AMY GAHRAN: The Right Conversation

Organic Conversations (Pun Intended)

Jonny Hunter, via Flickr

On Friday, June 22, I'll be speaking right here in Boulder, CO at the Organic Summit Leadership Conference -- cosponsored by New Hope Natural Media and the Organic Farming Research Foundation. I'll be speaking on a panel: What makes the organic news?

Like any industry, people in the organic food & product business want to spread the word about their offerings and issues. As a longtime environmental journalist (among other things), I'm very used to talking to people in this field, so I'm looking forward to it. At the very least, the food will be excellent, of course!

My co-panelists are award-winning food and nutrition journalist Carolyn O'Neil and Kristine Kidd, food editor of Bon Appetit magazine.

Most of the people attending this panel will probably be in involved in PR and media relations for the organics industry. That's great, because it seems to me that these folks, in particular, can have a ton of productive fun with online and conversational media.

Here are some things I plan to discuss...

Accounting for Community: Thoughts for the BlogHer Business Summit

                                               

Stig Nygaard, via Flickr (CC license)

"Toto, I don't think we're in Boulder anymore..."

I'm in New York right now, and on Friday afternoon I'll be on a panel at the BlogHer Business Summit that I'm really looking forward to. Here's the official blurb from the conference program:

An RFP for the Measurement Industry

Where is the blog measurement tool that could measure more than "eyeballs," more than "authority" via inbound links, and could begin to approach measuring influence and relevance? [The panelists will] scope out what is, is not and ought to be available.

The panel will also include Edelman PR's Elizabeth Lee and LiveWorld's Jenna Woodul. Jory Des Jardins, one of the BlogHer founders and a gifted blogger in her own right will be moderating.

Gee... No pressure...

Frankly, I've been stressing a bit about this session. For a long time I've felt I was missing something very obvious about this topic. I've been worrying that I'm going to get up in front of an audience of people I respect and look like an idiot. Perhaps I'm about to do just that.

Regardless, something just occurred to me. I'd like to hear what you think about it...

Transparency vs. Payola: Weighing Risks

PayPerPost: Worth the risk?

Over at the Center for Citizen Media blog, I've joined an interesting conversation concerning the thorny issue of payola in online media. See: PayPerPost: A Cancer on the Blogosphere, or Merely Semi-Sleazy? by Dan Gillmor.

Background: The controversial online advertising service PayPerPost attracted considerable blog and media attention after it recently got $3 million in venture funding. In a nutshell, PayPerPost is an automated system where companies can advertise their sites, products, services, or brands through a network of approved bloggers who get paid $2 per qualifying post. That is, bloggers who sign on to PayPerPost agree to write about those advertisers.

PayPerPost reviews and approves those posts, which can be required to be positive. Although PayPerPost urges its bloggers to be "honest," it discourages them from disclosing their relationship with PayPerPost. So, ethically, everyone involved appears to be on thin ice -- but when did ethics ever have much to do with the advertising business?

...Anyway, Dan Gillmor's post on the PayPerPost flap nudged me to consider the issue of payola more closely. Here are a couple of comments I contributed to that discussion...

Capturing Conferences: Expanding on Beth Kanter's Thoughts

Beth Kanter, one of the many great minds I encountered at BlogHer 2006.

Ever since the BlogHer conference in late July, I've been thinking about live blogging and other ways to capture the energy and creativity that often arises at conferences and other gatherings.

Well, as often happens when I don't get around to writing something down, some smart blogger beats me to it. That's just what Beth Kanter did. See her Aug. 25 post, Collaborative Models for Capturing and Sharing Conference Notes at Nonprofit Gatherings.

As a matter of fact, go read her post first. What I'm about to say will make more sense after you read her excellent overview of tools and techniques.

(Really, go read it. I'll wait. It's cool.)

