Leave it to Ted Wright at Fizz to always throw an interesting party at a WOMMA event. Last night Ted brought the Veev to Setai on South Beach.

The last Ted event I went to was for Absinthe at WOMMA New Orleans.

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After a great day one, and a very 'Miami' reception last night, day two kicked off with a keynote from Bob Pearson, VP of Communities and Conversations, Dell.

The Dell Hell/Turnaround story is often cited at events and this one has been no exception. Bob likes to think that Dell has just finished Chapter 1. Of course in that chapter there were some things that Dell did wrong, but they've made some significant strides to fix things.

A few key points: First, obviously, we're in the most significant period of change online.

Second, the number of conversation and data online is growing exponentially.

Third, customers want to speak with us in their language. English only reaches 1/3 of the world on a good day

Fourth, new countries have formed that are not being treated with the full respect they deserve. If you look at data, if MySpace was a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world.

Fifth, watch out for the content pushers. They want to create stuff and them dump it. People are looking for conversations and relevance.

Leaders will enter and become relevant in conversations every day in every language all around the world about their company and product.

Six, your new home page is Google. The content and experience is being driven by the customer. What are they defining about you?

Seventh, if you build it they may not come. The traffic that matters is not about you. The search action is not brands, it's broader topics.

Eighth, less than 1% of a person's time online is spent buying product. The majority of the people visiting your site are looking for something else, what are you providing them?

What were Dell's key learnings?

1. The most important thing we do is help customers with their technology problems. Dell has created blog response/support teams that go out and help customers with their problems. Only later did they launch their own blog.

2. Blogging is global, blogging multi-lingual, blogging is a community of passion, blogging is not one blog.

3. Would you rather do a focus group with 10 people or listen to 100,000 people debate ideas for a few months ad ask them questions through the process? This lead to Idea Storm. Idea Storm has generated 12,000 ideas, 120 of which are in action externally.

4. Customers are partners. Dell recently launched ReGeneration, a blog about their customers. Customers are driving it.

5. Communities are more powerful than individuals, communities want to help each other improve. Whatever we can do to empower our customers and communities, benefits everyone.

6. The online experience at work should be simulate to the experience at home. At Dell they gave all their employees complete access to the web, how many large companies do that?

7. Join your customers communities and become part of the solution. Think direct to customer Q&A. They participate in forums like Yahoo Answers.

8. You can see in real time whether or not you're relevant to the conversation. Twitter is great for this.

You begin to ask, if you are doing all of this, why do you need to use something like a press release?

9. If you are dealing with an issue, be truthful, transparent and diligent in updating your customers.

10. Your customers are people, not lines of business. Yes we know that, but what do your customers do? What does your customer do, when they're not your customer....i.e. their personal lives. How can you engage

11. Measurement requires thinking outside the box. Things like awareness and activities are easy to measure, but what really matters are conversations and communities.

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Immediately after the opening keynote, Jeffrey Graham from the New York Times presented a case study on how the NYTimes is researching how word of mouth impacts advertising.

Jeffrey disagreed with Joesph, he thinks that WOM and traditional marketing can co-exist, that is that traditional advertising is not going away.

Jeffrey has a new title for his presentation: WOM: Marketing's Butt Crack. Good laugh.

Next up was a quick game to get things started.

First question: What are the more commonly used marketing objectives? A: Branding/Awareness B: Direct Response C: Trial Response

Second question: What variables are used most commonly in planning marketing? A: Demographics B: Contextual Relevance C: Cost

Third question: What are the most common measures of marketing effectiveness? A: Direct B: Response Branding

Fourth question: What is the most influential contact point? A: Word of Mouth

There is a big disconnect, marketers know that WOM is important, but the investment, planning and measurement still skews toward traditional media.

What are the myths around WOM?
- You can't influence it.
- You can't buy it in scale.
- You can't integrate it.
- You can't measure it.

All this results in WOM getting a very small portion of the marketing budget, hence the butt crack:

All marketing should be word of mouth, but mass communications can still influence/start. Advertising can drive brand advocacy.

Start thinking about putting word of mouth at the center of media planning.

Media planning for dummies:
- Determine the objectives and targets
- Select media channels
- Develop a short list
- Measure results

Old Way: Demographics, Psychographics, Buying Behavior. New Way: Looking at the level of conversations about brands. Why are people talking? Why not?

Old Way: Channels. New Way: Conversations by technology category.

Old Way: The Short List. New Way: Think about quality and influence of content, what is starting conversation?

The NYTimes tracks what brands their readers are talking about....wouldn't a brand want to be in front of an audience that is talking about them?

Old Way: Measurement, Clicks, Impressions. New Way: WOM.

The Holy Grail has always been directly linking marketing to sales. It's called a Holy Grail for a reason, it's difficult to find. Marketers come up with proxies to link sales to marketing.

WOM also forces us to redefine our markets, since it can easily go global via the technology channels available.

Since WOM is a key motivator, shouldn't we link WOM with marketing? That is, what level of conversation is generated by advertising? Should WOM be the ROI measure for advertising?

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WOMM-U kicked off in Miami, FL yesterday with an opening keynote by Joseph Jaffe, author of Join the Conversation.

One of Joe's basic premises is that everything can be a conversation starter. If a book or a business card can be a conversation started, why can't a brand? However, conversation and community are much bigger than a series of tactical strategies.

What's more important impressions or relationships? What brands realize now is that a single bad relationship can have a dramatic impact, i.e. Dell Hell.

