Just Heather
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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!

Read the comments.
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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.”

Read the comments.
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Blog Indiana Day #1: The Math Behind Your Blog
Aug 13, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #2

Mike Seidle, Pro Blog Service

Why the Numbers Matter
You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

Three Blog Types:
Ad supported—makes money for selling ads, affiliates or pay per click
Business blog—blog generates leads or sales
Other— everyone else

Numbers Everyone Needs to Know
Visitors—number of people who visit the site.
Uniques or Unique Visitors—does not count repeat visitors
Page Views—number of actual pages viewed
Bounce Rate—Number of people are “one and done”
Top Pages—content that gets the most traffic
Referrers—who sends your site traffic
Keywords—what words are being used to find your website

Knowing your top content helps you know what people are interested in so you can create content they want.

Analytics Tools
Log Analyzers—track requests to your web server
(Analog, AWSats, SmarterStats, Webalyzer, Urchin, WebTrends, Click Tracks, etc)
Script Based—track when script or pixel are accessed *more accurate data*
(Google Analytics, Yahoo Analyitics, Omniture, WebTrends, Click Tracks)

Mike Recommends
If you have mad money, Radian6+Webtrends.
If you don’t:
Yahoo Anaytics + time
Yahoo is real time. Google is not.
Real time matters if you start getting lots of traffic.

It’s important to use something that is screening out bot traffic.

Ad Supported Blogs
What You Need to Know
Page Views—by author, topic, day of week
Impressions—how many ad views your site shows
CTR—ad clickthrough rate
CPM—price per thousand impressions
EPC—what you make on average when someone clicks on an ad
Comparative Rankings
Compete, Alexa, Nielson NetRatings

Use numbers to set prices and make your blog appealing to advertisers.
Advertisers will use comparative ranking sites to

EPC = Advertising Income / Ad Clicks (try calculating by author or topic)
Proj. Income = (Proj PV/1000) (CPM) or Proj. PV x CTR x EPC
ROI = 1 – Cost/(Income-Cost)

Business Blogs
Goal is leads or sales.

What You Need to Know
Top Pages
Conversion Rate—number of people who turn into leads or sales (don’t edit – include everything)
CPA – Cost per action: what it costs to get a lead or sale
ROI – the bottom line is what really matters
*Use a contact form so you know which leads found you through your blog.

What Business Blogs Do Not Need to Know
Conversation Rate
Conversation Depth
Authority
*It’s all about leads generated so the engagement & authority is irrelevant.

The idea of a business’s blog enhancing the brand value is bogus if the leads/sales generated aren’t increased.

Okay, this is the point where I realize that I’m not a business blog and I no longer care. Here is where I started playing on Facebook and Twitter and forgot to take notes. It’s also where my uber late night and early morning caught up with me. I’m eating Milk Duds and trying not to think of lunch. My bad.

Other Blogs
What You Need to Know
The usual: PV, UPV, Bounce Rate, etc
Conversation Rate—how many comments you get per post
Conversation Depth—Do you get big or little comments?
Authority—how important is your blog?

Authority
What makes a blog credible—the people in your audience
The right audience—depends on the blog
Finding your authority
1. Social Media Authority—focus is on influence (values links, conversations and aggregates like Technorati, Radian 6-Style, Google Centric)
2. Traffic—focus is on readers & numbers

Secret to Gaining Influence:
Write blog articles others will blog about
Make friends with other bloggers so you will talk about one another’s posts on your blogs
Use outrage. It works.

There’s no differentiation between good authority or bad authority.

The power of Radian-6: It exposes relationships. It’s expensive but worth it!

This is my first attempt at live blogging. I need 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.”

Read the comments.
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Blog Indiana Day #1: Productivity & Blogging
Aug 13, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Live Blogging Session #1

Robby Slaughter, Slaughter Development

Lesson #1: Almost all bloggers quit eventually
95% off all blogs are abandoned.

Lesson #2: Amazing Blogs are Regular
Great blogs are updated frequently.
Patterns create success.

Lesson #3: Quality doesn’t matter (much)
We’ve all owned a car that just gets us from point a to point b.
Bloggers actually debate the value of grammar and spelling.
Every blog has terrible entries. It’s out there and part of the blog’s history.

Lesson #4: The most recent post wins
When you have a baby, you are the most important person in the world for your friends & family. Until another baby is born.
Google loves recent content. ~Doug Karr, Marketing Tech Blog

Lesson #5: We are all vain
Bloggers write because they like being read. Otherwise, you’d keep a private journal under your bed.
Blogs succeed when people talk about them.
Engaged visitors = people who buy.

Applying the lessons
1. Everybody quits:
Pick a day to blog – put it on your calendar.
Pick times to blog – choose 2, one to get it started and another to finish/publish.
Develop a process.

2. Great blogs are regular:
Don’t imply otherwise.
Don’t apologize for not blogging.
“I haven’t posted in a long time is the Web 2.0 version of Under Construction.”

3. Quality doesn’t matter.
Let go of pet peeves. (should be part of your process)
Repetition is more important than creativity.

4. Newest post wins
Bury bad posts with new posts.
Respond to headlines. If something happens, write your own post about it. Commentary on current events puts you in the forefront.
Get the last word. The conversation never ends in the Blogosphere—you can always have the last word.

