Marketing

Welcome a new member to the Marcomblog contributors roster - Michael Darragh of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Michael is located in Shanghai, China. So, we now have contributors from four continents - Asia, Europe, Australia and North America.

I became aware of Michael when he recently started a blog at PRblogs.org called Navigator.

Michael is a Digital Influence Strategist and that means we have someone that is quite familiar with social media in Asia, particularly China. To me, this is a terrific opportunity for the students to learn even more about social media in PR and marketing around the world. So, I thank Michael for joining us.

Michael Darragh has stared at computer screens since 1986, and worked in new media since 1996. He joined Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide in 2006 as Digital Influence Strategist, China. Michael is based in Shanghai and has previously lived in Sydney, Guangzhou and Barcelona.

Michael is blogging in the same place the students blog, too. PRblogs.org.

Navigator is about the power of digital influence, with an emphasis on trends and activities in the Asia-Pacific. The blog is intended for professionals, students and anyone with an interest in digital communications.

Thank you, Michael, for coming onboard with Marcomblog. We look forward to your first post, perhaps about the state of social media in China and what types of projects you work on for Ogilvy.

Now, we just need practitioners from Africa, South America and Antarctica.  Well, perhaps we can at least get two out of three on that one.  The Antarctica practitioner, although we have interviewed one in class (I’m not kidding), may be hard to find.

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This July at BlogHer, Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita and I are doing a Business Blogging "Unpanel" on Saturday July 29th.

Here’s the scoop on the session:

This panel isn’t about us. It’s about all of us. Call it an “unpanel.� Call it a “rap session.� What we call it doesn’t matter. What we do, does. And what we are going to do is share our business blogging stories and then build a set of business blogging “best practices� based on our experiences. Everyone is part of the panel, and we’ll just do the best we can to keep up with the brilliance in the room.

Here’s the format. The first half of the session is devoted to case studies. Our goal is eight – we have three committed, so we need  BlogHers who plan to attend the session to step up and volunteer to share yours. How do you do that? Respond to this message (Please respond on the BlogHer site at this link) and tell us “I’m in� and let us know about the blog URL you plan to discuss in July.

During the session you’ll have 5 minutes to tell us the objectives of the blog, what worked, and what didn’t. Giving us the URL in advance lets us all check out the blog so you have to spend less time in exposition. And please, participants, do at least take a look at the blogs volunteered for the session. It will help us all get to the meat, which is creating our best practices deliverable.

Because what’s an unpanel without a collective product [You can see, Susan (who wrote this) really is a socialist at heart.]

The second half of our session is devoted to a group discussion. And we aren’t there just to chat. We want to leave the room with at least the shell of a best practices document –things that work become our best practices, things that didn’t are warning signs. This is the critical piece of this session. Without the deliverable, we’ve had a nice chat. When we create this document, we’ve helped ourselves and others be better business bloggers. Cool, huh.

So, please, if business blogging is your bag, and you are planning to attend this session, consider sharing your story. Yvonne, Toby and Susan can fill the time, but we don’t want to. We want to hear from and talk with you. Way more fun

Here are the case studies already on deck. Add yours in the comments. First come, first served. Five spots left, and we will do the session in the order received on the BlogHer site.

Masi Guy at http://masiguy.blogspot.com/
Know Your Bones at www.knowyourbones.com
Our Fathers Who Art in Heaven at http://murak.blogs.com/
Research from Stephanie Hendrik, a doctoral student from the University of Sweden: Stephanie will present research about when companies do inauthentic things with blogs. Things like fake blogs and fake commenters. Due to ethical considerations, she is keeping the the blogs in the study anonymous, but she is preparing a brief abstract for us which we’ll post here.

Two questions we know we’ll get:
Q. Can I talk about more than one blog?
A. Yes, but you still only have 5 minutes. Use them wisely.

Q. Will you stop taking volunteers after the 5 spots are filled?
A. Nope, keep signing up. People may decide to go to another session, or that they don’t really want to speak. Some people may take less than 5 minutes so we’ll have extra time. Who knows what will happen. Until it happens! So please sign up. We’ll go in order received until the time allotted for case studies runs out.

If you are planning to attend BlogHer, please consider joining us and sharing your blog case studies. Please sign up on the post at the BlogHer site –it is a whole lot easier if all the sign-ups are in one place. Thanks.

(cross posted to Marketing Roadmaps and MarCom Blog)

Tags: blogging, business blogging, BlogHer

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