Locating and Participating in the Online Conversations that Matter
a PRWebinar with Teresa Valdez KleinFebruary 19-20, 2008
Conversations
Finding Them✦ Keyword Monitoring via RSS (Google,
Technorati)
✦ Keyword monitoring via RSS on social news sites and social bookmarking sites (Digg, Del.icio.us)
✦ Subscribing to general, category-specific, and comment RSS feeds from key blogs in your space.
Monitoring Them✦ If you find a particularly interesting piece of
content, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed of comments, if one is available.
✦ Subscribe to an RSS feed of all the responses - posts and sites that link to the article - from Technorati.
✦ Use Firefox plugin Update Scanner to monitor comments if no RSS feed is available.
But what about non-blog conversations?
Channels
Blog Posts
Chunks of Content
Blog Post
Facebook Note
Facebook News Feed
Outsource Keyword
Monitoring
Look at People Instead
Old “A-List” Model
✦ Make a list of key bloggers and pitch them.
✦ Hope that by reaching a few key influencers, you can start a word-of-mouth epidemic.
✦ Still top-down, command and control.
Everyone is Influential
Everyone is A-List
✦ Read “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” in Fast Company.
✦ Assuming that that everyone is influential means that you need to have a conversation with as many of the influencers as possible.
So,What’s the A-List Good For?
Follow Them!
✦ Google Reader Shared Items
✦ Digg
Andru Edwards
Participating
Simple Rules
✦ Transparency - never hide who you are or who you work for
✦ Make friends - e.g. on Twitter, Tweet at people when they mention anything you find interesting, not just when they mention your product
✦ Connect across platforms
Community
Recap
✦ Use RSS feeds from blog search to monitor for certain keywords.
✦ Use Update Scanner to monitor for updates to pages that don’t use RSS.
✦ Use social media tools to keep track of what the A-listers in your space are paying attention to.
✦ Participate in the relevant conversations transparently, personably and across platforms.
