After another amazing lunch, the general sessions picked back up with a look at Wal-Mart and their Elevenmoms program. Leading the session was John Andrews, former Emerging Media Senior Manager, Wal-Mart.

How do you get a group of moms to help evangelize Wal-Mart? John Andrews, kicked off the program with an overview of the Open Brand model. The common theme is that consumers own your brand, and the sooner you start to think about that the better.

One example he showed was the Kogi taco truck in LA. It's the epitome of a new media brand. Kogi is a start-up though. What about a larger established brand? Look at Nike, they're well known, but how do you energize a community around that brand? With their Nike + program they've done that.

Another major asset of social media is the ability to leverage social insights. The ability to mine the discussions and learn. What does your community really want? What should you build? When they started to develop the Elevenmoms program, they asked, "What should a savings community look like?"

For Wal-Mart they started with a plan, but then forget about it. Social media is very dynamic, so perhaps instead of a calculated plan, have a set of guidelines that help you down the path.

Another core component was to link all their media. However, they try to make their community the center of the traditional media elements.

Participation is also key, get as involved as you can. The large events are great, but sometimes the smaller events provide more value and engagement. It's key though to not only have the marketing folks there, but other members of their team.

Having a network of advocates are also an amazing early warning system for any issues that may flare-up online.

Finally, build a real relationship. This can take many paths, but it's important to be involved, perhaps beyond a standard business relationship.

John then turned it over to two of the moms to answer questions.

Q: What guidelines were given to you by Wal-Mart?

A: Both of the moms said there was no guidelines given to them. The only two rules they had was that any travel or product provided had to be disclosed and that they couldn't be disparaging about Wal-Mart. But to be clear, they wanted criticism, but it needed to be informative.

Q: Has the involvement with Elevenmoms brought you any celebrity or additional traffic to their blogs?

A: The moms said it has, but not in the way they expected. They're not seeing increased traffic, but it has lead to new opportunities. They did joke that their home stores don't even know who they are.

Q: How did they identify and approach the bloggers?

A. Twitter. They looked for keywords around frugality and savings. That helped them quickly identify who the leaders in the space though. They did this for three months, then started building relationships. They didn't look at the existing blogs or traffic from them.

Q: How are you identified as a part of the program on your blog?

A: There is a badge that most of them have their blog. It wasn't something that Wal-Mart did, the moms asked for it. On the other side, there is an aggregation site that collects all their content.

Q: How important is the aggregation?

A: John felt it wasn't that important. While they do try to send traffic to the mom's blogs, but it's not about traffic in that sense.

Q: Have you provided any training to the moms about transparency or how to use the social media tools?

A: None. All the moms selected had established blogs or Twitter profiles. They simply asked them to keep doing what they had been doing.