Following this evening’s iGB Affiiate Awards, the conference and exhibition proper starts on Friday. theMediaFlow will be in full attendence so if you see me, Stephen or Sarah; please say Hi!

Friday I’m attending and liveblogging the following sessions, so if you can’t make any of these sessions or can only come for one day; be sure to bookmark, subscribe etc. I’ll also be tweeting-up the place #LAC.

Friday.

11:30 AM Social Media 101

Andrew Girdwood of Bigmouthmedia takes us through some of the most crucial social media concerns for affiliates, such as; legal considerations, Google and Facebook view of affiiates in social media, the crackdown on lead-gen and more.

12:15 PM Demon SEO

(My two favourite words in one session. What’s not to love?)

SEO heavyweights Bob Rains, David Naylor, Ziv Descalu and Frank Watson, will be taking us through Advanced SEO techniques and telling us what really counts.

13:45 PM Hunting for that Golden Link

Up to date strategies from a supremo SEO panel. Marcus Tandler, Ralph Tegtmeier (Fantomaster), Christoph Cemper and Sebastian Wentzell.

15:15 PM KEYNOTE: Bing – The New Search Experience

An overview of the Bing experience, plus insights into online gaming search trends which should be invaluable. Speakers are Cedric Chambaz and Adam Goodman of Microsoft Advertising.

I’m liveblogging a selection of the conference sessions, and there are many more excellent panels and presentations in the Friday program. Here’s the full schedule.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the liveblogs and the Saturday schedule.

To illustrate; imagine I’m a small business in the 1960’s seeking to make the public aware of its existence. I’d have to think about physical, visible signage for my premises and advertise in the classifieds. All of that costs money and would involve hiring specialist professionals to create such signage and ad copy. Fast-forward to today, and a small business director has everything they need to make their business brand known; strong and discoverable, just a few keystrokes away.

Of course this works both ways! So, just as a brand owner has some great tools and resources to reach a wider audience more quickly, so does a brand consumer have numerous outlets to transmit their dissatisfaction or voice their opinion. And rightly so; as it’s a good thing this so-called democratisation of the web allows all of us consumers to voice our opinions in an open and public forum. It can be a headache for brands however, as this unregulated, unofficial content on the web vies for attention with your own material. Now; we’re not about to advocate attempting to bury all negative publicity, it is still publicity. What we are advocating is that you seek to ‘own’ your brand message at least on page 1 of the search engines.

Why Own Page 1 for Your Brand Results?

•    Consistency of message
•    Brand recognition and reinforcement
•    Increase traffic to your owned and operated websites
•    Look like a big deal

How to Own Page 1! (It’s easier than you think).

Get Your Domain Name: Make sure you own your brand domain name. www.whatever.com and the local TLD for each market in which you operate; that is if you don’t already! Your own company website is the easiest way to own your first result.
Join Professional Directories: Add yourself to professional and local directories for your sector, thus controlling profile information and having the knock-on benefit of association.
Write and Distribute Press Releases: Writing specific and tailored news about your company is a great way to inform often, and in an official way. Distributing this news as a press release to your online press and having this covered is absolutely invaluable. Trade press publishers naturally tend to rank well due to the authority of their content.
Create a Social Media Presence: Social media is a fantastic, wide-reaching and cost-effective way of essentially, advertising your brand. Facebook pages, Linkedin profiles and CrunchBase profiles are all good ways to extend your brand message. We looked at a couple of good practise tips to be aware of, when expanding your social media brand in a previous post.
Blog and Comment: Nobody knows your business like you do. So get out there and blog, guest blog, comment on related blogs. Establish your internet credentials by showing exactly how much you do know about integrated circuits, or bridal gown design or whatever it is that you do.

Although we can’t control (nor should we want to control) what is said about our brand, but we can control what we say about our brand; so there’s really no excuse not to.

I got to thinking that this could mean a lot of consumer brands and websites are adding content and functionality that is actually counter-productive to their brand, due to available resource and stage of development. It seems there is a lot of pressure and evangelical promotion of social communications that can lead a business to feel that they are not professional, ‘2.0’ or approachable if they’re not engaging in such activities. I decided therefore to examine the circumstances when it’s best not to blog.

1. If you do not have the time or the resource

A blog should allow a consumer brand to give a less formal perspective and an inside view on activities and happenings within that organisation. If your organisation does not have the time or available resource to commit to regular and open communication, then schedule blogging for a later date in your brand development. Nothing smacks more of insincerity than a half-arsed blog.

2. If you cannot/will not disclose

If for whatever business reason you are not able to share more than you do in a press release, then don’t blog it. A blog is not media communication tool (though media professionals can of course get a great level of organisational insight from company blogs) so do not feel tempted to re-hash or replicate your press releases in blog form. Your customers and fans will not be hugely interested in formal announcements or whoever has just won your accounting software contract.

3. If you can’t take the heat (i.e. accept feedback)

Okay, so a blog technically by definition; (and as an abbreviation of weblog) is essentially a record of activities, happenings, thoughts opinions and sometimes feelings. A blog is still a blog without the facility to allow user interaction in the form of comments and feedback, but really why bother unless your brand is ready to engage with readers? Again we come back to the point of what are you really offering that is distinct to your press releases? A blog really is a valuable platform to spark conversation, debate, allow insight and open up your business or brand to the people that actually buy it. Why the hell not allow the most important people connected to your organisation (your customers) have their say too? If you are blogging well and if you are sharing real insight and excitement then allowing comment and community input can be the most valuable (and free) insight you can get!

These are just some of the reasons and situations I could think of when blogging is not the best idea for a consumer brand. Don’t misunderstand me, I am usually a great advocate of blogging and all social media in general; however I thought it important to get the point across. Don’t succumb to the pressure and blog for blogs’ sake.

Please help me expand on the list above and add other reasons you can think of when a consumer brand would be best not to blog!

theMediaFlow blog is written by Nichola Stott. You can follow me on Twitter: www.nicholastott.com