Check this interview out on Beet TV with Mike Dunn….Hearst is changing Online Video as we know it!

Went to Podcamp NYC and had a great time.  Talked about all the reasons why a company should blog:  search engine optimization, reach out to new and old clients and create a community, auto PR when bloggers like your product/service and finally blogging as a crisis management tool.

Well last week, one of my clients, Bigelow Tea, used their blog for just this reason, to manage a crisis. 

I felt that a well established blog with loyal readers would be the spring board for keeping the lid on the media and would prevent clients from loosing faith when managing a serious situation.  This still may be so, but what I observed with Bigelow is that the blog was used first as a communication tool.  Their first official statement hit the blog and the press took notice from there.  Statements going forward were posted on the blog and these weren’t corporate speak statements.  These were heartfelt, behind the scenes, I am doing the best I can, statements from the co-President Cindi Bigelow.  You may not have agreeed with her (and many didn’t) but you had to hand it to her, she laid out her dilemma honestly and was responding directly to the blog comments and emails pouring in from the main website.  The fact that Cindi had the blog to communicate and reach out to others on her own terms was what helped Bigelow Tea get through their situation honestly and humanly which, and time will tell about this one, should only bring loyalty from old and new clients!

The second interesting thing about the blog as a crisis management tool was that many didn’t even read what Cindi said, they came to speak their mind based on what they heard in the press (and the press didn’t get the story right half of the time and you would know this if you read the blog entries).  It was the one place where the commentors weren’t censored…the one place where they could go to vent and they knew they were being heard.  A community was created as divided as they were.

So my belief in blogs is deeper than before.  Blogs, in my mind, are not just a “new” media tool or a social networking pastime…this is real stuff that is here to stay.  A forum and a tool whose mere structure is, will and should be the backbone of every web presence for the corporate sector!

Thanks Constantin for including Creative Concepts on the newly updated international PR Blog List!

I have been to a lot of conferences and presented to my share of interested and disinterested individuals so I have the experience to say that Podcamp NYC was a total joy to be a part of!! 

The other conferences I have been to (and I have reviewed them or at least made comments about them on this blog) have been empty in the sense that a bunch of people make themselves out to be the innovators and leaders of new media.  I realized that the others (participants from OMMA to Ad Age among others conferences) were in it to make money or make a name for themselves vs. many at Podcamp NYC who are truly the leaders because of their curiosity, their passion and the fact that many are starting out from ground zero vs. the already successful agencies who are just trying to keep up if they are keeping up at all.  So interesting….so great to be a part of Podcamp!

On the speaker side of the equation, it was equally great to be in a room presenting information about corporate blogging to people who not only cared about it but understood many of the principals we mentioned and then wanted to know more.  The questions were intelligent and nonstop (and thank you to Anil Dash for contributing and adding to our presentation)….what a thrill for Sabine and I to be a part of the great energy at The New Yorker Hotel in NYC.

Here are the promised slides from Creative Concepts’ Podcamp NYC 2007 session on corporate blogging (1 MB pdf file). They’re in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format for those who don’t have or won’t use MS PowerPoint.

Well, Sabine and I are getting excited about attending and speaking at Podcamp NYC.  They are now up to 1100 people attending which is amazing…quite a gathering in NYC for the Saturday before a major holiday (Easter)!!  Michelle, our sales maven, is heading to the networking party tonight, Friday, at Slate…Sabine, our emerging technology maven, and I are heading in tomorrow to hear what we can hear and to speak.

Now what is interesting about our workshop is that in a sea of passionate podcasters (and I hope to learn a lot from them), we are talking about “Blogging for Business!”  We were convinced to do so by John Havens one of the organziers (and great guy by the way!)  We will either have a near empty room or a room overflowing…this is the joy of doing an unconference…no one knows these things and there is no overplanning and everyone attending and planning the event contribute together…it is very cool!

If you are a second life fan, this link will lead you to some workshops that are taking place in real life at The New Yorker Hotel.

I haven’t checked the latest list of workshops but I do know that Greg Verdino will be working a panel on Saturday morning and Reena Jana from BusinessWeek will be speaking as well!  I do believe that Mike Dunn, podcaster extraordinaire, is thrown into the mix too (as long as there is no snow on a mountain somewhere :))

Ok then, see you all there…this is going to be a good time!