Just Heather
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Blog Indiana Day 2: Syndication Strategies
Aug 14, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #3

Marcia Taylor, Newstex

Blurring of Mass Media:
Mainstream journalists who vblog
Bloggers have moved to media outlets
Corporations are blogging
Twitter is breaking news before CNN.
Blogs are now mainstream.
Newspapers are now providing more material on their blogs than in their print medium.

Syndication—when things have a life outside of itself.
Blogs –>RSS, Email newsletters, ???

Types of Syndication
Free or Bartered—no monetary payment, but blogs can find benefit from added exposure
Ad-Supported—paid a percentage of revenue from the websites where your content appears
Licensed—distributed with copyright, licensing, royalties

The rest of this session was basically a sales presentation on her company. This is where I zoned out and played on Twitter & Facebook instead. Why can’t I remember to click Uno when I’m playing on Facebook? I am never going to win this game.

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Blog Indiana Day 2: Speaker Q&A
Aug 14, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Speaker/Twitter Panel Q&A

Chris Brogan
Amy Stark
Krista Neher
Chris Baggott
Chris Lucas

This appears to be the official Chris panel, but they are also very fascinating tweeps. Clearly, I’ll have to label their answers by last name. Looking forward to hearing what they have to say. I’m not sure I’ll be able to capture it well in this format, but I’ll certainly try. This is not at all a full transcript, nor is it word for word because I’m not a stenographer. I’ve tried to capture the best quotes on the questions that most interested me.

Q. (BradJWard): Blogging is dead? The conversation has left the blogosphere? Discuss.
Brogan: “Knitting is not dead 100 years later, nor is blogging 8 years later.”
Baggott: Companies are trying to get more human.
Lucas: As marketers, you get tired of your stuff long before the market does. People are willing to write things off as dead before they see the real impact. You can’t get bored with a tool before you have conquered it.
Neher: The key to a successful campaign is to integrate all the tools. A blog can be a really great centerpiece to a good campaign.
Stark: Blogging is great for marketing, but it’s really customer service. Too often we put social media in the PR/Marketing department when it really should be in customer service.

Q. (audience): Chris Brogan, on your earlier keynote you mentioned sharing information and rolodex. For the sake of argument, if I have Senators and supermodels, I should really just give those out?
Brogan: Not everybody should know everybody, but you should share contacts with people who need to have them. If you know someone who could benefit or should have the ear of a senator and you know one, please share.

Q. (audience): In light of the review issue and IZEA’s new sponsored tweets, how do you feel about disclosure?
Brogan: I’m all for it.
Stark: Full disclosure.
Brogan: Full frontal disclosure!
Stark: My brother owns Beef & Boards and they’re competing on RTV6 A-List. When I tweeted the link to vote, I stated that this is my brother, please vote for him.

Q. (indymojo): Lots of talk of twitter spam. Where is the line between spam and business/personal account with promotions?
Lucas: One thing you can do is have a personal account and a separate business account. Our biz account has a specific goal and its intent is to let people know what is going on with the company. You can integrate some of it on your personal account, but know your audience to know what level is too much.
Stark: Your work is part of who you are so it would be inauthentic to not share what you do.
Neher: If it’s not something you would do in the real world, don’t do it online. There’s a place for promoting your business, but it comes out overtime.
Brogan: The difference between spam and promoting business in relationships is when.

Q. (audience): Start doing anything well and the haters come out. Does that make your shit burn?
Brogan: People tend to see the internet as not human. I just ignore it.
Stark: I think the worst insult in social media is ignore. If you talk about the haters, you’re giving them power. Ignore!
Neher: I think it depends why they’re hating you. If it’s misinformation, you can correct that. If they just hate you because they want to, you can get upset about it or you can ignore it.

Live Tweet Wall Questions that went unanswered:

Q. (mooshinindy): Do you feel all blogs have some sort of intrinsic value? Or are some just douchebaggery?

Q. (mamacita): As an internet liason/social media team member for a business, what should my top priority be? What to do first each day?

Q. (rmpuckett): Where does this panel think twitter is going? I frequently hear folks predict that it will continue to exist “in some form.”

