Daniel Nenni

As I wrote in Social Media, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, I also twitter and recently entered the blogosphere. In the first month, 530 people viewed my blog, now thousands of people view it, bloggles the mind! The software I use (WordPress) tracks views, where they come from, and which links they click on, etc… I also get search engine terms and stats, very clever stuff, excellent tools for market research. The million dollar question is: How should businesses work with independent Bloggers?

Business Social Media is all about brand management, speaking directly to your target audience in a language they appreciate. You can also listen in and get real-time feedback. For technical industries, like semiconductor design enablement, press releases are rarely seen and easily forgotten. The traditional semiconductor press is so sanitized  now, it’s like reading an idiot’s guide to semiconductors. Blogging is a much more dynamic medium with over 200 bloggers in our market segment alone. Quite a few of the EDA and IP companies have internal bloggers as well but that is about as much fun as artificial insemination. The formal press also uses select bloggers as “trusted sources” for technical content but I think the implication that other bloggers are not to be “trusted” is incredibly immature and outdated. Old school PR companies generally don’t like bloggers either, but in my experience blogging is the best way to spread the word and create a genuine product buzz, with a minimum amount of overhead. Quite a few companies now have social media executives or consultants like myself on staff, if not, they are already behind.

Prior to technical conferences, I now get invitations to blogging events, just like press events, but specifically for bloggers. The Atrenta BlogFest at the 46th Design Automation Conference is a great example, these people obviously get Business Social Media:

ATRENTA BLOGFEST

Why are we doing this?
We want to reach out to the press/bloggers at DAC, but not with a traditional press conference.  Rather than discuss new product announcements, etc., we’d rather discuss design trends and have a lively debate about what they mean.

So, we are holding our first BlogFest. A BlogFest is the new press conference with a twist. We don’t answer questions about a press release.  We don’t have a press release at all.  Our distinguished panelists will say a few words (very few) about the topic and then we will open it up to the blogging community for a spirited  Q&A/discussions session.

Logistics: Each panelist will discuss their point of view on the topic for 3 minutes (and no more).  No slides, but strong opinions are solicited.  We then open the floor to the bloggers for a spirited discussion.  All bloggers (trade press and independent) will be invited.

I congratulate Mike Gianfagnia and staff for hosting this event, they are well ahead of the marketing curve and the dominating Atrenta market share is well deserved.

There are 233 semiconductor design enablement bloggers at last count, who have an audience as big or bigger than mine. That’s hundreds of thousands of people who will read your message on a regular basis. It isn’t easy coming up with frequent blogs so whatever you can do to help a blogger say something clever, get blog views, and most importantly help the blogger BRAND their product, that is what you need to do. I don’t see bloggers bashing companies that reach out to them, worst case they will ignore you. So this is how I would handle independent bloggers: treat them seriously, treat them with respect, build personal relationships, it is the most affordable branding experience available today.