5. We’re all vain.
Get attention by praising other blogs. Talk about it, write about in your own blog, email it to your friends. Mention posts that you liked and expand on them in your own blog.
Get attention by arguing. Picking a fight/disagreeing with another blogger gets attention.
Promote your blog—tell people it’s great. Go to their website, comment on posts and mention your own posts on similar topics.
We’re all vain—accept it and use it.

Blogging Faster:
Characterize Blog Posts:

  1. Response— to another blog, news article or op-ed content
  2. Summary—of an event we sponsored or attended
  3. Continuation—of a previous post, possibley from months or years ago
  4. Perspective—on a bit of common knowledge or an everyday expression
  5. Announcement—of an upcoming event or proposed action

Schedule & Constrain
At most 1 hour
No more than twice daily
Start with once weekly

Divide by activity
Brainstorming (coming up with an idea)
Writing (putting together the post)
Editing (polishing—grammar, spelling, layout)
*Everyone isn’t good at all 3—find partners that can meet your deficiencies.

Blogging in 600 seconds:
Write your topic into the post title just to keep in mind what you’re writing about. You can change it later. (Tip: write the topic in all lowercase to remind yourself that it isn’t the final title.)

Write something you know. Create a lead.
Include a plug—talk about something else you do well that’s related.

Q&A
Q. How much does the editing process take away from the tone?
A. The balance between being readable and accessible vs. formal depends on the style of the blog. Be careful that your editing doesn’t destroy the tone of your overall blog. Maintain a common style or voice.

Q. Do you typically add images to your posts?
A. It’s pretty tough in 600 seconds, but usually visuals are good. Photos can even become your inspiration. Use them as part of the brainstorming process.

Q. How do you know where to stop?
A. Use a timer. Limit your words. (Slaughter Development has a 500 word max; Robby’s personal blog is long essays and has a min of 1500 words)

Q. How do you use networking to drive productivity?
A. Include networking as part of your process. Twitter the posts; if it’s a response to someone else, comment on their blog and use a quote from your post.

This is my first attempt at live blogging. I need 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.”

Read the comments.
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Blog Indiana Day #1: Keynote
Aug 13, 2009 | Filed Under: Making Connections

Shawn and Noah have put together a great conference for us. I’m excited to be here to learn about the things I need to be doing to make my blog and Inexpensively what I know it could be. They really know what their doing when it comes to connecting. They’ve been on top of every question I’ve had on the conference—even the ones I didn’t think to ask.

It was a bit disconcerting to walk in and have someone I’ve never met greet me by name. I guess my avatar looks just like me. Who knew? I’m so bad about names and faces that it throws me when others aren’t. It actually happens all the time, though, so I guess I need to get used to it. (Yes, Mom, I’m wearing makeup!)

This is my first attempt at live blogging. I need 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.”

Live Blogging Keynote

Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer: The Rules Are There Are No Rules

“If the rules are there are no rules, what the hell is this guy going to say? I’ll get to that, in about 40 minutes.”

The rules are there for a reason, but sometimes they’re meant to be broken.

Design Matters:
Design doesn’t matter in the tech/social media world because more than 50% of readers are never going to visit your website—they will subscribe to your RSS feeds instead.

Engaging:
The more you engage with people, the more connected you are with your audience.
A blog that does not allow comments is not really a blog. It’s a personal publication platform.

Blog Frequently:
Deb Schultz, Jeremey Pepper, Dave Weiner—Don’t blog frequently, but when they do it is incredibly compelling and engaging.
Keep it short and simple. People want short snacks in today’s attention deficit world.

Play Nice:
Some who don’t can get away with it because they are entertaining, if you get their humor and/or sarcasm.

Provide Value to Your Reader:
Value is relative—any blog will have value to someone, even if it’s just your mom.

Advertising:
Most blogs will never make more than $24.99 (and no one will cut you a check until you make $25)
Monetizing blogs is not about advertising; it is capitalizing on opportunities that your blog provides.

Driving Traffic:
Promote your blog.
The rules say be active on Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Propeller, Mixx.
The theory is readers vote for good content. “The theory is bullshit.” None of the front page content on social media sites is actually based on what the community wants to see. It’s based on the back scratching and trading of a few hundred people.

How to Use Social Bookmarking Sites/Breaking the Rules:
Vote for good content when you see it.
Help friends with votes, if I like the content.

Social News/Bookmarking Success:
Spend all day on the site.
Get secret invites to voting circles
Pander to people via IM
“all the damn time!”

There is a lot of great advice, guidelines and “rules” but bottom line is are you happy with your blog? The success of your blog is really determined by how you feel about it.

Jason’s Rules for Blogging:
Be bold. Say something that other people are not. If your blog offers nothing different than what other people in your niche are saying, you’re just a me too. Take a different stance now and then.
Be fair. Let your opposing readers have their say. Letting them have the last word now and then is classy.
Follow the rules…sometimes. Good advice is still good advice.
Be loyal to your audience. Remember what people come there for and stay true to it. See what drives traffic. See what people comment on. Write about what your readers want to talk about.
Write good stuff!

Q&A
Q. What would you call it then, if there are no rules? Aren’t we still in need of rules and guidelines?
A. I would call it Blogging Best Practices.

Q. What about ghost writers?
A. Transparency is key in social media. Ghost writers are the opposite. The biggest problem is getting found out. You run the risk of being disingenuous. It intimates that you have something to hide.

Read the comments.
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