Michael Phelps gets caught smoking pot, the judge doesn’t press the case and drops it. The only sponsor who dropped Phelps was Kellogs. Good PR move? Maybe in a 1.0 world. No less than 11 websites were setup instantly supporting Phelps and calling for a boycott - social media knocked out Kellogs.

What lesson to take from this? Two:

1. Understand the risk – what’s bigger, pot or a guy who’s a hero to millions, a dedicated athlete, symbol of American pride, and winner of 8 (EIGHT) Olympic gold medals?

2. Understand your audience – are they the kind of people to connect closer to their idols when they do something that humanizes them (for example, make a mistake)?

The backlash against Phelps’ critics is amazing – and in today’s self-publishing, easy-to-access soapbox that can reach millions instantly – you have to be very very careful which side you are on.

What’s interesting is that “Web 2.0” connects directly to society’s true sentiment by accessing individual commentary.

So understand your audience and balance the risk with this insight to ensure you find yourself on the winning side of the marketing game.

Here is my first proposal that went in to speak at the Web 2.0 NY conference taking place in Sept-08.

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People are Googling your organization and keywords related to what you do. Are they finding you? Once they find you, they Google you to learn more about you from other sources. What are they finding there?

This talk is about building more (higher quality) traffic and ensuring that traffic converts through establishing the expert presence with a golden reputation.

Your reputation is priceless – don’t let it be left to chance. Experts are respected, experts who are validated and recommended by others, receive more business. It’s that simple. The perception of your online reputation is critical and you must learn how to take ownership of it.

Learn how to use on the Internet to dominate search engine rankings for your keywords and your organization’s name at the same time. This talk will expose the powerful concepts of Web 2.0 – where giving more means getting more – to market your site. You will learn how to position your organization as an expert in its industry/sector and dominate search engine visibility using wikis, blogs, forums, social bookmarking, and other Web 2.0 sites.

Who should attend: Corporate, Start-ups, Government, Non-Profit, and Small and Medium sizes Businesses; any organization looking to the internet for marketing and communications – that’s you!

Tags: SMO, PR 2.0, SEO, SEM, Authority Engineering

Technical Expertise required: Low