Bloginar??

Yesterday I attended a webinar on blogging and how to use blogs as a marketing tool. This of course ties into the task of figuring out how to use blogs to a corporate advantage that I was assigned (and referred to) earlier.
I found the webinar to be really interesting. It echoed a lot of what I had said about television advertising and other "older" channels being ineffective, but that the power of word-of-mouth lives on. And Bloggers are really influencers. I also liked that it was stressed that bloggers are smart and won't be fooled for long by marketing teams seeding sites with product pitches and false comments.
As the host said, "When you play soft and loose, you get outed." One way to use blogs is to monitor them for nameshare and hope for the best. Another one was to run a corporate blog, that builds the brand but is honest and promotes honesty. That, the host said, is likely to be rewarded. There are some good corporate blogs out there, according to the webinar folks. There are corporate blogs that have managed to become extensions of the brand.
They gave some interesting stats too: top news story linked to by bloggers? Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN's Crosswire. Top book citations and links? Unfit for Command, the DaVinci Code, Eats Shoots and Leaves. Most cited people - President Bush, John Kerry - not too shocking given the past year, right? - Harry Potter, Britney Spears and Michael Moore.
So basically, blogs create buzz. Marketers want to tap into that buzz. Marketers cannot be tricky, it will eventually make them look bad. Marketers have to seed bits of honesty wither on a corporate site, or (and this is mine) create relationships with bloggers who are already promoting/mentioning their companies. Give them nuggets to work from and they'll reward you with positive mentions.
"You'll know you're doing well if bloggers start sending it along." --Webinar host.