Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Every year in various cities, social media types come together to discuss the world of blogging. Aptly named “BlogWorld”, this conference focuses on how to reach your audience effectively, achieve the most out of your 3-15 paragraph manifestos, and discuss the future of blogging using lasers and wearing tinfoil hats.

Social media is my job here at Groupon (@theagroupon). While attending this conference over the next two days, I enter uncharted waters and will temporarily abandon composing this entry in third person. Please check back for live updates!

Working at Groupon, I most appreciate the transparency and engagement with our customers. I enjoy being able to respond to customers via Twitter and Facebook and reach out to merchants, sales reps, or customer service in order to address any concerns. I like that our customers are able to reach humans with a “@groupon” mention.

So over the next two days I will be immersed amongst a sea of social media types (I refuse to call anyone a guru) and can’t wait to hear and compare experiences. It’s my team’s goal for the blog to create interesting content, remain open to feedback, and showcase the fun and quirky culture of Groupon.

If you are at BlogWorld, please stop by our booth. We’d love to meet you and swap stories and URL’s. In the mean time, let us know what you’d like to see on the blog, or any speakers you’d like us to check out this week.

The Booth!

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I sat at in on the presentation “How @Toyota Turned #toyatafail Into a Social Media PR Win“. As most businesses, celebrities, and social media types know, a tweet can go a long way.

At 11:30am a well established ‘mommy blogger,’ @crissy, tweeted a post from her blog, Dear Crissy, calling out Toyota for a shady email pitch she received…In the text of the email a direct connection with Toyota was never established, but the language of the email heavily implied that Toyota was behind the effort. Of course, Crissy found this communication to be offensive and so she shared the story on her blog and with her 33,000+ followers on Twitter.

Like wildfire, the hashtag #ToyotaFail spread. But by monitoring what was being said about the brand and being aware of the blogosphere, the brand was able to confirm that they were not associated with the affiliate that sent her the email.

Speakers Anne-Marie Nichols, Lucretia Pruitt, Shelly Kramer, and Christopher Barger, talked about how as a brand grows, it needs to be aware of crisis management and understand that while you may be unable to prevent mistakes, you can turn a mistake into something positive. They sited an example of an accidental tweet sent out by an employee referencing alcohol and rather than letting it go, they turned it around and paired with with the beer company that was mentioned in the tweet to do a “Pints for Pints” blood drive. They felt that while Toyota did address the concern and set the record straight, they didn’t necessarily take it to the next level and spin the controversy to create positive change.

I was happy to hear and agreed with the overwhelming sentiment from the speakers that if a company makes a mistake, they’d rather you go directly to them to see if something is true rather than posting an inflammatory blog post. For that to happen effectively, a brand still has to be accessible. The challenge is when a company becomes so large there are several different agencies in charge of different accounts and the most direct route to address a concern isn’t as apparent to the blogger/public. “Put self in audience’s position – they don’t care which team it came from, they just see the brand.”

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Dancing in the carpeted streets.

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After writing that last entry I sat in on “How to Create Bite Sized Content” which provided ideas on how to structure your blog and draw your readers in more. Think outside the box, blog about concepts that are outside of your niche. Write in chunks vs. one long entry to create better flow and readability.

So based on that presentation, I should end this update here.

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It was an entertaining presentation from the folks at MyDamnChannel.com. They develop original shorts, shows and comedic programing. When asked if they were going to only ever focus on comedy, founder Rob Barnett commented, “We’ve never come up with a slogan other than ‘Waste time here’,” and the opportunities to branch out to music or television are always an option.

Celebrities such as Adam Carolla and William H. Macy are finding their home on the great WWW and while Carolla is breaking world records by being the “#1 podcast in the world”, other actors are getting to develop new and original pieces.

When asked what was most effective at driving traffic to the site, Barnett said, “The magic bullet is talent.” If there is a good show, people are more willing to spread the word. And while some people may question the motives and assume that he’s just using this site to get on television, he responds with, “No. This material is made to be watched on a laptop.”