On Tuesday Ronnie, our marketing director, and I headed up to Manchester to present at the Marketing 2.0 seminar. We talked about the work we do for LG, including the LG Blog and the various social media outreach activities we manage for them. We’d been invited by Paul Fabretti of KMP and though the event was pitched as an introduction to the landscape, we found people attending had a variety of skillsets and knowledge which made for some interesting conversations.
KMP chief Bill Daring kicked off proceedings with an introduction to the digital landscape, which while it may be meat and drink to seasoned digital professionals, taking stock of what’s out there - from MySpace to Flickr to Twitter to Wikipedia - you forget how much of it is is out there. To the uninitiated it can be daunting entering the field for the first time and to me it emphasised that taking it gently and step by step
Neville Hobson followed up next and he gave a highly informative talk on the modern web-savvy consumer, how they distrust company-speak, and the problem with press releases and one-way messaging. The full video of his presentation is well worth watching (and you can also check it out on Slideshare) but I would like to highlight particular his “Eight Rules of Engagement” - all of which are spot-on and well worth keeping at the forefront of your mind when planning a social media campaign:
Neville Hobson - The 8 rules of social media engagement from paul Fabretti on Vimeo.
Bill and Neville’s general overviews quite nicely set up the second half of the seminar and two talks about specific case studies. First Ronnie talked about our work with LG, which included not just setting up blogs for LG in several languages, but also updating them with content and engaging with what other bloggers have been talking about. This was supported with events for bloggers to attend and making sure they get included in reviewing LG’s products, such as the LG Viewty. We both then contribute to a Q&A where I talked about getting tone and approach right are essential parts. Both Paul and Neville have posted about our talk and are well worth checking out for an independent analysis of our work.
Finally Paul himself wrapped up the seminar with further case studies of corporate blogging (in which LG Blog got a mention, thanks Paul!) - including Dell’s Direct2Dell and GM’s FastLane, and showed how just blogging isn’t the end, but the start, and can lead to many more exciting and engaging projects.
It was a really interesting day and our thanks go to Paul and everyone else at KMP for inviting us and making the arrangements, as well as Bill and Neville for two very engaging talks. There is a second Marketing 2.0 seminar in London pencilled in for September 30th, which we’ll be at as well, so if this has interested you then do check it out and come along to chat with us.
