I went to the Ann Arbor Ad Club meeting last night, at the dreadful SPARK place (sorry folks, you’ve got a great mission but an awful space), to hear about SEO and engaging the blogosphere. I know some about the former and well, I live in the latter, so I’m not sure why I felt compelled to attend, but there you have it.

The talks were good - Linda Gerard from Pure Visibility was her perky and engaging self, evangelizing for good SEO practices (the white hat, google-fu kind). I picked up one thing I hadn’t thought about - don’t use your company name in the page title, use something descriptive (keyword-y). There were two women there from MS&L (a PR firm) who work in the capacity of helping their large clients engage the blogosphere. They were good, too - talking about how it’s best to be completely transparent in your communications, and how the difference between traditional media outlets and bloggers is that the traditional is one-way communication and the blogoshere is two-way.

At one point, they were talking about a case study where they were promoting an online art project dealing with environmental issues. They mentioned that they wrote to bloggers and that 7 influential blogs picked up the story, which was great for the project, especially as one of them was Boing Boing. Immediately, hands went up - everyone wanted that list of 7 blogs, presumably so they could pitch them too. (head->desk, head->desk) The MS&L people, of course, meant 7 blogs that were influential in the sphere they were promoting to (environmental and/or art) - good luck pitching a new fishing widget or local pizza joint or cleaning product to them. And the MS&L people had already talked about this - you can’t just send bloggers press releases! It won’t work! Using the blogosphere as part of your marketing program is not a quick process, it’s something you have to research and you have to take the time to actually build relationships with the specific bloggers who can help your cause.

These sorts of responses (web! blog! 2.0! I don’t know what it is, but I want it!) are hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. This blind, groping desire to use the web for gain without taking the time to forge a plan or even have a rough idea of reasonable expectations is beyond me. In my feed reading this morning, Jeremy Keith summed up thoughts and feelings I haven’t quite been able to articulate:

The crowds at the big keynote events just weren’t my kind of people. That’s not to say they were bad people; they just don’t love the Web. They see the opportunities and power offered by the Web. They see how the Web can help them. But they don’t love the Web.

Yes - that’s it exactly. The people asking those questions aren’t dumb or bad or anything like that, they just see the web as a business tool instead of seeing it the way I do, as an evolving, beautiful thing that combines art and logic and people in a way that is simply lovely and amazing to me. As a web lover, it’s sometimes frustrating to talk to web users - they don’t care so much about the big picture, they want the direct path. The direct path is certainly a valid path, and will accomplish certain goals. I’m much happier taking in all the sights (sites?), wandering off the path, exploring the larger landscape, enjoying the beauty of the place - and that’s a valid path, too.