The Social Media 2007 conference, sponsored by Business Capital Edge, is being held April 5 and 6 in Chicago. It will cover essential issues about corporate blogging and podcasting and will include presentations from Southwest Airlines, attorney David Ritter, and examples in my presentation of how companies are using podcasting in B2B and B2C environments.

Provident Partners and the Business Capital Edge are promoting this great event by giving away two registrations to the conference. Complete the seven-question form to enter the drawing. If you’re curious about whether your company can benefit from integrating blogs or podcasts into your marketing mix, this is an excellent conference to attend. It will save hours of research and put you in touch with those who have first-hand experience with these new social media.

More on corporate blogging from the Social Media 2007 blog and our earlier podcast, the “Great Blog Debate.”

This year the talk is about how marketers can either leverage or participate in social media. I use the two words to indicate a school of thought. The “leverage” school I’ll define as more aggressive, more sales oriented. The “participate” school I define as one in which the marketer is on equal footing with others in the social group. This second school requires a different perspective for marketers and management within corporate America.

For example, blatant sales blogs that don’t disclose their corporate sponsors or connections to a PR firm are often exposed for attempting to deceive the reader. Corporate blogs don’t succeed at trying to be passed off as objective, consumer-generated conversations. Instead they cast doubt on blogs in general.

Those companies seeking to participate in social media do so first by changing their perspective of “typical” marketing. This change requires a dialogue, not one-way communication, and a commitment to realize that companies don’t control the message and certainly don’t control the market’s perception of them. Instead, marketing is conduit for dialogue of mutual reward. The company gets first-hand opinions from their audiences, and the audience gets a candid discourse with the company.

Each party has a responsibility to be civil, and the result of this environment greater trust, better product information, and stronger relationships to the brand. This type of relationship is not for every company, and that’s what most marketers are trying to figure out: Is it right for my company?

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