Contributor George Simpson reports in from this week's BlogOn Conference with the news that marketers are still anxious about blogs and social media.

A blog is born every second, according to recent research, with around 80,000 new weblogs created every day. Then there are chat rooms, forums, IM, Wikis, podcasting, social networks and innumerable other online forums. The content of these creations of “social media,” as they are fast becoming known, runs the gamut from teenaged daily diaries, to community forums like MySpace.com, to corporate websites, to customers angry (or occasionally happy) with a product or service that is routinely marketed through traditional media channels. It is those loose cannons that seem to most fascinate marketers, and at this week's BlogOn conference in New York these marketers pondered how to control, exploit or otherwise “engage” them.

The race is already on. On Monday, a Social Media Adoption Survey of corporate marketing communications professionals revealed that 61 percent of responding companies use external blogs for public relations and marketing and "demonstration of thought leadership.” More than 40 percent of respondents had a blogging CEO. The expected benefits of external blogs include improved brand recognition and external communications, as well as a vehicle for customer feedback.

And so it was with some anticipation that several hundred good souls gathered Tuesday for day two of BlogOn, where they were promised a discussion of “Can Advertising Be Social?” Commentary was provided by Steve Hall, publisher and editor of Adrants; Joseph Jaffe, president and founder, jaffe LLC and an iMedia editor at large; Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic and David Rubin, brand development director for Unilever (who pioneered Axe Deodorant Bodyspray’s viral marketing).

While there seemed to be universal agreement amongst the panelists that social media is here to stay, and that marketers ignore bloggers and other sources of online commentary on their products and services at their peril, there was precious little advice on how best to get started. 

In fact, during questions there was a palpable annoyance at a succession of speakers who apparently belittled selected corporate efforts to engage social media. In the audience, there seemed to be little comfort in the confession that the rules are still being written and that the best place to start is to listen carefully to what is being written about your company.

Moderator Steve Hall summarized the proceeding on Adrants the next day this way: “The primary message to marketers during the two day event was, number one, listen to the ongoing conversation, enabled by with which consumers can achieve a voice as powerful and widespread as marketers; number two, join the conversation by participating in these new media; and three, do not attempt to control the conversation with bullhorn marketing communications methods of old.”

Even listening isn’t easy.

Unilever’s Axe-man Rubin emphasized that marketers can’t control what is said in the social media environment, but that it is better to be talked about than to be considered “irrelevant” by customers.

Jaffe felt that too often corporate PR people were driving the effort to tap into social media. He suggested, rather, that brand managers ought to be on the front line.

All hands agreed that corporations might find news products or product extensions or ways to modify their existing lines or ways to adjust their ad messaging from customers who are so passionate about their interaction with brands that they actually sit down and write about them positively or negatively.

Jaffe pointed out that he thought it was irresponsible of Apple to have not at least acknowledged George Master’s independently produced iPod commercial, which ended up attracting substantial online attention. Jaffe suggested that the company could have used the spot to its benefit. He also felt that Nike should have responded to his own self-produced spot featuring Tiger’s hanging putt at the Master’s.

Oren Michels, VP of biz development for internet search engine and advertising network Feedster, which exhibited at BlogOn, said, “Marketers should look at social media as a resource where they can learn a great deal about their markets by observing what consumers write and what they read, such as what RSS feeds they subscribe to. Social media is not to be feared but embraced for what we can learn from it.” 

In spite of the survey results that indicated the PR folks are getting on the social marketing train, there was still widespread trepidation from marketing and advertising folks about how appropriately to enter an environment where control of the messaging has shifted from the producer and marketers to the consumer.

George Simpson works with new media companies to help them tell their stories and promote their brands. Read full bio.