...OK, now that you've read Beth's overview of collaboration tools and strategies that can help capture the value of conferences (and hopefully followed her links to some examples), here's my bigger-picture thought for today:

Conference planners should consider how to capture and extend the value of the conference during the planning process. Because for many people and organizations, what gets captured from a conference is more valuable than the event itself.

READ MORE: Over at my client's blog, Capture the Conversation, I've published a quick checklist of what I think conference planners should start taking into account...

Beyond Blogs: Moleskine Goes Where the Conversation Happens

My Moleskine reporter's notebook -- which is holding up well, despite frequent abuse.

Like many media pros, I'm a die-hard fan of Moleskine notebooks -- especially their small, unlined reporter's notebook (see photo).

Moleskine notebooks aren't fancy. In fact, this brand's reputation hinges almost entirely on quality, and on a vocal, dedicated community of customer evangelists -- such as Merlin Mann of the popular productivity site 43 Folders.

Therefore, when sharply worded complaints about Moleskin's quality and service erupted on the 43 Folders Google Groups forum on Aug. 15, Modo & Modo (manufacturer of Moleskine notebooks) had a pretty big problem.

Apparently, some Moleskine notebooks started falling apart after just a few weeks or months of use. Some owners of these defective notebooks tried contacting Moleskine US, but got no response. Later, it turned out that Moleskin US is not the US distributor for this brand. The official US distributor is Kikkerland Design Inc. But in the meantime, these customers believed Moleskine was ignoring them. Not good.

Clued in by e-mails, Moleskine maker Modo & Modo began checking out the online complaints. On Aug. 30, the company posted a sincere apology on its blog. They offered an explanation of their late response: they're a small company, and in Italy everyone's on vacation in August -- not a great answer, but an honest one. They also offered clear instructions on how owners of defective notebooks could get their problem addressed.

Even smarter, Modo & Modo posted the full text of this statement onto the 43 Folders forum where the complaints arose. It's interesting to note that, despite earlier frustrations aired in that forum, all the responses to the company's apology were positive and supportive.

This story demonstrates the importance of three lessons for all organizations who understand how conversational media can help make or break your reputation...

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE on the Capture the Conversation blog...

Conversational Media Tools at Capture the Conversation

I've recently started blogging for one of my  clients, Room 214. They're an internet marketing firm that offers an intriguing service, Capture the Conversation. This service gets to the heart of why conversational media is so valuable and important. I think the Room 214 people and I can learn a lot from each other.

The Capture the Conversation blog is a good resource for marketing/PR pros and others who want to learn how to make the most of conversational media. My "beat" there will mainly be the tools of conversational media. So when I have tool-focused topics to discuss, I'll post over there. (I'll mention it here, though, with a link). I'll continue to post my think pieces and open questions to this blog. I believe that's a complementary content strategy -- we'll see how it works out.

Over at the Capture the Conversation blog, I just launched into what will be a multi-part discussion of the tools of comment tracking. Today's post is very introductory, but watch for followups. See: Tracking Blog Comments: The Challenge...

Microsoft's conference marketing, part 3

Over the weekend I wrote about a major Microsoft marketing/sponsorship gaffe -- a cheesy, crass, embarrassing commercial that took place on the main stage during the Saturday morning welcome session. If you look over the comments to that post, you'll see I'm not the only one who was cringing.

Then, via Kevin O'Keefe, I learned that Microsoft took a softer, lower-key approach to marketing at Gnomedex, a tech conference held just a few weeks ago and amply sponsored by Microsoft. In a July 3 posting, Gnomedex founder Chris Pirillo praised Microsoft for rewriting the rules of conference sponsorship:

Pirillo wrote: "Microsoft (as this year’s diamond sponsor) did not have any scheduled time on stage. By this action, they have set the bar incredibly high for conferences the world over. No longer need conference coordinators be pressured by pay-for-play politics -- and no longer need top conference sponsors fall victim to the misconception that speaking time is implied."

Given that moment of shining progress, why did Microsoft backslide so suddenly into a heavy-handed, off-target sales pitch?

I suspect there are several reasons...