What's the Story with Online Branding?

How Storytelling is (Still) Critical to Communications in the Blogosphere

As companies try to figure out how to use blogs and other social media tools to engage with customers, successfully participating in the blogosphere remains a bit of mystery to many marketing and PR professionals. Social media initiatives can't be spin, but companies must have a compelling story to tell about their brand, culture, products, and customers in their online activities. At the heart of every communications effort must be a story. Storytelling can be an organic process that comes from open dialog with customers.

What are the models? Who is doing it well? What are the lessons learned from the past few years? How do you find your story ? especially if you have lost it and must re-define it? How do you craft it to get a targeted reaction? What is the balance between authenticity in your story and making money, and how much of your story is determined by you versus your customer?

This discussion aims to address and answer some of these questions. Specific models to be discussed include examples from healthcare, high-tech, and consumer products. Bring your own examples to discuss!

While communications professionals must adapt to new media as they become viable, best practices must always revolve around the fundamentals: offering a great product or service to solve customers' needs and telling a compelling, creative and differentiated story.

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About the Speakers

Elisa Camahort

Elisa is a co-founder of BlogHer LLC (http://blogher.org...) and its President of Events and Marketing. A marketing executive with 16 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Elisa opened her own high- tech marketing consultancy, Worker Bees, after a successful career in the cable broadband sector, managing multiple product lines, senior product management staff, and multi-million dollar budgets. Her most recent corporate position was Senior Director of Product Marketing at Terayon Communication Systems, where she was nominated for an SCTE (Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers) Women in Technology Award. She has been published numerous times and has extensive public speaking experience, focusing on Building Online Communities and on the What, Why and How of Blogging. Elisa was at the vanguard of professional and business blogging, and currently contributes to no less than eight blogs regularly. Elisa is Fellow and advisory board member of the Society for New Communications Research.

Kathy Klotz-Guest, MA, MBA

Kathy is a marketing executive with over 15 years of experience launching successful high-tech products and services. She has launched products and driven messaging for SGI, Dataquest, Gartner Group, MediaMetrix, Excite, Excite@Home, and Dow Jones to name a few companies. In addition to her deep expertise in product management, market research and strategic messaging, Kathy has also written and performed sketch comedy for years (most recently with MoronLife). Her passion for humor, storytelling, and creativity drives and shapes her work. Kathy is the founder of Powerfully Funny, a marketing consultancy that designs compelling marketing strategies with a creative edge to help clients ?stand out? from the pack. She has an MA in Multimedia Applications Development and an MBA in marketing from UC Berkeley, and is currently working on her MLA thesis at Stanford University. She served on the board of the Silicon Valley chapter of the American Marketing Association for five years, and is on the board of directors of the Society for New Communications Research.