As you may know, I participated in the “User Generated Content” panel at the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association (CIMA). The panel was sponsored by heavy.com and we received a really cool bag, with a t shirt, & an iPod protector with a notepad. THANKS HEAVY.COM !!
The panelists were:
Danielle Wiley. Vice President of Interactive Solution for Edelman.
Jory Des Jardin.Blogger,Writer for Fast Company & Co Founder & President of Business Development for Blogher.
Ed D’Onofrio. Midwest Advertising Director for Feedburner.
Bryce Emo. Regional Vice President of Myspace.com
Danielle Wiley is a great person that was the moderator during the panel and she gave everyone great insight of her online personal experiences.
Jory Des Jardins is really cool too. Jory was really friendly, very smart, and made me feel comfortable at the panel. Her foresight allowed her to develop a conference called Blogher. Men can attend the conference too. Blogher is ” BlogHer’s annual event continues to be dedicated to bringing bloggers together, and to celebrate the fact that although there are, in fact, many blogospheres, we can find common ground.” This year I’m actually thinking about going. It will be in Chicago July 27/28, 2007. You should check out Blogher.
Ed of Feedburner is really funny and definitely was the character of the group. His area of expertise is RSS feeds and I defintely would like to learn more from him. Some poeple still don’ t know much about RSS Feeds, so check out this Techiediva.com article that I wrote to help simpifly the terms. Feedburner is the best media distribution for blogs, podcasts, and vlogs.
Bryce of myspace.com is very organized and level headed. He was straight to the point in answering questions during the session. Everyone knows who and what myspace is, unless you’ve been in a cave or on an island with no internet, you should also know who Tom is. Bryce actually knows TOM!!.
Wendy Piersall from emomsathome.com/blog & wendypiersall.com booked me for this event. She is a really cool blogger, entrepreneur, coach, and stay at home mom. She has traveled all over the place attending panels and conferences. She recently returned from the Elite Retreat gained some valuable insight from one of the blog masers, Guy Kawaski. Check out her article here.
The best part of the panel was interacting with the people, and answering their questions. The majority of the people who attended were marketers. Plus, there were some computer/tech savvy people there - which made me comfortable.
My impression of the panel purpose was to explore “how marketers can benefit from user based content?” User based content is like free speech. Users can talk about whatever they want in their blogs and vblogs, and social networking websites. When people post on their blogs it becomes from word of mouth. Usually word of mouth is the most effective way of marketing, but the most difficult to monitor and gather statistical data.
For example, a friend watches a movie then tells a friend about their experience. Blogs and social networks work the same way. If Marketers companies contact these social networks and blogs they can get their name out there by word of mouth.
The tangible evidence of the results is another subject because there isn’t software that can give you qualitative statistical analysis of an internet buzz. There is statistical analysis of the number of hits on a website and features, but I don’t know of specific qualitative analysis software that monitors the internet. Therefore, in the future, Engineers will develop programs to search for keywords to monitor buzz of company’s product/service.
While we discussed a variety of topics, I’m sure we left out a lot. It was a very interesting group and an educational experience for me. I learned to talk about the issue/ topic, not promoting an individual business/company. I was using my personal experiences as an example….
I’m sorry may have seemed like I promoted the product/individual and been a little bit too edgy. I apologize if I offended anyone.
After the discussion, a lot of people approached me with questions about vlogging. Video is the next step in interactive user based content. Yes, believe it or not, it is still new.
Wendy also had some questions about video blogging, and after the panel she video taped me with my camera afterwards.
Check out the video here.
Check out David Dalka he wrote a little review of the conference on his blog too.
I would like to thank the panelists who participated in the event. Additionally, I would like to thank CIMA, heavy.com, and the audience.
