Session Title: Blog Yes! Marketing and Generating Excitement For Your Training Programs With Blogs

 

Session Number: 836

 

Room: Fiesta 7

 

Day and Timeslot: Tuesday - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

 

Formats: Learning Story

 

Listen to Preview PodCast

 

 

 

Session Description: Blogs are more than on-line journals. Blogs can be used to promote upcoming training initiatives, encourage employee feedback and as an effective communication tool. We will demonstrate how to effectively use this simple tool to market to your own learners. We will discuss existing internal marketing techniques and problems that are faced. We will then try to find solutions to the issues by using blogging as a marketing and "excitement" tool.

 

  • Generating learner excitement about internal training initiatives
  • Soliciting informal feedback on new ideas and upcoming events
  • Finding a writing voice and approach to which learners will relate

 

Led by: Michelle Lentz - Write Technology (Cincinnati, OH)

 

 

Michelle is an independent consultant specializing in technical writing, instructional design, and collaborative learning. Michelle is also an award-winning blogger, with 2 successful industry blogs and 2 personal weblogs. She advocates Web 2.0 technology and, in spite of herself, is really quite a geek. She is also presenting session 250 at this conference (it's a book club!) and is presenting on wikis and open-source at ASTD TechKnowledge 2008. This has all come as rather a surprise to her.

 

Contact Michelle: michelle@write-tech.com

 

 

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Hello everyone!

Running my blogs has taught me a little about marketing, although I'm certainly no expert. I'd love to talk to you about how blogs can help your internal marketing. There is no rule, after all, that says a blog needs to face towards the outside world. It can be just as useful on your intranet. 

 

Before our session in Orlando, I want to hear about any of your marketing challenges, why you're interested in blogs, and things you want to discuss. I see this more as a discussion where we can all learn from each other.

 

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you! Remember you can edit this page or use the comments.

 - Michelle

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This is a PDF of a handout I plan to offer at the session. It's an article from the September issue of ASTD's T+D magazine, "Learning and Networking with a Blog" by Tony Karrer.

Let me know what you think!

09TD_Karrer.pdf

 

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Useful Links

 

Marketing

 

Using Blogs for Personal Marketing: Influential Marketing Blog: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/02/using_blogs_for.html

A Penny For ... Using Blogs for Word of Mouth Marketing: http://www.apennyfor.com/movable_weblog/000851.html

 

Blogging Tools

 

Weblog Matrix: allows you to compare many available blogging tools, including open-source, free, and for-fee: http://www.weblogmatrix.org

 

Google

 

Google Blogoscope - Pulls together blog posts from ALL of Google's blogs:  http://blogoscoped.com/

 

Blog Interview with Karen Wickre, "Mother" of Google's countless blogs: http://searchengineland.com/071018-062059.php

Podcast Interview (2006) with Karen Wickre on managing Google's blogs: http://tinyurl.com/39bnfb

 

Matt Cutts, Google Employee and individual blogger, endorsed by Google: http://mattcutts.com/blog/

 

Microsoft

 

Search Microsoft Employee Blogs: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalHome.mspx

 

One Louder: Heather Leigh for Microsoft: http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/

AprilR's Weblog (education Program Manager for Microsoft): http://blogs.msdn.com/aprilr/default.aspx

Betsy Aoki, Program Manager and Ace Blogger: http://blogs.msdn.com/betsya/

 

Korby Parnell: MS Blogger, Info on MS Blog Policies: http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2005/05/20/420657.aspx

 

Delta

 

Delta Airlines recently launched an external blog written by employees: http://blog.delta.com

 

 

Recommended Reading

 

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

 

Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin

 

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  • Recent comments:
    Michelle Lentz:Hi Amanda! Thanks for your comment! I think you've touched on a very important thing - and not something I have a suggestion for - which is Time. Blogging takes time and we don't all have much of it. I like the contest idea and think it's a great way to publicly recognize employees. I'd like to hear more!
    Amanda Schulze:Hi Michelle, We are using blogs before education events and courses, but have gotten little "life" from them (they get low ratings on evaluations). Our course and event instructors are too busy or not able to make comments themselves in a blog so we have someone completely disconnected from the education writing the blog items. As a result, I think our bogs are not very relevant (though relevant to the industry in general). I'd like to hear how others are using blogs. One thing we do with our blogs is have contests and post the contests and winners in the blog. The students do seem to like the recognition and being highlighted.
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