The Cluetrain said that markets are conversation, Joe thinks that marketing can be a conversation. If we as an industry don't participate, we'll be left behind.

Joe jokingly said, "God gave us two ears and one mouth, use it"

Step 1, listen. It's unacceptable that often a marketing department doesn't know what's going on. Of course part of listening is hearing and understanding.

Step 2 is response, once you listen and hear you need be responsive. People expect a response.

Step 3 is join, but more importantly, be invited to join. Brands aren't as cool and sexy as they think they are. When brands built islands on Second Life the realized that nobody wanted to come. Brands have to earn their place in the party.

Step 4, catalyze. Brands have the budget, staff and resources to help things along. Find the influencers and help them.

Joe showed some graphs of Twitter conversations related to the Oovoo brand conversation compared

Word of mouth is not bought, it is not sponsored, it is earned. At this point you can get to...

Step 5, start a conversation. You can't do this, unless you've done the first four steps.

So what shouldn't you do?

Don't fake it. Don't manipulate the conversation. Don't control the conversation. Don't dominate the conversation...we (brands) like to talk don't we?

Lastly, avoiding the conversation. Brands are very good at this. Some just don't care.

Are you in the campaign or the commitment business? Are you building relationships that will build and profit over time, or just a quick impression?

Brands need to protect and nurture the new non-traditional programs since they're helping build relationships. How much are you spending on experimentation? Marketing should be storm-chasers, delving into new territories.

Joe believes that corporations will have conversation departments by 2012. Customer service will be a major brand differentiator.

Brands will be redefined based upon on they relate and interact with their communities/customers.

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I'm over there......I'm back in live-blogging mode. This time from WOMM-U in Miami, FL. You can follow all the action here and of course photos.

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I'm very sad that I'll be missing NewComm Forum this year. It's one of the events I try to go to every year. The event is always full of good friends and good content. Unfortunately I have two other speaking engagements this week so I won't be there. However, a few Voce folks will be in the house along with some clients.

I'll be watching Flickr for photos to remind me what I'm missing.

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Wow, I can't believe I'm actually posting about BlogOrlando 2008, but then again it's almost April. Quite a few friends have asked, "Are you doing BlogOrlando again this year?" Yes. At least as of now I am :-)

Back in 2006 when I planned the first event, you may remember that the original concept for BlogOrlando was a bit different than the actual event:

The original concept/title for this event was: Josh is Tired of Traveling Outside of Orlando so Everybody Come Here Con or JTTOOECH-Con. I wanted to get some friends to the area to meet, but more importantly spend some down-time at the theme parks with their families.

That private gathering of friends soon expanded to a public event that eventually became the first edition of BlogOrlando. Then things expanded even more with the 2007 event with almost 300 people taking part.

For 2008 we're blending the old with the new. BlogOrlando will once again be held on a Friday in late September. The main event cost (FREE) and format will not change, and perhaps expand, but there is a twist.

Reaching back to the original concept, BlogOrlando will now feature a private invite-only event on Wednesday. Just an intimate gathering of colleagues, clients, industry leaders, etc. Perhaps a limit of 30-40 folks. The topics will focus more on things like future trends, etc. I dare say Davos-like. The catch is, if you're invited to the Wednesday event, you are required to lead a session at the Friday event.

Here is a tentative schedule:

Wednesday:
- Invite-Only Event

- Special Event/Fun Thing at Orlando Theme Park for Session Leaders

Thursday
- Special Event/Fun Thing at Orlando Theme Park for Session Leaders
- Official BlogOrlando Reception

Friday
- Main Event
- Friday Night Reception

Saturday
- BlogOrlando Day at Orlando Theme Park

More thoughts soon.....

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Some of my favorite shots from this morning at Future of Web Apps - Miami. First is the venue....amazing space.

Next, it's Kathy Sierra on stage. There are 300+ people in audience, but you can't see them.

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A number of SoCon 08 attendees have found they 'met' a new friend at the event this past weekend. It seems that Jack Scherer of The Sales Group (sorry no link for you), subscribed all the attendees to his sales newsletter. Nice.

Jack, in your e-mail to me you said we recently 'met'. I'm really sorry, I don't remember meeting you. Of course it could be my bad....I did meet a bunch of new people at SoCon08 and sometimes I forget names. So....if you could refresh my memory about when we 'met' and 'talked':

1. What did we talk about?

2. During our 'meeting' what did I say that lead you to believe that I'd be interested in receiving your sales newsletter? I mean I don't remember saying, "Hey, if you have some great spam on sleazy sales tactics, I'd love to read it."

Thanks in advance for refreshing my memory.

Of course there is another explanation. We never met, and your initial sales pitch to me is based upon a lie. Great way to get new business :-)

Update: A few minutes later and a Google search for "Jack Scherer" shows this. Um...wow.

Update 2: On April 29th I received the following e-mail from Jack:

Josh,
I am responding to your blog listed on my website (www.salestalent.com) on 2/14/08.

