Full RSS Feed
Receive
the Free CMSWire NewsletterGuest contributor Blake Landau brings us a summary of the past few days at the BlogWorld 2010 Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Engagement is the word, but as is usually the case, the vision is exceeding the realities.
Some people come to Las Vegas for extravagant buffets with all of the edible arrangements you could ever imagine. And then there are the people who come to Las Vegas every year to indulge in Blog World, the largest social media event of the world — a buffet of content, networking and more than 320 speakers.
This year’s theme moved beyond definitions.
Many speakers this year reinforced the notion that we've established some definitions around customer engagement strategy and collaboration. It's time to act with purpose and intention with "social." Let's step out on this journey with key objectives and execute carefully.
Executing well on a customer engagement strategy is survival of the fittest. And "storytelling" is a key critical aspect of any good customer engagement strategy.
This year's Blog World conference which featured a keynote with television show "Survivor" executive producer of Mark Burnett. Burnett was interviewed by Brian Solis on the topic of storytelling. Here is a behind the scenes clip with Burnett discussing why he's at Blog World this year.
Burnett debuted his new reality show "Sarah Pallin's Alaska" through YouTube at Blog World, a first ever occurrence.
Burnett is famous for building compelling stories with "real" people as the stars of the show. Burnett reminds us that content should be a story woven with customers, employees, partners, vendors and the crowd — this should be quality content — not cheap tricks to turn big audiences fast.
A Brand Pours Stories
Some brands are already weaving stories with customers.
One is Macallan scotch, the only liquor company sponsoring this year's BlogWorld event. Macallan's PR rep from M Booth, Rob Longert, manned the speaker lounge and told me that the scotch brand has a "heritage and history that easily accommodated storytelling."
He said, "if you know anything about scotch drinkers, they celebrate the story and the history behind a brand."
And alcohol companies like Macallan spend a lot of resources on "brand aura." Longert told me, "we are about finding influencers and brand advocates — we want to let them tell the story. It's about the intricacies of why people like the brand — personalizing it, and putting a face with the brand."
More companies are here at Blog World to learn how to improve the connection and communication with their customers, partners, suppliers, vendors and prospects. The truth is most companies just aren't there yet, but a few are starting to clue in on this.
In the bustling exhibit hall featuring more than 50 companies I ran into an old friend Brian Lusk of Southwest Airlines who was managing a very dynamic Southwest Airlines booth.
Southwest was one of the first companies to set up a corporate blog (Nuts About Southwest). It's no surprise four years later Southwest Airlines are leap years ahead of most brands. We remember the Kevin Smith too fat to fly situation and the company's readiness to proactively manage the situation.
Continue reading this article:
Email It
