I was unable to personally attend the Blogwell event in San Jose organized by Andy Sernovitz from Gas Pedal earlier this week because I was at the Forrester event in Dallas but a co-worker, Brian Killen from our Bus. Dev. team, was there to represent Visible Technologies. Some observations from the event are provided below:
…just got back from GasPedal’s Blogwell “How Big Companies do Social Media” conference in San Jose and was impressed with the level of content and turn out from top companies here in silicon valley. The event was packed with real life case studies from Cisco, Intel, UPS, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Home Depot and Kaiser as well as a lesson on Disclosure Best Practices.
The first session I sat in on was Cisco’s John Earnhardt presenting “Why Vlogging is Better than Blogging.” In his session he outlined the cost associated in Vlogging (about $30.00 / Vlog = 4 cents per view and dropping) and how to breakdown the ROI model. After his discussion, it was clear that there is an upward trend around Video Blogs. He noted in his examples that video blogs bring passion and sincerity to content that would otherwise be flat in a standard blog.
Ken Kaplan from Intel led a great session titled “The Four Phases of Intel Inside Social Media” and discussed the importance of pairing online engagement with offline meet-ups highlighting their success in Intel’s Developer Forum. His session prompted a flurry of questions from companies like VM Ware and Ebay.
Wells Fargo’s Tom Collins and Ed Terpening (who is also and amazing artist) led an entertaining session titled “Darwinism in Social Media”. They discussed how content in brand marketing has changed over the years using a series of fun videos to make their point. They also reviewed how Wells Fargo has experimented with SecondLife and how their social media approach has evolved from that experience.
One session that is near and dear to my heart was a review of the Blog Council’s Disclosure Best Practices Tool Kit. I discuss the importance of transparency and disclosure in every discussion I have with clients. Almost 100% of all social media scandals are related to someone pretending to be some random Joe (Plumber?) and someone figures out that they are not. To prove my point, check out this blog discussion discussing how a social media agency (Maverick Digital) did exactly the wrong thing. Use the tool kit and share it with friends!
Over all this was a top quality event with participation from some of the largest companies in the world. I’m glad we had the opportunity to sponsor BlogWell this year!
Thanks again for the update Brian we will surely continue to be involved with GasPedal events in the future.
