Miami Social Networking Conference: The Power of Bloggers

Day 1
Blogging: Understanding and Engaging the New Influences
Speaker: Richard Jalichandra - Technorati

Richard Jalichandra opened his speech by marking 4 years of the social media phenomen anniversary and noted that past 4 years done more for the Internet world than previous 10 years.

Internet evolved from Web 1.0 stage when everything was all about the pages to the Web 2.0 world when your audience seeks its own audience.

The speaker used several examples as bloggers were perceived by people and media. Back in 2002 the CMO of Technorati went to the streets of NY and asked people what do they think about bloggers... He actually used the movie clips of the responses and most of them were just a blank stare..

The funny example was the shoe shine guy at Grand Central. He actually responded with a perfect answer: “The big media companies will definitely get hurt.."Technorati came to shoe shine booth 4 years later to ask Kevin his thoughts about the present stage of social media and blogging. He was right on the track answering 'it's all about haters now. If you hate someone or something just go and blog about it..". Richard discussed the impact bloggers have on brands today. It's up to brand how to embrace bloggers and customers feedback. The strategy is that "control is an illusion" and brands go through stages before accepting that customers have more power than they thought.
The good example of customer engagement are companies like Sun who let consumers have unfiltered conversation on their home page.

Best practices for consumer engagement:

• Let them play with your food (allow mashups and encourage consumers creativity)
• Giving up the control and engaging is the key..