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

Due props to: http://scagozo.com/

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!

✦ Twitter

✦ Facebook

✦ 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.