Some 125 advocacy, PR, trade association and government affairs types packed into the hall of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in D.C. yesterday for Blogging 101 for K Street. Impressive turnout! I shared a panel with Ken Deutsch, executive VP of Issue Dynamics, Inc. and Pat Cleary, senior VP, communications and chief blogger for the National Association of Manufacturers. Henry Copeland of Blogads (I love the way Henry talks; definitely the visionary type) and Peter Hirshberg of Technorati also presented, among others. A few highlights from our panel:

Blogger Relations

Ken recently launched a Blogger Relations practice for IDI. BR, as it's called, means monitoring the blogosphere both proactively and reactively…

I'm on a panel tomorrow speaking about corporate blog writing tips for a conference here in D.C. - Blogging 101 K Street. (Hope I'm over the summer flu which I'm fighting today. Yuck.) Joining me are Ken Deutsch of public affairs firm Issue Dynamics and Pat Cleary who writes the plugged-in and snappy National Association of Manufacturers blog. Washington is full of wonky policy analysts and advocacy types. I bet some of them will be there. It's what makes D.C. a fun place to live and work.

As an aside... the conference is being sponsored by two public affairs / Internet marketing firms: Issue Dynamics (which generally promotes progressive agendas) and Rightclick Strategies (which,…

The WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) folks released yesterday what they're calling a new set of standards to measure the impact - and ROI - of word-of-mouth marketing. Download WOMMA's 12-page PDF here. It explains measurement terms and methodology - including the WOMUnit, the "single unit" of information that is passed from one consumer to another.

Tomorrow is WOMMA's first Measuring Word of Mouth Conference in Chicago chaired by the irrepressible Andy Sernovitz.

I'm intrigued by the efforts to put a structure and labels around what is a free flowing phenomenon. It should help corporate marketers get their arms around the impact of blogs; namely, to act as enablers for word of mouth marketing.…

"Nothing I do gets sanitized. Every once in a while I venture into an area that's a bit controversial and I'll take the beating that goes along with it." - Bob Parsons

I interviewed Go Daddy CEO blogger Bob Parsons yesterday for the book. He's a character. Flamboyant, irreverent and an entrepreneur to the core. Offensive? Maybe.  Refreshing and provocative? Yes. I've got pages of notes. Here are a few highlights:

He's currently spending three to fours a day blogging. ("That leaves 20 or 21 hours to do other stuff.") He blogs because he enjoys it. He likes to write. He'd "rather blog than watch a movie." He likes to stir up controversy (cf the Gitmo blog storm).…

Was interviewed yesterday by Carole Matthews, senior editor of Inc.com. She's writing an article about "top blogging tips" (I'll post the URL when it's published) and asked me a bunch of questions. It was more than an interview really. We had a great conversation. We found ourselves musing over "fear of blogging" as a possible impediment to businesss blogs. We agreed that there are several components to the "fear":

1. Stagefright... fear of writing and being published
2. Fear of what other bloggers are saying about you or your company
3. Fear of negative comments that readers might leave on your blog

As for #3, I tell business types that getting any comments at all should be a greater concern. If…

It's treacherous territory but I'm reconsidering my earlier posts here and here. I initially said Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons made a huge goof in posting an essay about interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay to his blog. Yes, it was offensive to many. But, according to Parsons, many others responded positively in private emails. Parsons clearly has a big following on his blog. (His blog is the 23rd most popular blog site, according to a Go Daddy press release. Hmmm, the computation based on combining his Alexa ranking with the Technorati Top 100 seems a bit garbled. No matter, his blog gets a lot of traffic.)

As I opined in my…