Read the comments.
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Blog Indiana Day 2: Website Analytics for Blogging
Aug 14, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #2

James Paden

What do Analytics tell us?
Visitors: unique, location, loyalty
Traffic sources: websites, keywords
Pages: views, times on page, bounce/exit rate (learn what pages are most engaging)
Goals: conversion rates, funnel
Usage: clicks, scrolling, mouse tracking (current technolgy allows you to track what users clicked on, where they move their mouse, what they looked at)

Bounce/Exit Rate—how many people leave before reading another post. (60% to 80% bounce rates are common, 20% to 40% is outstanding.)

Don’t worry about hits—look at page views and unique visitors.

Why Use it
Write more targeted, engaging content
Measure marketing effectiveness

Google Analytics
Free—if you don’t use this, install it now! It can’t backtrack, only analyzes since installation.
Industry standard
Advanced Segmentation
Limisted Customizability
No User-Identifiable Information
Social Media Metrics Plugin

Analyzing Data
If less than half your traffic comes from search engines, learn about driving search traffic.

Goals—setup specific things you want to track (Google allows 4 goals)

Woopra/Clicky
Free & Paid options
Real Time Stats
User-Identifiable information—allows you to track individual users; you can track how specific visitors use your site
Fancy/Rich interface
Woopra: Live chat with visitors
Clicky: Visitor tagging

Hit Traffic
Paid, 60-day trial
keyword tracking
to-do list
blogger/typepad integration

Crazy Egg
Paid
Click Heatmap & Overlays—tracks exactly where on a page people clicked

Click Tale
Paid
Interaction tracking
session videos— watch exactly how a user used a website

Chart Beat
Paid
Realtime dashboard
Analytics, interation and marketing

WordPress Stats
Won’t tell you anything more than Google analytics, but it’s a nice built-in basic solution

Alexa
Free
Publically available
traffic stats
low reliability for small sites (guesstimates some)
Useful for comparing to competitors

I asked: Is there any software that provides data on internal searches so you can track what people are looking for within your site?
A. Google analytics can do this if you provide it with your local search page and the search query.

With a few minutes to spare, he’s going into some advanced analytics examples. It’s fascinating, but visual. Also, since I’m new the concept of analytics there’s no way I can cover it properly.

Read the comments.
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Blog Indiana Day 2: Blogging for Search
Aug 14, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Session #1

Douglass Karr, DKNewMedia

Confession: I ducked out of my originally chosen session when I realized it wasn’t what I needed. I’m sure it’s great for a lot of the people in the room, but it was more basic than I had anticipated. That means I missed the first quarter of this session, but I’m jumping in where we are. I learned more in the first 2 minutes after arrival than I did in 15 minutes of the the session. Yes, I chose wisely, my friend.

Search Engines are Dumb
You are your words!
Search engines find you via keywords.

*Wordle* Tool to see if your blog is on topic.

SEO is a process, not an event. It is a strategy that constantly changes.
Keywords change over time, but if you are already established as an authority on a topic your blog will evolve organically to fit.

There are different ways of saying the same things over and over.

One topic per post—don’t write posts that are all over the place, stick to one main idea.

Analytics: Find What Drives Business
Critical component that is not in your analytics—the people who are finding your search results and not clicking through
Understand what drives search before people even get to your results
Beware of keywords—some keywords drive traffic but not business (measuring conversions is critical)
Pay attention to which authors are driving traffic and/or conversions
Referring sources—pay attention to which of your efforts are driving traffic and conversions
Setting Goes

Ignite Old Content
Don’t just move foward…move back!
Go back and edit old posts—a post may be dead to your regular readers, but search engines still read it and rank based on updates
You can change the post title, but leave the slug the same—never change a url!

It’s Not Easy
Starting a blog is easy, but creating an effective blog that people use is not.
Most blogs are abandoned; most business blogs suck
Don’t just post or rehash press releases

Don’t believe that isn’t going to work—people are searching for you, your products or your services…be there!

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Blog Indiana Day 2: Keynote
Aug 14, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Keynote: Attention Wars and the Rise of the Trust Agent

Chris Brogan

I’m not sure I’m capturing this one well. You really just have to see this guy in person. We’re currently watching a photo slide show while he name drops. And it’s beyond awesome!

The Attention Wars
We’re not competing with tv, podcasts, banner ads—we’re competing with everything

“How many ADD kids does it take to change a light bulb? Let’s ride bikes!”

