Shel Israel liveblogs Steve Rubel's keynote speech at The Blogging Enterprise conference in Austin, Tx, and while it's a big wet kiss of a post, it nicely captures Steve's great energy and smarts--The finale-- 4 points for using blogs to manage customers-- from Steve, via Shel:

• Find--determine which bloggers are most likely to become your company evangelists. Understand what's being said & join the conversation
• Listen--use a combination of Technorati, Feedster, IceRocket Pubsub et al. to track what matters to you. Understand the common thread, the beat on the street and take it seriously.
• Engage--show bloggers you care. Blogger complained abut not being able to find his favorite deodorant. Unilever sent him a case of the store and told him where in his neighborhood he could get more. That's engagement. That shows customers you care. "It puts you at eye level with the people you care about most.
• Empower--help people achieve something they could not do on their own. Create programs that create customer evangelists.