Yesterday I attended Podcamp Seattle, my first unconference and also the first Podcamp in Seattle. The first ever was held in Boston in 2006. Since then there have been Podcamps on nearly every continent, save Asia. (Apparently, the Antarctic new media community also has yet to come on board.)
For a first-time conference (I can’t keep calling it an unconference without flinching), it appeared to go very smoothly. The event was well organized—especially since it was a first-time conference, run completely by volunteers. Some of the speakers were clearly more focused on self-promotion than others, but then I’m (sometimes overly) sensitive to marketing efforts.
Here I go, digressing…
If I can digress for a second, pushing your brand (or blog) isn’t a great way to market yourself.
Consider an author promoting a book on a talk show. Some authors will mention their book, certainly, but spend most of the time speaking passionately about their ideas. Others will spend most of their time basking in the host’s artificial praise and stuffing the conversation with references to their newest book.
The problem for the latter author is that we consumers have gotten smarter (or more cynical, or simply become overloaded by advertising). We don’t want to be told how great the author is, or to listen to a 10 minute sales pitch—we want to evaluate the ideas ourselves. With every mention of the book, we’re reminded that someone is trying to sell to us.
Now, the first author’s ideas won’t appeal to everyone. But by spending the time sharing knowledge, rather than pushing a book, the author is more likely to find a targeted, loyal audience. It works the same way for self-promotion. Subtlety is key—better to spend your time sharing information.
…but back to the conference.
The first session I attended was called Social Media and PR, presented by Leigh Fatzinger. He talked about the death of traditional advertising agencies. The agencies he believes will survive will be those that can:
- Be more creative.
- Make delivery more effective.
- Target individual consumers (a long tail approach to marketing–in other words, many small campaigns that are targeted to different segments of your audience).
He also mentioned a few considerations for corporate blogs:
- Don’t use the blog for whitepaper-style posts (more marketing than information).
- Don’t use the blog to advertise services or products.
- Allow employee bloggers to be honest (to share opinions of the company, even if they are negative).
- Be real. That is, connect on a personal level with your readers. Blog posts are meant to have a conversational tone, not to be press releases.
- Be consistent. If your blog had regular posts for a while, but hasn’t had a post for six months, visitors might wonder if you’ve gone out of business (or if the company is headed downhill).
At the end, Leigh told a great story (which I will now likely butcher while trying to retell). He likes airplanes, and was out at Sea-Tac airport taking photos when approached by a DHS employee. He was told to leave after some questioning, but managed to get a great photograph of the tower that had been monitoring him before he left. Then he wrote a blog post about his experience.
Well, someone from Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden had set up a Google Alert for SeaTac and saw his blog post. Less than 24 hours after he posted, the woman wrote him, letting him know that he could obtain a great view of the runway from the botanical garden.
Whoa! Great marketing technique (and about as long tail as it gets). Not only might he become a regular visitor to the botanical garden—since he’s a blogger (and also a speaker), perhaps some of his audience will as well. This is the new way to market, to a few interested people at a time.
On to the next session: Videophlow
Videophlow is a service that lets users chat with friends while sharing YouTube videos. The service is currently under development, but you can sign up to be part of the beta now. They expect to release in a month or so, according to Bryan Partington, the designer and presenter. This team also has a photo sharing/chat solution in beta, called Photophlow, that integrates with Flickr.
Personally, I can’t see much use for Photophlow. There’s no doubt that people love sharing photos, but would there be much to chat about? If you were in an online photography group and wanted to discuss the photos as artistic pieces, yes, this would be a great way to do that. If you just want to share field trip photos, or pictures from a party, how much would people really have to say? (I guess it depends on the party.)
Videophlow, however, is a fantastic idea. It would be great for, say, watching election debates and discussing with friends. Or for those office-wide YouTube distractions. Hey Charrrlieee…
You can announce the chat in Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace, so any of your contacts can come to chat as well. One caveat, though: there are no permissions controls, so anyone can control the video (pause, fast forward, throwing tomatoes at the screen). Might want to avoid inviting your prankster friends if you actually want to watch the video.
Online community building
The last session I attended was presented by Leif Hansen of Spark Social Media. Despite having only found out he was presenting the night before, it was an excellent session (maybe my favorite). It was also very well attended—I ended up sitting on the floor of the conference room.
His advice:
- Adding profiles to existing online communities can entice people to become more invested in the community.
- Love. That is, if you genuinely care about your business and customer relationships, you’re on your way to successfully building community around your site.
- Know your audience–what do visitors want to get out of the site? Give the people what they want. He suggested Groundswell, a service from Forrester Research that allows you to see online community usage statistics for different demographics (age, gender, country).
Someone then asked about best practices for an online community. Here are some of the ideas from Leif and others in the session:
- Provide a dashboard where users can see recent activity.
- Make the community a safe place—That means keeping their information safe, but also making sure people feel free to communicate openly.
- Offer niche content (i.e. groups on specific topics).
- Be consistent (the phrase of the day at Podcamp).
- Offer some way for people to connect offline, a face-to-face element.
- Give users a way to invite friends and share with each other.
- Analyze your fan base. Where can you find other people with the same interests? Target these places to bring more people into the community.
- Use contests to get people involved. Reward visitors in some way (say, a fun tech gadget).
- Deliver value outside of the community (Resources, tools, etc.).
Overall, I enjoyed the conference. I’ll definitely go back next year, and since it’s free, I’d recommend that anyone with an interest in new media and the internet attend. Many of the conference sessions were recorded as audio or video—they should be added to the Podcamp Seattle wiki soon, so check them out for yourself! You can also view photos from the event here.
I’d love to hear your impressions of the event. What did you learn? What was missing?
Tags: community building, internet marketing, podcampseattle, social media
