Bloggers?). Compete got it right, so far, Radian6, didn’t.

But in Social Media, should not a Social Media platform provider be good communicators too?

It appears not to be the case, all too often, but then, you could say the same thing about Web Analytics providers, and even the WAA, whose Board, I sit on.

And, Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Perhaps the old saying “the first will be last and the last, will be first” applies here, too.

I believe, we (and I include myself here, as a WAA member) who provide the “tools”, who embody “the way”, we need to also practice openness, transparancy AND, in the case of Web Analytics, the ability to “measure” and provide “insight”, that our audiences have the right to expect of us and hold us accountable for.

Enough said, missing the next session while expressing myself on this one.