Beyond - a digital engagement consultancy - london, new york, san francisco

I have to admit; I was wary of the BlogWorld Expo at first.

Photo Credit: Ken Yeung - www.snapfoc.us @thekenyeung

You’d think that someone who created her first web site in 1995 would have been to hundreds of blogger conventions and meet-ups by now, but the truth of the matter is that I never really saw the point. I know how to build an audience, know how to engage with users, know the pluses, minuses and increasingly bleeding nuances of earned/owned/paid media. I’m not currently a “blogger,” (and sort of have a snotty, pre-2000 internet-user aversion to the word anyway) but I’ve always thought that if I ever took up personal web publishing again, I wouldn’t need to attend any lectures or seminars to make it happen. I think you either know how to create compelling content or you don’t, and everything else has to do with how much of a business endeavor you want your web presence to be.

Still, I was headed to #bwe10 last week in Las Vegas for better or for worse. For better would mean networking with undiscovered talent, crowd-sourcing Beyond’s ideas around engaging communities and winning big on the slots. For worse would mean confirming my belief that so many of the current “bloggers” are only interested in selling out to ad networks so they can quit their day jobs, sitting through dumbed-down panels where I learn nothing new and losing horribly on the slots.

Well, let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: I won!

But, more important, I had a fully excellent time at the convention, met a ton of creative smarties and realized that I need to put away my snobby paintbrush and delight in the power and variety of bloggers today, as well as the insightful steps brands are taking to create new models for digital partnerships.

So, here’s just a sampling of what I saw as the key takeaways, power players, and most popular insights to come out of the convention:

Kodak/Pepsi/Ford: Trifecta Of Social Approachability
It’s one thing to have a job as the Social Media Lead at a brand. It’s another thing to be genuinely passionate about your innovations and eager to share them with anyone and everyone. Thomas Hoehn, Bonin Bough, Scott Monty, all extremely influential and powerful thought-leaders at their companies, are nothing if not absolutely approachable people. If there were three kings of Blog World this year, these were the guys. Okay, so their companies were all major sponsors, but these gentlemen went above and beyond the call of duty as sponsor representatives, and seemed to be working 24/7 throughout the run of the expo. Just from WOM and from my own experiences, I don’t believe there was a single attendee who didn’t meet at least one if not all three of these guys, and later walk away from conversations feeling listened to, appreciated and inspired. You know what makes your social media team a success? When your directors are effortlessly social (both online and IRL) and wonderfully personable people. No strategy can beat that.

Who’s Your Daddy(blogger)??
Ford was the stand-out brand that really capitalized on engaging the dads, but overall crowd consensus was that this year, daddies were outpacing mommies, not only in creating and curating interesting, diverse content, but in also amplifying their voices and making their community known. A really important note in this is that there seems to be a “clean slate” approach to paid media best practices that is also circulating amongst this new trendy target group.

The Business Of Social
As I mentioned, my prejudicial critique of Blog World Expo was that there’d be a focus on content for content’s sake, and a dearth of actionable business practices. The “business” of blogging is very new to the majority of content creators, and can be even more intimidating to brands trying to become more open, so I was very pleased to catch social CRM thought-leaders, Brent Leary and Jacob Morgan, do a panel entitled “Moving From Social Media to Customer Relationship Management.” We at Beyond wholeheartedly believe that listening, monitoring and gathering insights regarding brands and their industries is crucial ahead of developing a cohesive, long term digital strategy and customer engagement model. Everyone is asking questions around awareness, loyalty, amplification and sales, and it’s important that new ideas, opinions and leaders in these fields find platforms, like BlogWorld Expo, to share.

Delicious (Free!) Scotch Whisky Makes You Popular
Okay, this isn’t so much a learning as it is a shout-out to our colleagues Robert and Rebecca from MBooth, who rocked a completely awesome sponsorship presence with The Macallan. They were nothing but class and professionalism throughout all of those wild and crazy Vegas parties. Great team!

So, thank you to all the great people I met who shared their creativity and ideas with me. On behalf of Beyond, we can’t wait to see your next big moves!