The New Communications Forum started today at the beautiful Hyatt Vineyard Creek hotel.

I’m live-blogging the social media/beyond blogging pre-con workshop with David Parmet.

There is a mix of knowledge here – some very new to Web 2.0 and some who are quite savvy.  David is talking about the importance of RSS feeds and blog content in terms of Google ranking.

Tip:  When you are writing articles, press releases or blog posts, think about your keywords and use them in your titles and headlines. Do your keyword research and get a content strategy in place.

Tags:  Use tags to spread your content and let others find it.  Example:  David tells the story of how his wife discovered the tags on Del.icio.us about lighting when they were doing remodeling.  She was tagging ideas and then found all these other cool ideas that others had tagged too.

Categories on blogs are the bigger, overall sections of the blog. Each blog post should be tagged with relevant keywords. The amazing thing about tagging is that when poele add tags it spread your content into more places.  Example:  The person who took the original photo, or wrote the blog post tags it with certain keywords. Anyone who finds the content will tag it with words they associate with it.  It can spread into more audiences who will find the content when they search.

The most important step you need to master in Web 2.0 and social media is how to listen.  It’s vital to know what is being said about you and your company. (Note: You can get a free copy of the PRoactive Report which covers Online Reputation Management in detail) 

How do you publicize your blog? 

• Read the blogs of others
• make relevant comments about their posts 
• Transparency is paramount
• If there is a remark that you can address for the company, do so.
• Link to them in your blog. Links are the currency of the Internet.
• Write good content that adds value to the conversation.

Tip for PR folk: Mentioning an A-list blogger in your post can attract their attention.

Video blogging:  Buy a Flip from Pure Video on Amazon or Costco for about $100.  Add videos to your blog and to a sitelike Blip TV or YouTube.  You can use Tube Mogul as one place to upload and distribute your content to other video sharing sites.  It is a free service and it has metrics that allows you to see where your video is getting most play.

Podcasting:  Use a digital recorder that has a USB connection so it’s fast and easy to get the files onto your computer. M-audio is a good one.

The takeaway from this session is that blogging, podcastng and videocasting is easy to do, costs almost nothing and gets great results.

There is a learning curve. But once you get going and get familiar with the tools and the format, the rewards are vast.