1) I met you after your presentation at the SoCon08 at Kennesaw. We spoke about e-marketing and its application to the recruiting industry. My wife was with me and our conversation lasted about 90 seconds.
2) I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium and was introduced by a friend and a client. After that introduction, I raised my hand to speak and I mentioned that I was interested in meeting people during the conference who had recruiting techniques that were passive in their approach. I mentioned that we were in the sales recruiting and sales training business and that we were interested in other techniques for recruiting candidates, other than using Monster and Careerbuilder. I also said that we publish a monthly newsletter, Driving Profit, which I emailed to the database from the SoCon08 list.
3) As a result of my presentation, I met some very interesting people. One was an attorney who then visited us in our office. I spent two hours with him, giving him marketing ideas to help him launch his new business. There was NO fee for my service.
4) I am not a liar. Quite to the contrary. Consider the following…
a. Elected to the parish council of my church for 3 years
b. Director of a Career Ministry for the last 7 years that helps people network through our church. This ministry has helped many people in their quest to network and refine their job-seeking skills
c. I have provided numerous sales and marketing seminars for the following colleges and associations, as well as many businesses:
- University of Georgia
- Georgia Tech
- Kennesaw State University
- Furman University
- National Association of Women Business Owners
- SHRM (Society of Human Resource Mangers)
- GAPS (Georgia Association of Personnel Services)
- Georgia Society of CPAs
- TAG (Technology Association of Georgia)
d. We have received excellent reviews from these associations and organizations. For specific comments, please visit our website at www.salestalent.com
e. The newsletter that we publish was the driver for my new book “21 Laws of Sales Success” which will be published this year.

In conclusion, I do not feel that your blog is a fair portrayal of Jack Scherer and The Sales Group. I would appreciate it if you would remove this blog by April 30th. It creates a negative image of The Sales Group which has earned a fine reputation during the last 17 years in business.

I responded to Jack that I don't remember talking to him, but what concerned me was that a number of people received similar e-mails/pitches. I also said that I don't remove blog posts, but that I would be willing to post his response, which I have.

I think overall, the larger issue at hand is that he doesn't seem to feel that e-mailing all the attendees was a bad thing. I (as well as other commenters) disagree.

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The first slide I showed in my mid-day recap at SoCon 08 was this photo. This was shortly after 8:00 am on Saturday, about 20 minutes before the event kicked off.

The point? At the beginning of the day, we're all equals. There are no special seats for different classes of people. We can all learn from each other.

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Tomorrow at SoCon08 I'll be leading a breakout on photography and Flickr. What are your favorite things/tips about Flickr? Share them in the comments so I can work them in :-)

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I head out later today for a quick trip to St. Petersburg beach...yeah it's rough, but it is work related. After that stop, I'm off to Atlanta for SoCon 08.

This is the second year for the event so it will be interesting to see the changes/expansion. I'm helping out in a number of ways.

In the morning I'll be providing a quick wrap-up of the discussions so far. In the afternoon I'll be leading two sessions. The first is a general Social Media Overview and the second is on Photography and Flickr. I'm almost to 15,000 photos on Flickr, so the plan is to upload the 15,000 shot during that session :-)

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Now that Shop.org has wrapped up in Orlando I'm on my way to Savannah for BlogSavannah. I have the honor of leading the opening discussion. I had a great time at last year's event...and always love visiting Savannah. (Photo from BlogSavannah 07)

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The second keynote of the morning featured Andy Nulman, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Airborne Mobile. To say Andy is enthusiastic would be an understatement. Unlike many speakers, Andy asked everybody to turn their cellphones on and up. His company is in the mobile content delivery business, a ringing cellphone is money in his pocket.

Mobile devices are everywhere, they've become a third appendage. Couple this with people's passion for shopping and you have powerful mix...but how do you use it?

The fear, from consumers, was that mobile marketing would be disruptive. If it was, the mobile marketing business would be dead.

Mobile marketing is at its core, 1 to 1 marketing. It's about building a stronger relationship. You need to allow people to opt-in, but this should not lead to opt-in overload. You want to be perceived as a dear friend....not a nudge. What would you whisper to them? What can you tell them that will make love your more?

NOW is the word and the acronym that Andy's been thinking about.

Near-by, customers need to be in your radius, close, local
Only, there has to be a limit
Wow, make a compelling offer

The power is getting the person when they're ready to buy. The basic building block is the text message (SMS).

Andy provided five things you can do NOW.

1 The NOW Pssst: Limited time offers, but it needs to be engaging and special. Target people near your location.

2 The Secret Sale: Things like in-store sales, or special offers. Texting to a special number will provide them a message/discount/coupon. It's completely opt-in. No paper costs.

3 The In-Store Experience: Give the customer control of what they want. Give them additional information, the backstory on products.

It should be noted that text messages have to be short, so the message is message, no marketing speak.

4 Woot! Like Countdown: Send limited offers to opt-in customers. The idea is similar to Woot!

5 Mini WAP Sites: Basic mobile web sites that provide information about a store.

What are the benefits? Once again an acronym HUMID.

Hyperlocal - Operate things at a local level. Give local managers the tools and power.
Uurgent - Text messages hit, e-mail sit. People respond to text messages quicker than other forms of communication.
Measureable - Mobile is a data-crunchers dream.
Immediate - Promote cold, fast, hard sales
Dynamic - Take action when you need to. Empty store? Do something.

Shoppers love discovery, talking, bargains and recognition. Mobile delivery can address all of these.

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Day two of the Strategy & Innovation Forum kicked off with a general session by FAO Schwarz CEO Ed Schmults. Ed talked about the challenge of expanding their reach, while protecting their brand.

FAO has been around since 1862. There were two recent bankruptcies in 2002 and 2003. However their direct-to-consumer business is growing. Their retail locations are in New York City and Las Vegas. With their brand equity they are looking to expand their private label toys.

