September 2007 Archives

That's what Chris Heuer tells us during the closing session of BlogOrlando.

He makes a great point:

Social Media is tearing down the walls that keep us apart and changing the rules that have kept us from being human inside our companies.

Chris also offers some rules for human organizations:

• Start with the presumption of trust
• Make clear your intentions
• Give people a chance
• Provide power for people’s passions
• “live the life, love the life” (as Jake said earlier)
• Participate in your market’s conversations
• Personal pronouns are OK
• Social Media creates opportunities to be found and to connect
• Trust the conversation

Clarification - to trust the conversation, you have to trust the people. In working with many of my clients, this is one of the first things we do - work to establish trust with their target audiences.

We do this by showcasing their real world, hands-on experience - the credentials that make them a true expert. We also use their experience and credentials to differentiate them from their competition.

There are a lot of people that profess to be experts but when you start drilling down, it turns out they are really just regurgitating what they've heard at a seminar, read in a book, or listened to in a podcast.

It's easy to declare yourself an expert: simply tell everyone you're an expert. It's much harder to maintain expert status if you don't have the experience to back it up.

We've heard from a lot of experts today (the "real" kind) and it's been, as expected, a very educational and worthwhile day. I'm already looking forward to BlogOrlando 2008!

Twitter - it's taken some dings for being nothing more than a mass blast tool to let your friends know every little boring detail of your dailylife; however, it can be a very powerful tool.

Case in point: we got started a little late this morning. After the opening keynote, everyone dispersed into breakout sessions in different rooms and buildings on campus.

Josh used Twitter to let everybody know we'd caught up on time and were only about 5 minutes behind. People in the breakouts notified the session leaders so they knew when to wrap up. We didn't have to wait until everyone reconvenes for the next general session to get back on track.

For conferences, it's a must have. Of course, if it's not a blogging or technology conference, how do you convince your attendees to use it? I'm going to try and figure that out before my PR Crash Course in January.

I'm out of the office all day, attending BlogOrlando 2.0. You can follow the action on Twitter.

Kudos to Josh Hallett for putting together another great unconference. He's built a great following since last year's inaugural event. BlogOrlando 2006 had 90 people registered. This year? Nearly 300 people are expected to attend.

This year, there are four tracks . I'll be following the Technology track most of the day. I love this event because it lets me explore my inner geek. Plus, I always learn new things and pick up a lot of tips and techniques to help my clients grow their businesses.

There's a PR/Communications track (I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of my PR friends and colleagues), a Media track (hmm, maybe I'll pitch a client or two) and a Life/Local track.