Hello from the Canadian Animal Health Institute annual meeting in Niagra-On-The-Lake, Ontario. I’m here to make a presentation to the group on blogging and podcasting as new media tools to reach out to customers and members.
At last night’s dinner one of the participants wanted to use my camera so I let her and she took a picture of the photographer (me). Her name is Fran Doig and her husband, Paul received one of the CAHI “Recognizing Its Leaders” awards last night. You can read more about this on AgWired.
I thought I’d post some of the resources I’m using here and later I might add the audio recording of my presentation too just in case you’re interested and only if I think I sound okay. So linked to here are the agenda for my presentation (Word doc), my Power Point slides (PPT file) and a little resources handout (Word doc).
I’ll also be giving away a few sets of ZimmComm retractable ear buds to some lucky winners too.
ZimmComm New Media hasn’t been idle these last few weeks. You can see some examples of how we’ve been out and about covering multiple events on our own blog sites using the following links.
A good example of event coverage is the past week’s activities in Indianapolis as we covered the activities of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council during race week of the Indy 500.
Another one is my trip to Lexington, KY to make a presentation on the use of blogging and podcasting for the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ). This was covered on AgWired.
This week I’m off to the annual meeting of the Canadian Animal Health Institute to make a presentation on new media and to show examples like these. Their members are looking for new ways to reach out to their customers and the theme of their convention is “Harnessing Technology to Expand Markets.” I think what I’ll be presenting fits in just fine.
Please let me know if you’d like a presentation for your convention or company meeting or if you’re interested in consultation or event coverage of your event.
One of the people who you might want to read if you don’t is Seth Godin. He just recently wrote an interesting post on this topic of what he calls, “liveblogging.”
If you’re looking for reasons why you might consider blogging then you might want to read this post on Online Spin by Max Kalehoff, VP of Marketing for Nielsen BuzzMetrics. In it he makes a case for anyone involved in marketing to blog. Well that would be most of us since we’re all trying to sell something aren’t we?
Here’s an excerpt from his post that I really like. This is what so many people have trouble understanding.
I also received a great education in syndication. While publishers, advertisers and agencies get caught up in site visitors, I found it interesting that I have roughly five times as many active RSS and email subscribers. And I now can understand why; I’m making it easy for others to discover and regularly consume my content, on their terms.
It may not be until September but I’m already registered for the 2007 Podcast and New Media Expo. This will be the third year that this conference has been held.
The 3rd Annual Podcast & New Media Expo is a “prosumer” and corporate event that brings together influential digital media creators, podcasters and content developers to cover the complete range of creation techniques, business objectives and future trends.
The Expo focuses on educating individuals and companies about how to produce high quality digital content, grow a loyal audience, and market or monetize that content in creative ways. The Expo is also a major networking event where content creators can share ideas and build partnerships.
You can learn more in the attendee tools section of their website.
eMarketer.com has an interesting story about how business communications professionals are looking at incorporating Web 2.0 into their plans. This one says that “In fact, a global survey of internal and corporate communications professionals found that more than half use blogs, online video and RSS, or plan to do so in the next 12 months.”
The information comes from a Melcrum survey, Social Media and the Corporate Communicator. Here’s what their summary says about the future.
While only a third of communicators described social media as a priority right now, 41% reported that they were committed to two-way communication with employees/customers online, and 52% anticipated their social-media budgets increasing over the next 12 months.
When asked about the barriers for further adoption, 23% of respondents highlighted gaining executive support as a key challenge, along with 13% reporting IT constraints and restrictions.
Robin Crumby concluded that “It seems likely that social media is here to stay and the key challenge for corporations is likely to be how they integrate these new technologies into their existing media mix.”
May is proving to be a very busy month for ZimmComm New Media. I’ll be on the road a lot (already have) and of course I’ll be blogging all the way. Here’s a mostly complete list of the projects I’ll be working on this month:
National Press Club - Washington, DC - Ethanol Promotion and Information Council
World Ag Forum - St. Louis, MO - World Ag Forum
CBOT Ethanol Press Conference - Chicago, IL - Ethanol Promotion and Information Council
Elanco Sensory Briefing/Wet Lab - Des Moines - Elanco Animal Health
Syngenta Soybean Field Project Setup - Missouri - Syngenta
Alltech International Symposium/IFAJ Board Meeting - Louisville, KY - Alltech/IFAJ
Indianapolis 500 - Indianapolis, IN - Ethanol Promotion and Information Council
Blogging or podcasting are involved in most of these projects. But even more descriptive of the type of work I’ll be doing is photography, audio interviews and some video. These things become content in my posts but also have additional applications for each client including for internal and external public relations.
When someone has done something right there’s no reason to re-invent the wheel. When it comes to a simple explanation of RSS this video should be a big help. It was produced by Commoncraft.
If after watching the video you still don’t understand then let me know and maybe I can try to further clarify. RSS is what drives blogs and podcasts from a distribution standpoint so it’s a pretty important mechanism.