FAO has some brand perception issues. They're perceived as expensive. The store is sometimes seen as a museum or a tourist site. Other issues: Net relevant to today's kids, it's all about the New York store, just for the holidays.

The plan was to repurpose the brand. This started with the merchandising strategy. They wanted to target items that had: Quality, Design Integrity, Orginality, Health/Safety.

With this change they removed hundreds or brands and vendors. Shortly afterward same-store sales rose 20%. Other than Thomas the Tank engine, FAO did not carry a single recalled toy. That's part of their focus, safety and quality.

Their product mix is very selective. There are more private label products and exclusives. The brand repositioning has allowed FAO Schwarz to stand out among children's retailers once again. This change has led Hollywood to their door. Movie studios look to FAO for exclusives for movie-related toys (think Charlotte's Web, Harry Potter, etc).

Their research has shown that FAO is strongly associated with quality. They also had a very high net-promoter score. FAQ has brand recognition similar to large global luxury brands. There is also high affinity within children.

Research showed that FAO is seen as the expert in child development. At first it's kind of scary, but now they're looking to really embrace that. FAO is working with an advisory board to help build that development arm. Ed was sure to mention that their advisory board was a real board of experts, and not a pretend board like some others.

The key questions are: How do they appropriately participate in the parenting community? Who is our audience? Women are a key customer segment. "Women don't just buy brands, they join them?"

Ed noted that they passed on WebKinz. They had a first look at the product, but they felt the quality of the plush was not that great. But that's not what the toy was meant to be. With that

FAO is leveraging their brand by working consignment deals. Vendors pay for the build-out, repay staff costs and FAO only pays for inventory sold. Ed noted that he has brands lined up for these deals. For FAO it's great, they can constantly update/upgrade their stores with no capital outlay.

Recent external capital investments did not focus on IT or infrastructure. Moving forward, one of the key focusses is updating the infrastructure.

With the brand repositioned, FAO is building new revenue channels. They include clothing, health & wellness as well as publishing.

Looking beyond the storefront (Catalogue and Internet) there are things they need to improve on. Their site was boring and not up to date and it doesn't match the excitement of he store experience. They're looking to replicate the in-store experience as much as they can.

Retail expansion has been spearheaded by their Macy's in-store presence. The Chicago Macy's story is performing way beyond expectations.

The next phase is licensing. They're working to license the FAO name to media properties, etc. Internally they're developing a brand book. The brand books sets internal and external expectations.

For Ed, one of the things that drew him to FAO was the ownership. They're owned by a hedge fund. Ed asked the audience, "How many of you are owned by private equity firms?" A few hands went up....Ed's response, "Just you wait, it's coming."

Ed described the relationship he has with the owners, it's not unlike a traditional board. There is a need for constant communication. You need to know are they investors or operators? Investors are starting to think like brands. They want to be seen as innovators.

However, owners will always look to extract brand value. You need to watch this since it can lead you astray.

The key challenges of working with owners:
- Want it all, want it now
- Push for every opportunity
- Challenge convention
- Uncomfortable pressure
- How much do you shield your team?
- Must be comfortable working with senior people
- Expectations of success
- Fear

Lessons learned:
- Great brands are much more rugged than most people think.
- FAO's key asset is its brand. We need to honor our heritage, but keep relevant.
- Chart a path that has a chance to succeed.
- Know your customer.
- All innovation must pass the brand filter.
- Private equity ownership has been a huge plus for FAO Schwarz.

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There are not many retailers that have not heard of the long tail (if not go check out Chris Andersen's book). The final breakout session of the day featured Jack Jia, CEO, Baynote and Brian Elliott, President and CEO, Alibris discussing how the long tail applies to online sales.

Jack Jia from Baynote was first to speak. Jack defined the major problem as being poor search and navigation, 83% of leads to a site will abandon in the process. Sure you're driving people to your site, but are they conversions? In measuring loss, they found that 95% of visitors will give a site 3 clicks before abandoning. Compare this to most commerce sites which require 6 clicks to complete a sale (from inbound link to sale).

Enter the long-tail dream. Is it better to sell many of 1 or 1 or many? In Jack's words it's tail or torso. In order to benefit from the long tail you need to expand your inventory. Here's the problem, when you increase you inventory, you also increase you chances of users getting lost.

One way to help users navigate sites is the wisdom of crowds. The other concept is emergent behavior. Rather than relying upon what somebody 'tells' you what they do, watch what they actually do. Track usage patterns and learn from them. Recommendation technology is based upon these tools.

Jack showed an example using US Appliance, how they make recommendations based upon browsing habits of other users. Community involvement also helps bring relevance to keyword searches.

A side benefit of the long tail is that long tail products have a higher margin.

Jack then sat down to talk with Brian Elliott of Alibris. Jack mentioned that Brian and Alibris stumbled into the long tail way before it was fashionable. Alibris currently sells 75 million SKUs, 15x what Amazon sells.

Brian talked a bit about Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice. People are sometimes are paralyzed by choice. How do you balance offering more (long tail) without scaring it off (paradox of choice).

At Alibris they do have a number of options for single items, but they allow other customers to rank/rate and this helps other customers. They're also constantly refining their site based upon customer testing.

Alibris built their own recommendation engine. The looked to their vendors for data. Many of their vendors have a wealth of information about their products. The challenge is to hook into that data. The second factor the look for is demand. A high demand product doesn't always make a good recommendation.

