Our Keynote for the event is being delivered by Ed Keller, author of the must read book “The Influentials.” His insights are truly exceptional and will set the tone from a very practical perspective in regards to Word of Mouth practices and understanding the systemic implications of advances in communications technology.

Ed Keller, CEO
Keller Fay Group
New Brunswick, NJ
www.kellerfay.com
Word of Mouth Research & Consulting

Q1 - What are the 5 Blogs you can’t live without?

There is no blog I “can’t live without.” There’s a lot of research that shows I’m not alone. Most Americans don’t read blogs regularly, and those who do rely on personal relationships and traditional media to a much greater extent than blogs.

But blogs are important, and increasingly so. They have democratized media, and allowed many new voices to be heard. Once heard, their power is magnified through personal communications and the mainstream media.

Some of the blogs I most like to read and are valuable to me in the area of word of mouth marketing are those published by the Church of the Customer, Pete Blackshaw, CRM Metrix, Dr. Walter Carl of Northeastern University, and Bazaarvoice.

Q2 - Tell us a little more about you and your company.

My company, the Keller Fay Group, is the “fly on the wall” of the American consumer conversation. We provide marketers with a systematic means for tracking marketing-relevant conversations in America through an innovative diary-based survey methodology that allows us to measure not only the topics of conversation, but also the brands, companies, and news stories that Americans are talking about and writing about. This service, which we call TalkTrack™, allows marketers to understand the word of mouth momentum for their brands and others in their category, the effectiveness of their marketing in creating word of mouth, the conversational context for their brand, and their brands share of talk today and over time.

Before starting the Keller Fay group, I was the CEO of the well know research firm, RoperASW.

I am also an author, of The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy (Free Press: 2003). In the lead up to and since the publication of The Influentials, I have become quite engaged in the emerging discipline of word of mouth marketing, and am proud that the publication of my book has been called a “seminal moment in word of mouth.”

Q3 - What does Beyond Blogging mean to you? What does it look like?

Beyond Blogging is a great conference title because it has meaning on multiple levels. It means that ‘blogging’ has matured to the point of being a key subdiscipline for marketing professionals, and that virtually every significant organization needs to have a strategy to address the impact of blogs. It means that understanding the impact and potential of blogging requires that we get beyond the blog medium itself — we need to look at the interaction between blogs and mainstream media, and between blogs and our customer and prospect relationships. Finally, we need to look beyond blogging as we know it today, and understand its implications for all our relationships. No longer do we live in a top-down communications environment, but one in which listening skills are as important as our ability to articulate and broadcast messages to our organizations’ key stakeholders.

Beyond Blogging is a terrific opportunity for marketers and communicators to come to come together to discuss (and, I suspect, debate) the new dynamics of communications – where the consumer is very much in charge. What are the opportunities, as well as the challenges, and how can we as marketers become a part of the consumer conversation. All the old rules are up for reconsideration, and the new rules have not been written. So it should be lively and provocative.

Q4 - Do you have any sage advice for a communications professional trying to work with a client that wants to Blog? What are the 3 most important things they need to look out for?

You need to know who the expected audience that will read the blog is. While the number of blogs is enormous, there is still a small percentage of the public that reads them. Knowing who you are communicating with via a blog, and why, is critical before your client starts blogging. In addition, any word of mouth – including blogging – should not be thought of as a silo, divorced from your brand’s other consumer touch points. Blogging is one of many ways to reach out to consumers, and it should fit with, not fight with, your other communications.

Q5 - What’s the one trend in communications that isn’t being picked up on, or understood, by mainstream communicators?

There is a great deal of focus today on the new communications technologies and how they can be harnessed to maximum effect. But if we think back to John Naisbitt’s best selling book, Megatrends, we should not forget the powerful trend he called “High Tech/High Touch.” The more technologically advanced we become as a society and as individuals, he said, the more people crave “high touch” solutions at the same time. The trend to remember in communications is that word of mouth primarily takes place in person with people we know personally. Technology is an enabler, but it doesn’t replace the consumer’s need for a personal touch. Communicators, too, need to keep the right balance.

Q6 - Discuss briefly what you’ll be sharing with our audience at the Beyond Blogging event.

I’ll be talking about the underlying dynamics that have created a word of mouth revolution, whereby word of mouth is now far more important to consumers than it has ever been, and considerably more important to them than other forms of information. I’ll share new research coming from our TalkTrack™ study – research that is being released for the first time the week of the symposium – that will give new insight into the ways word of mouth really works, and implications for how communicators can become part of America’s word of mouth conversations.

Categories: Word of Mouth, Speakers