Last week while we were at BlogWorldExpo 2009, we asked a few smart people what they thought made a confident social brand. I spoke with folks from agencies, from monitoring firms, and from brands.  This is our first video, featuring Greg Verdino from Crayon.  His take?  If you’re already a confident brand, confident enough to stay true to the brand, you’re most of the way there.

We Ask Greg Verdino: What Makes a Confident Social Brand from Kat French on Vimeo.

David and I are back from this year’s BlogWorldExpo.  I had a great time, learned a lot and got the opportunity to meet several people in real life that I’d previously only known online.  

We did manage to snag a few smart folks and ask them our big question: "What makes a confident social brand?"  I’ll be posting the answers in video form here later this week. 

As for the conference itself, the keynotes were generally solid (the celebrity panel, in particular, was engaging and eye-opening).  However, some of the sessions were a bit hit or miss.  Some panels were really interactive and actionable, but a few were straight presentations with no real room for audience participation.  Also, some sessions seemed to be in the wrong "track" based on their actual subject matter.

The social media monitoring panel I attended, while one of the most helpful and actionable sessions, was entirely Q&A.  I can’t help but wonder if we might have missed some really good information that no one thought to ask about.  On the other hand, we didn’t spend the session mired in 101 level background.  

One of the most fascinating sessions I attended was actually in the Real Estate track.  It was on integrating/aggregating media into a single site.  The content of the session was wonderful (I learned some amazing tricks with Sweetcron and WordPress), but it seemed pretty advanced from a technical angle for the Real Estate track.  It seemed like it might have been a better fit for the Nuts & Bolts track.  

I did get the feeling that some sessions were shoehorned into a track because that track had a "space"–rather than because the content was genuinely that relevant to the track. A few people told me they were ignoring the tracks altogether and simply picking sessions based on descriptions.  

From the perspective of this blog, and corporate blogging in general, I would say that BlogWorldExpo is a good conference to attend.  Many corporate bloggers are new to blogging, so some of the 101 level sessions would be valuable.  It’s also a good opportunity to engage some of the established bloggers in your topical area of interest. 

Professionally, attending BWE09 helped me get reinvigorated about my work. Personally, it was great meeting some of my online colleagues in the real world.  

 … and we’re totally stoked!  BlogWorldExpo is going to be a great opportunity for David and I to get inspired by the best-in-breed work going on in the world of blogging, new media and social media.  

But we’re not forgetting about you guys.  We set out to create The Social Enthusiast as a resource for marketers who want to build a confident social brand.  So we’ll be grabbing the smart, the experienced, and the too-slow-to-outrun-us at the conference and asking them one question:

"How do you build a confident social brand?"

Our Flip cams are fired up and ready to go.  Hopefully we’ll be back with some great, brief, interesting and helpful tips to post here.  

You can follow our #BWE09 exploits by following @DavidFinch and/or @KatFrench on Twitter.