Jack asked Brian about some of their SEO/SEM tactics. Brian stressed that the keyword strategies need to appeal to the machine (i.e. the spiders) as well as the consumer.

So much of the recommendation model looks at user behavior around purchases, but what about the non-purchaser? How can you take the data from those sessions and do something with it? That's the next step.

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The afternoon at the Strategy & Information Forum featured two concurrent tracks. I attended the panel focussed on monetizing Web 2.0. On the panel were: Brett Hurt - Founder and CEO Bazaarvoice, Paul Martino - CEO Aggregate Knowledge, Joe Chung - CEO Allurent, Jim Calhoun - CEO Popular Media and Steve Papa CEO Endeca.

There were four speakers, a moderator and 45 minutes....it made for a lightning-round session. Brett introduced the topic by asking the audience how many of them had integrated user-generated content into their sites. A large portion of the audience had. Brett compared that to a few years ago when only five of the major retail brands had dabbled in UGC.

People can find the content they want, Google is becoming more of a brand tool than ever. Of course the CMO wants to know, 'How does this drive sales?'

1. Give you customers a voice
2. Maximize their influence by integrating UGC throughout the brand experience
3. Turn a single voice into a chorus

Integration drives impact. You need to integrate the tools on your site to get people to use them. At PETCO, the initial search filter is now customer rating.

Next up was Paul Martino from Aggregate Knowledge. Their focus is discovery of UGC in non-traditional way. How can you turn people that comment on your products into a sales force? Another focus is interest-based navigation. Driving people through your site based upon user recommendations.

Allow your customers to share their retail experiences within their social networks. However, don't look at the Facebook Beacon model.

Steve Papa with Endeca addressed information visibility. Retailers have millions of SKUs and other bits of information that get buried. In the physical world retailers organize their stores. In the online world it's not so easy.

Now layer upon this UGC. How do you organize this content in relation to the products? You need to make the UGC visible. Steve revisited PETCO. User generated reviews are becoming the primary navigation method for users. Allow the customers to organize the store.

Steve stressed that we're in the first innings of this UGC game and you need to be able to adapt, listening to your customers can help with that.

Next to speak was Jim Calhoun with Popular Media. Jim did a quick review of how the landscape has changed over the past few years. What we're seeing is a new set of tools that go beyond traditional behavioral targeting. Targeting that is based upon social networks is way more powerful. As botched and as painful Beacon was, it's the future. Of course the execution needs to be better.

You need to know what percentage of your customer base is participating in online social networks (i.e. MySpace, Facebook). You need to understand how to market your product now how you want, but how the customer wants.

Jim thinks of it as user-distributed content. It provides: Great leads, great customers, high conversion rates, etc.

The final panelist was Joe Chung with Allurent. Joe talked about redefining the shopping experience and perhaps the notion of social commerce. The goal is to move beyond shopping systems built by geeks for geeks. Until now, people would shop in one window or tab and the participate in social networks in the other. Why not a crossover?

User experience can be monetized in the sense that it improves the usability of the site. Make things easier to use. Joe reference a case study where they redesigned the check-out process for a client and drove a 24% increase in sales.

Another concept that Joe showed was widget-based shopping. The ability to browse, select and check-out all within the browser window of another site.

The goal is move shopping and social interaction closer together. Much of this involves taking the shopping experience out of the traditional environment.

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The second keynote of the day featured Bob Myers, SVP QVC.com and Direct Response Marketing, QVC.com. Bob's talked focussed on the multi-media aspects of QVC's operations, specifically how they integrate the web and broadcast.

QVC is the second most profitable network, this includes the majors. For Bob, advertising and marketing is somewhat interesting, since they run a network. However, they do very little traditional advertising. They have always relied upon word of mouth. They sell stuff via product demonstrations on air.

Now some stats. They reach 90,000,000 home, handled 179,000,000 calls, 341 calls per minute, 3.5 items shipped per second. It's some serious velocity. On the web the numbers are there as well. 200,000,000 page views in their online community, 400,000 online customer reviews.

Their old web site was a very good transactional site, so why change it? They have a social shopping experience on air, why not online?

The company brand experience are the 3 E's: Enrich, Entertain, Engage....they applied these online. The first step was integration of video on the web. Customers want to see their favorite show or host online. It's about providing the content when and where the customer wants it.

A major initiative is the 'Item on Air'. It shows the web user the item that is currently being sold. They can also watch the webstream of the video. The inventory numbers are updated every six seconds, both on the air and on the web. There is video all over the site.

Their program guide was also upgraded in the web re-design. Video is included on the program guide, so instead of a paragraph they can watch an actual preview.

'Items Recently on Air' allows customers to view things they may have missed on their favorite shows. From a technical standpoint it's difficult. It's about media asset management. Bob said that video and media asset management will be your next new headache.

The next major initiative for QVC was the social shopping community. It starts with things like interactive polls. They embed community on every page of their site. QVC has 24 full-time internet sales managers. They interact with online communities. Many sections of the site feature host blogs, forums, responses, etc.

An innovative feature is their Model's Closet. This section of the site allows broadcast viewers to review products not currently featured.

The important thing to remember is that what drives them is not an online commerce strategy, it's a company-wide strategy. Much of what they're featuring online is driven by their broadcast product.

