Conversational Media Marketing

I've started writing a post or two per week over at WordFrame.com. My first post is Vertical social networks for business, a table of their own, which reports on the new eMarketer study about businesses entering the social network space.

(BTW, WordFrame is an awesome B2B social networking platform. If your company has an interest in creating a socnet for either internal or external use, I recommend it highly. It's affordable, highly scalable and has all the features you'd want or need.)

I had the privilege of sitting in on a two-hour webinar led by , the CEO of WordFrame, where he demoed the enterprise level social networking/online community platform. And, two hours wasn't long enough!

I was amazed, not only by the extensive number of components that make up the platform (with more to come), but its ease-of-use. I've had experience with a number of both open-source and .NET social networking platforms and found none of them as simple to use as this. The logic, the workflow...everything made sense.

I'm not the only one who thinks highly of the product either. Just announced, one of the WordFrame sites, IT Counts, won the "Best New Web 2.0 Initiative" at the Web 2.0 Strategies 2008 conference held in the UK. How's that for industry credibility!

Not only is WordFrame a platform for the future, George is a genuinely nice guy who thoroughly believes in his product. You can tell he's proud to show it off.  And I was proud to be in attendance.

The more I think about the use of blogs and email together as complimentary marketing tactics - a topic I've discussed - the more I'm convinced they are truly a marketing power duo.

Email is without peer as a tried-and-true marketing technique. Blogs have entered mainstream awareness to the degree they are no longer considered tangential. It's becoming commonplace to see a blog associated with a company's Web site. Since both are content-centric, they pair very well. (I call them a digital "peanut butter and jelly sandwich.")

That's why I feel strongly that some company should create an integrated blog/email marketing platform, and I know just the company to do it too, Compendium Blogware.

Bizzuka, the company I serve as marketing director, recently rolled out its own blog component, part of its more comprehensive web content management system. Big whoop you say. In the world of all things blog, it probably isn't, but to us it's a big deal.

The platform doesn't pretend to offer the same level of functionality as WordPress or Movable Type. That was not its intended purpose. Rather, it's designed to be a light-weight, but highly useful blog that's completely integrated into our CMS.

The folks at Six Apart have created what I believe is their first Facebook application, BlogIT.

Basically, the app allows you to post to all your blogs, including mini-blogs like Pownce and Twitter from one posting interface inside Facebook. Plus, you can update your status on Facebook, Pownce and Twitter from the same interface.

Ever attempted to live blog an event using any of the popular blog platforms? Pain in the rumpus, isn't it. The platform just isn't suited to that purpose. That's all changed now, thanks to an application designed specifically for live blogging called, Cover It Live.

The videos on CIL's Web site explain how the platform works much better than I, so let me encourage you to view them. However, I will hit some of the highlights.

You set up a live blogging session via CIL's admin console and are given a snippet of code to embed in your blog's posting interface. (CIL uses iframes to push its content into your blog and AJAX technology to make it all work.)

Updates made via an entry field in CIL's console  are added in chronological order. Site visitors can not only follow updates, but leave moderated comments,  which, once approved, are added to the stream as well. The blogger can add panelists who provide additional commentary and producers who manage the whole affair. That way, the blogger can focus on providing commentary without the distraction of approving comments, inserting images or video clips, etc.

Images and video can be added to a library and used as needed during the live blogging session. And, there is an interactive polling feature which can be set up in advance or created on the fly. CIL's platform requires no manual refresh either (no need to use the F5 key).

Cover It Live takes live-blogging to an entirely new level and  opens the door to blogging press conferences, political or sporting events, television shows, conferences, or breaking news in real-time. I can't wait to use it and am looking for any excuse to do so. 

In the battle of the blog platforms for the Conversational Media Marketing blog, TypePad has risen victorious.

You've got to be asking, "Paul, of all the platforms you could have chosen, why TypePad?"  Nostalgia, plain and simple.