“There will never be another mega superstar because we’re all superstars to 500 people now!” (Side note: I told you I was kind of a big deal! That’s why I wear a crown.)

3 Levels of attention
Awareness
Reputation
Trust

Trust Equation
Trust = social capital
social capital + web = links
links = traffic
traffic = social proof
social capital + web = a big f’n network

Make your own game—it’s not a niche. Be the only one doing it.

“The Long Tail is a great justification about why you can be a loser & still feel good about yourself.”

Find your value differentiation
Create a new word for yourself
learn the systems – decide when you should be attuned or distorted

When you are in a circle, you have the transferred wonderfulness of being one of “us” – cool by association.

How to be one of us
Find the agent zero
seek frictionless distribution
be everywhere and create/maintain bonds
all knowledge is vocabulary—the more you learn people’s languages, the more it matters
insider language is huge

Leverage can be time, money, etc

On Bill Gates
On “Who ever figured geeks would inherit the earth?”
You can get to be the richest guy on earth by becoming the almost richest guy.

Archimedes effect
build off your previous success
never start from nothing

How to be Agent Zero
Be the priest; build the church—get your religion, then help others do the same
be the relationship before the sale—don’t try to sell your product if I don’t even know you.
you live or die by your database—do not keep all your contacts in Twitter or Facebook (make the most basic spreadsheet and keep everything in it!)
be part of everyone’s 150—if, primates can only truly maintain 150 relationships, how do you connect with thousands? Really maintain a relationship with 1 person in each group you want to be a part of.

Being a human audience means connecting with people. Being a trust agent online means being human at a distance.

Connect people constantly
share rather than hoard—share your rolodex, share your ideas (they have a shelf life anyway)
practice simple touch points of loyalty
self aware vs. self involved—it’s never about you, it’s about what people can take and learn from you.

Support the people around you because they’ll never forget it.

Be a coach, not a teacher—coaches go beyond the material and all the way into your lifestyle

Give your ideas handles—share small, packaged ideas people can pick up and run with
Teach them to fish
Bring your own dialtone

It’s always about the people; it’s never about the tools.

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Blog Indiana Day 1: Moving from Twitter to Real Deals
Aug 13, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #5

Pat East Hanapin Marketing

How To:

Step 1 – follow the right people.

Step2 – engage and interact with them

Step3 – take it offline

What qualifies as a deal?

Anything that dramatically moves the business forward:

Anything that directly generates revenue

Anything that indirectly generates revenue and is just one step away from generating revenue

Anything newsworthy and/or helps grow business

Follow the right people

Choose your area of expertise; informs your target audience—follow people in that area.

Use Twitter search for keywords and locations

Follow people you know and people you want to know.

Engage and Interact

Be valuable: don’t think “what are you doing,” think “what would people find interesting?”

Respond to @mentions

Don’t worry about seeing every single tweet that passes by – if you are following enough people in a niche someone will retweet the important stuff.

Be specific. Just because they’re following doesn’t mean they’re listening. Stay at least 75% on-topic.

Take it offline

Contact them – meet for coffee, meet for lunch, meet at a conference

Pick and choose targets – select those you have interacted with before on Twitter

Reverse the process and take it online – follow people you meet on Twitter

Tactics for More Influence

Influence is more than quantity, it’s quality

Follow the people your friends follow

Add to the conversation: Tweet about what others are talking about (don’t just repeat or RT, add your own thoughts)

TwitTemperature.com measures how much you’re talking about things that are hot topics

Start a conversation: Tweet what others aren’t talking about but should be

Make people think

Always follow those you’ve met offline

Keep your eyes open

Follow local people

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Blog Indiana Day 1: Effective Blog Writing Techniques
Aug 13, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #4

Erik Deckers, Pro Blog Service

5 Simple Rules of Writing Quickly
Quality is important, but you have other stuff to do with your day.

Plan first.
Think about it during your downtime—in the car, in the shower, etc.

Plow through.
There’s really no such thing as writer’s block. It’s really just lack of motivation or getting stuck on what to say. The best cure for writer’s block is just to sit down and start writing. The rhythm of writing and stream of consciousness will eventually lead to what you want to say.

Fill it in later.
Start with an outline or bullet points and create paragraphs out of it later.
Write a lead; string leads together or space them out and add content to each lead.