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The 2008 Strategy & Information Forum kicked off Wednesday morning with a keynote by Andy Sernovitz. Andy is known as the WOMM guy, that's Word of Mouth Marketing. Andy's job as the opening keynote was to set the stage for the next two days, so of course the topics were Web 2.0, CGM, and WOMM.

Andy started off his talk with some examples of great, simple WOM. It's the little things that make all the difference. He talked about Red Envelope and how with great product presentation they turn the conversation to their brand.

There has been a evolution in the marketing business, ads to affiliate to search to WOM. With traditional advertising you pay up front, need to monitor the program and then measure results. With affiliate marketing you only pay for success, but it sometimes doesn't scale well. With search you can reach millions for a very low cost, but there is still overhead and management. With WOM, the work is done by the customer, usually at no cost.

The secret to increasing ROI is to get other people to spread your ads for free.

One of the things that lead to Amazon's early success was the affiliate program. They made it really easy for people to run their ads...and yes the affiliate program is advertising. When the first blogging widgets were created, Amazon was there. This enabled them to reach a whole new audience of advertisers.

With traditional advertising, you run it and it's done. That's the way traditional banners. People never save banners. With WOM it can go on and on. With good WOM the true test is will people keep doing it without paying for it. If a blogger picks up a WOM campaign, that blog post will live forever and chances are the reader impressions are a bit more qualified than a traditional banner.

Andy showed the popular Will it Blend campaign. You have millions of people watching an ad that's over a minute long. Then consumers pass this along.

There are three tenets of WOM economics:
- Starts Cheap
- Gets Cheaper
- Builds Assets

WOM is also recession proof. Happy customers are the best ads. The motivation is not money or an affiliate link, it's love. Love gets people to advertise for free.

New love is incredibly powerful. Think of the out-of-box experience. It begs for a recommendation.

WOM 101:

1. Give people a reason to talk about YOUR stuff
2. Make it easier for that conversation to take place

A classic example is Krispy Kreme, they gave people to talk about, hot doughnuts....unfortunately they lost that thing. You can now find their product in gas stations. Who talks about food you buy in a gas station?

To make it easier, make it portable, make it mobile. Allow people to pass it along. Make it easier to share.

There are two motivations in WOMM, the first is You, the brand.

The second motivation is Me, ad in the talker. The influencer. The person you would call about buying a car, or travel. Who is your 'local' expert.

There are very specific emotions related to WOMM:
- Happiness: when things to right.
- Love: passion for products, think Apple
- Surprise: surprise them with things they don't expect
- Fun: think about the stuff your mom forwards to you
- Smart: people like to be experts, give them the inside scoop
- Pride: take ego and add information and reward, make them VIPs
- Anger: when things go wrong, it's also the most powerful of emotions

The third motivation is US, make them part of the community. It's about belonging. People love to show their relationships with brand statements. Think about the Harley owners club.

The 5 T's
- Talkers: find out which people talk about you, it might not always be your current customers
- Topics: What makes a good press release, does not make a good WOM topic
- Tools: What's in the box? What are you sending people, can you pass it along?
- Taking Part: This is what scares marketers, you need to get involved, respond, fix the problem
- Tracking: spending time interacting leads to new inbound links, use traditional metrics

The final question is, "Would you tell a friend?" Is that you're selling, marketing...something you would tell a friend about? If not, what can you do to fix that?

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I'll be live-blogging for the next few days from the Strategy & Innovation Forum, hosted by Shop.org. You can follow the blog-action at blog.shop.org. The photogroup is here.

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I'm off to Atlanta today to take part in the Executing Social Media Conference. Chip Griffin and I are leading the opening keynote session. I'm looking forward to seeing many old friends from the conference circuit.

On Thursday I head to New York City for a meeting on Friday morning. Then it's back to Atlanta for the weekend and a few days next week.

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One of the things I'll be doing at the PRSA International Conference is looking at the various conversational monitoring services in the exhibit hall. There are a number of firms that all 'say' they can automate the monitoring of blogs (social media) and provide metrics, tonality, sentiment analysis, etc. It should be noted that a number of these services cost a pretty good amount of $$$.

What's interesting about the search is the I have long said (as have many of the colleagues in this industry that I know/trust/respect) that the free tools and a trained staffer can do the same thing. Plus there is that community context thing :-)

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From the South to the North. I'm now in Philadelphia for the PRSA International Conference till Tuesday. I'll be helping Kami and a few others with some conference blogging, but I'm mostly handling some photos (big surprise). I arrived late in the day, so I was able to catch the end of K.D. Paine's session and the Social Media panel with Rob, Peter, Lee and Nicco (below). My photoset will be here, the PRSA photo group is here.

Tonight is the blogger dinner. More to come. I plan to post a wrap-up from the UGA Connect conference soon.

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Today at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum I moderated a panel on B2B blogging. When you get a room full of marketers the conversation will sometimes turn to SEO and of course ROI. Mix the two and you have a lively conversation.

Yes we all know that Google loves blogs, but if your only reason for blogging is SEO, then you're going to fail. Back in early 2006 I posted about a newspaper that wanted to start community blogging. I told them if the reasons were revenue or page views that things would fail. The primary purpose has to be conversation and community. If you do those two things right (and have your blog properly configured) then SEO and all the other benefits should follow.

During the panel today the analogy I used was this:

If your fiance asks you why you love him/her and want to spend the rest of your life with them you shouldn't say:

A. I'm looking for increased ROI thru shared living expenses.
B. You have a great network of (hot) friends, and partnering with you allows me to position myself favorably with them.

