In September, I went to the Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada and spoke on a pair of panels (Blog World Expo 2008 recap). The final panel that I spoke on was called “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media.” Here’s the panel description:

This panel will discuss how not to approach social media for people looking to promote themselves and/or their companies through blogs, forums, social networking sites and other types of communities online. We’ll highlight and discuss strategies and tactics that can damage you and your brand, such as introtisements and adverquestions (veiled advertisements), lying about your affiliations, never giving anything of value, being ignorant of your surroundings and much more. The end result will be a better understanding of how to utilize the social web to get the word out about yourself and/or your organization. We learn not only from best practices, but from poor practices. Who you want to be, directly relates to who you don’t want to be.

I was joined on the panel by Lee LeFever (Principal, Common Craft), Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer, Doe-Anderson and Blogger, SocialMediaExplorer.com) and Darren Rowse (Owner, ProBlogger.net; Co-Founder, Sixfigureblogging.com; Co-Founder and VP Training, b5media and Co-Author, “ProBlogger: The Book“).

The panel went really well and I was really proud of it and how it all came together, from organization to finish. The only thing that I regret is that I didn’t switch out the battery on my camcorder before going in the session, as my camera died and we lost probably 15 minutes of questions which kills me because the questions were the best part and there was a funny moment or two in there. Hopefully, the Blog World Expo folks taped the questions segment and will release it at some point.

Thank you to my friend Chrispian who did an excellent job manning the camera.

No further description needed, here is the video. After viewing, please let me know what you thought! Thank you for watching.


Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media Panel at Blog World Expo from ManagingCommunities.com on Vimeo.

In addition to Vimeo, the video is also on YouTube (parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5).