Write everyday.
Writer’s write. They don’t watch tv, sleep, etc. Write everyday, no matter what it is.

Keep it short. Real short.
The shorter it is, the more likely people are actually going to read it.
If you end up writing a huge post, chop it up to create multiple posts and post date so you’re ahead of the game.
Series posts bring people back.

5 Simple Rules of Writing Well
Write for a Clever 12-year-old
We don’t like to read things written at a college level. We only have so much mental space and don’t want to fill it with heady articles.
Blog readers don’t usually want to think too hard.
Funnel—all the big, important information is in the first sentence/paragraph so the importance of the information gets smaller as the article goes on.
Bloggers should skip the background information that doesn’t need to be there. Keep posts to 300-500 words.

Be clear.
“For sale: baby shoes, never used.” ~Ernest Hemingway (the 6 word short story)

Use short words. Use short paragraphs too.
You can have 1 word paragraphs, despite English rules.

Edit mercilessly.
Revise and rewrite. Cut out useless words.

Don’t overwrite.
Say what you need to say with the fewest words possible.

5 Simple Rules for SEO writing
Write for readers, not spiders.
Being number 1 on Google doesn’t do any good if people leave 3 seconds after they arrive because they don’t want to read crap.
If you write for readers, readers will come. Write good, quality content that interests people.

Use unique keywords.
Erik is number 1 on Google for “It’s in my raccoon wounds.” for a post on his child’s vomit.

Integrate Keywords Naturally
Title
Lede
Subheadings
Related words and synonyms

Don’t repeat your keywords.
Don’t pack key words. This is bad writing. No one is going to stick around to actually read it.

Anchor text
Be sure to use keywords in the actual post. It must be relevant.

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Blog Indiana Day #1: The Long Tail of the Social Web
Aug 13, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #3

Brad Ward, Blue Fuego
Based on The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

Oh, boy. I’m not sure I can do this one justice. Lots of graphs & charts. Taking notes probably won’t help me grasp it all in an hour. Clearly, I should have read the book first. Maybe if I understood The Long Tail, I could better learn how it relates to the Social Web. We shall see.

Not everyone tweets, but that won’t matter if you use Twitter API. They don’t have to find you and follow you to see the content on your page.

Even if you aren’t serving a large audience with some of your pages, it is important to get content to the people when they need it.

User Generated Content
Conversation is in the Long Tail—conversation is user generated. Comments give people a reason to come back and participate. As participation increases, so does content and engagement.

90% of the people who read your content are just lurkers. 9% will participate occasionally. 1% is brand loyal and engaged.

1% is the Gold Standard—if 1% of your fans comment/like your content, you are doing an amazing job.

Brand Generated Content
Build the Foundation—Your Website (navigation, content, etc)

“It’s not about what you think the customers want or want the customers to want. It’s about creating anassembing a collection of tools that captures the attention of people who truly care” ~Seth Godin

Choose your weapons—collection of tools: email, YouTube, forums, blog, Facebook
Facebook:
Watch backend analytics for unsubscribed fans as well as interactions
58.4% of pages open to a tab other than the wall; pages that open to the wall averaged 57.63% growth vs 23.78% growth.

Drawing in user generated content to use as on-site content (YouTube, tweet streams, etc)

Social Web Callouts: Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc buttons

Secrets of the Long Tail
PHCC: Patience (it takes time to build your brand/niche), Hustle (get involved in commenting), Content, lose Control (you don’t own the content)

Think and, not or—Facebook and MySpace, not either or

Listen to the conversation; participate in the conversation; host the conversation

Be prepared for what’s coming.

Own it. Own your presence. Watch what’s being said about you and your competitors.

Have a ‘Max Strategy’ (Take whatever you are doing and do it to the max; “…since the marginal cost of distribution is free, you might as well put things everywhere.” ~Erich Schmidt

Research and Repeat. Make sure the things you are doing are effective and that you’re serving the user in the right way.

Disclaimer: Today is my first attempt at live blogging. I needed to take notes and this seemed like the best idea, given the topic. These are my raw notes as they happen. I’ll come back later to fix obvious typos and errors, but if I decide to expand on anything I heard, it would be in a separate post. To quote my girls, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”

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