It should first and foremost be about love and compassion (with your fiance).

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What happens when you invite a group of bloggers to your location like Kennedy Space Center did? There will be blog posts and photos, boy will there ever be photos.

Posts:

http://nowisgone.com/2007/09/28/blogorlando-kicks-off-with-nasa-cape-canaveral-tour/

http://www.communityguy.com/1055/blogorlando-take-aways/

http://www.alexrudloff.com/2007/09/30/blogorlando/

http://www.thedisneyblog.com/tdb/2007/09/the-absence-of-.html

http://whiteafrican.com/?p=764

http://www.indyhall.org/2007/09/28/indyhall-helping-make-noise-at-blogorlando/

http://www.blogorlando.com/blog/2007/09/blogorlando_thanks_delaware_no.php

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/communityguy/sets/72157602198929992/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyku/sets/72157602172071221/

http://flickr.com/photos/extraface/sets/72157602189002851/

http://flickr.com/photos/judxapp/sets/72157602187393027/

http://flickr.com/photos/jharr/sets/72157602194213657/

http://flickr.com/photos/cjscott69/sets/72157602185719113/

http://flickr.com/photos/tiki/sets/72157602189961902/

http://flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/sets/72157602182180162/

http://flickr.com/photos/cethilk/sets/72157602204873821/

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Here are some BlogOrlando recaps from other folks out there:

- Dave Coustan
- Chris Scott
- Alex Rudloff
- Geoff Livingston
- Jake McKee
- Joe Thornley
- Laurie Mayers

On the live-blogging front Marijean and Mistie from Standing PR and Sherry did a bang-up job. Jim Hathaway has a link-round-up as well.

And photos....do we ever have photos. The BlogOrlando Flickr photo group started with 250 photos on Thursday. As of this post it's at 1,083.

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I just posted my 'Thanks' list for BlogOrlando. On a personal note it was touching to see this post and collection of video clips by Geoff Livingston.

Thanks everybody.

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I'm still recovering from BlogOrlando and hope to have a big wrap-up/thank-you post up in the next day or two. For now though I'm off to Chicago for the MarketingProfs B2B Forum.

On a good-travel-karma-note, my first requested upgrade since becoming a SkyMiles Medallion member was confirmed, woot!

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Big thanks to Billy, Andrea, Jill and Sara from Delaware North Corporation for hosting the BlogOrlando session leaders at Kennedy Space Center today.

I'll be uploading my photos in a few days, but for now you can look at some from Chris and Judson.

P.S. it was almost an all Nikon crew out there!

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BlogOrlando kicks off Thursday so I'll be tied up with running that event till next week. This year's event is much bigger than last year, and thus requires more planning and time.

Some updates will be posted over at the BlogOrlando blog, but you're best bet is to follow what other folks are saying. The official photogroup is up on Flickr.

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October is shaping up to be another busy travel/conference month. Three key events to highlight that I'll be speaking at:

MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum: I'll be leading a panel on the second day of the conference.

University of Georgia's Connect Conference: A few days of fun in beautiful Athens, GA.

PRSA International Conference: I'll be part of a panel on Monday and then presenting on Tuesday. In addition I'll be joining Kami and a few others in blogging the conference for PRSA. As with recent conferences, I'll be mostly focussing on photography. We're trying to organize a blogger dinner for Sunday during the conference.

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I'll be one of the presenters at the upcoming PRSA International Conference in Philadelphia. I'll also be one of the conference bloggers along with Kami Huyse and some other good friends.

The Sunday before the conference kicks-off we're planning a blogger dinner. I've asked Annie Heckenberger with the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Co. to suggest a locale.

As soon as we have the final details we'll post them, but go ahead and mark your calendar for dinner on Sunday, October 21st.

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SPRF/PRCA. that's quite the acronym, it stands for Southern Public Relations Federation and Public Relations Council of Alabama. The group is holding their annual conference over the next three days in Mobile, AL. I'm slated to speak on Tuesday, but I'm heading to Alabama today.

Why early? I plan on sneaking away on Monday afternoon to photograph the USS Alabama and some of the other 'hardware' they have at Battleship Memorial Park.

I may post a few session recaps from the conference as well. We'll see.

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I, along with good friends Kevin Dugan, Constantin Basturea, Paull Young and K.D. Paine will be presenting at the University of Georgia's Connect conference. It's being held October 19-20, 2007 and is hosted by the Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication.

I'll be arriving in Atlanta the morning of the 19th. I might stay in that area, or head directly up to Athens, GA. We'll see.

Last year I spent the day on campus at UGA speaking to a number of classes. It's a great place and I'm looking forward to spending some more time there.

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Over the weekend I finalized the schedule for the 2007 edition of BlogOrlando, the un-conference being held in Orlando, FL on Sept 27-29th. You can check it out here.

When you have so many great sessions planned it's difficult to figure out which ones should overlap. This year we have four distinct tracks tailored to the diverse audience that attends the event. The tracks are: PR/Marketing, Media, Technology and Life/Local.

If you're in the Orlando area (or want to come to Central Florida) be sure to check out BlogOrlando and perhaps register. See you in September.

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Yesterday I visited the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex to plan a pre-BlogOrlando event. During my brief stay I was able to 'ride'...whoops, 'experience' the Shuttle Launch Experience (SLE).

That little slip was on purpose. The SLE is just that, an experience, and not necessarily a ride. When you tell people it's a ride they have a certain expectation and if you're thinking ride when you get on it, then it might not meet your expectations. This issue is compounded by the fact that there are a bunch of 'rides' about 60 miles away at places like Disney and Universal Studios.

That brings up the question, how do you marketing or tell people about the experience which simulates an actual Space Shuttle launch without using the word ride? When you try to tell somebody the word 'ride' always seems to slip in there.

I'm a space/aviation geek so the ride/expereince was cool and something I look forward to taking my son on soon.

The rest of my photos from KSC can be found on Flickr.

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The finalized list of 2007 BlogOrlando sessions has been posted. This FREE event will be held on Sept 27-29th in Orlando at Rollins College. You can register here.

This year's event is shaping up to be a big step-up from last year. We've broken down the event into four separate tracks to represent the diverse audience we expect. Here is the list:

Opening Keynote

The State of Social Media in the World
Leader - Shel Israel, CA - Global Neighbourhoods
Keynoter Shel Israel recently conducted a 10 week Global Survey of the state of social media on behalf of enterprise software giant SAP. He interviewed more than 50 people in 20 countries on four continents. His primary finding: social media is evolving at different rates in different corners of the globe, but it is changing all cultures and businesses. It is beginning even to change some governments.

Israel will report on his finding, some of which are quite surprising most of which indicate that social media is rapidly changing the entire world and in a great many ways, it is for the better.

PR/Marketing Track

Blogger Relations and Ambassador Programs
Leader - Tom Biro, NJ - Open the Dialogue
Working at MWW, Tom spearheaded the Nikon D80 Blogger outreach program. Tom will talk about working with bloggers and building ambassador programs.

Using Blogs for Product Development
Leader - Dave Coustan, Atlanta, GA - Earthlink
Dave Coustan, corporate blogger for EarthLink will talk about how organizations are using blogs as communication tools to develop better products by (gasp) actually asking people what they want.

Crisis Communication
Leader - Laurie Mayers, MI - MS&L
How do you handle a crisis via blog, or created via blog? Laurie Mayers of MSL (think the GM Fastlane Blog) will talk about how GM handles ‘issues’ online, and the limitations of what a publicly traded company can say on a blog.

Customer Relationships with the Rabid Crowd
Leader - Jake McKee, Dallas, TX - Community Guy
As former director of global community development for LEGO, Jake knows a thing or two about working with passionate users. What can your organization do to develop deeper, longer term relationships with your audiences?

Tourism and Social Media
Leader - Annie Heckenberger, Philadelphia, PA - Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation
As the social media guru for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation Annie oversees a number of social media programs used to promote Philly. Annie will discuss how tourism groups are adapting to the new media landscape.

Business Blogging the Next Steps
Leader - David Parmet, Pound Ridge, NY - Marketing Begins at Home
David Parmet returns to BlogOrlando to lead a session on the business blogging. We’ll assume you know what a blog is….and start to talk about what some of the next steps are.

Participation is Marketing
Leader - Geoff Livingston, Alexandria, VA - Buzz Bin
In the end it’s all about getting involved. Geoff will touch on a number of topics presented during the day…the foundations are honest, open communication. Can you do it?

Continue reading "2007 BlogOrlando Sessions Posted" »

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I could do a long, detailed recap of Gnomedex, or I could just point to Randy Stewart's great comic version. Good stuff.

One of the folks I've been running into quite at conferences is Kris Smith. Of course it's hard to miss Kris, he has a unique look :-)

If you look at the photos below you can see there is a difference. One is casual-conference-goer-Kris, the other is serious business-man-out-on-the-town-Kris. But which one is the real Kris Smith?

Kris is a podcaster by nature so of course he was doing quite a bit of podcasting from Gnomedex. He talked to a number of folks including me. To listen to the podcast you can click here. We talk about conference photography, development and a number of other fun topics.

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Speaking at Gnomedex Guy Kawasaki said: Good companies are about making meaning, not making money.

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A few hours ago Chris Pirillo kicked off the 7th edition of Gnomedex in Seattle, WA. The wifi and EVDO is very slow so photos will be sparse today. Look for a massive upload tonight.

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I'm sitting at Orlando airport (MCO) using their free wifi (go Orlando!). It's been a hectic past few weeks and I'm almost at the end of my marathon travel run. I'm at Gnomedex till Sunday and then I make a quick trip to Phoenix at the end of next week.

After that I'm home for a while, thankfully. I need some time to slow down and catch up. Then it's time to start ramping up for BlogOrlando.

Plus there are some work changes coming up....more on that later.

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My blogging-partner-in-crime Chris Gent has a wrap-up post for our conference blogging at the 2007 Florida Public Relations Association Annual Conference. We posted a total of 84 entries, 7 podcasts and almost 700 photos.

Like many conference blogging experiences, it was fun, but exhausting. We had a team of bloggers and we tried to closely follow the conference blogging guidelines I set out last year.

Chris and I handled most of the photography. You can find the FPRA Flickr stream here.

One of the highlights for me was Cynthia Gordon's session on how Universal has been using digital and social media. Many of her examples revolved around the recent announcement that Universal Studios Theme Park would be home to Harry Potter.

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I'll be blogging from the 2007 FPRA Annual Conference for the next three days. You can follow all the action over at the official FPRA Blog.

We have a team of conference bloggers covering the event. The conference is being held at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, FL.

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