Mindsigh

Blogher08 – A roundup

Posted by Jerry on July 21st, 2008 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology

Despite being plagued by the tyranny of timezones (Australia) and some technical hitches with the vid feeds and audio, I really enjoyed what I was able to experience of this great conference from within SecondLife. However, for much of the content – especially the breakout sessions, which were not streamed into SecondLife – I am largely reliant on the summaries put up by those who were there in person.

Happykatie put up a good summary of the breakout session on:
DIY content syndication and promotion.

The panelists were:
* Moderator Krista Neher;
* Gwen Bell;
* Anne-Marie Nichols; and
* Esther Brady (aka faintstarlite)

For her it was about the way the interwebs make it easy to create, post and promote content across video, audio and blog posts.

Social bookmarking is a key to this. Social bookmarking is a bit like the Devil’s tea party where you have a sumptuous banquet and the cutlery is two metres long, so you have to feed each other across the table. Social bookmarking promotes your work by you promoting that of others, whether they are bloggers, twitters, or social aggregation sites like facebook, myspace or bebo. One way is to use StumbleUpon to show your approval of other’s content – and maybe they’ll do the same for you. It’s a ‘pay it forward’ philosophy that seems to work for web 2.0.

Others do video content. And although there are many vid sites out there, YouTube seems to be a constant. If you put vids out there, they should also be in YouTube.

Twitter is made for people to jump in – it suits those who want to just join the global conversation like they’ve just walked into a room and after a little bit, just start throwing out their own part of the conversation. It is not a space made for didactic types who want to show off their knowledge. Collaboration is a good way to get going – working with other bloggers. And leave thoughtful comments on blogs that share your conversation, and use that to participate in and build your community.

Happykatie recommends using “…Friendfeed to search for your company and product name to track what people are saying about you. It gives you an opportunity to engage another blogger and grow your community…” And there’s a heap more on Happykate’s site!

Thanks for a great writeup Happykatie 🙂

Kribaby also gave a great writeup – summarising five tips from BlogHer08 DIY content Syndication – a session she moderated.

Here tips were:

• Depth over breadth
• Leverage other blogs
• Find niche sites
• Analyse your current traffic; and
• Not all traffic is created equal

You’ll have to click over to her site for the expansion on these excellent tips.

Thanks for sharing these Kribaby/Krista

The panelists were

Writing Workshop
Web Teacher blogged about the writing workshop, and loved the discussion about tools for writers, including:

• Wordtracker – for finding the right word
• co.mments.com – for tracking comments you leave around the web; and
• Lijit – for searching and tracking all the things you post in blogs, social between working sites and bookmarking sites, in a searchable format.

The Friday night keynote was a sampler of blog posts from a wide range of bloghers – and the odd bloghim 😉

Web Teacher summarised the session on building traffic to your blog, led by Elise Bauer, who spoke about thinking about Content, Community and Technology. Content referred, not just to the words, but whether you use photography, video, words or all the above. For photography, Bauer recommends a good DSLR camera and good editing tools like photoshop or lightroom. On community it’s about linking out and sharing comments. And for technology she proposes making your site easy to use, easy to find and platform independent.

The photography session led by Me Rah Koh gave ten excellent steps in using photography – go to Web Teacher’s blog post for the list – it’s great!

And Web Teacher herself moderated the session on Boomers and Beyond.

It’s a pity we didn’t see these in BlogHer08 in SecondLife.

Again thank you Web Teacher for providing your writeup.

Monetizing Your Blog
Christine.net provided a great summary of the session on monetizing blogs. In essence click ads are only one way to go, and not necessarily the best way. Like any business the key is to be strategic, know your audience, and think broadly – including selling directly, whether tee-shirts or some product, either tangible (things/stuff) or intangible (plans, software, tutorials).

There are a number of click models for advertising, and you will need to consider which might work best for you:
CPM – cost per thousand impressions
CPC – cost per click; or
CPA – cost per action, such as completing a form or purchase

Others work with affiliate programs, like Amazon.

Again, a great summary Christine – many thanks.

Tomorrow I’ll post on the one session that I was able to see and hear clearly from SecondLife – and that made the 3.00AM schedule worthwhile – the final keynote session.

Cheers
Jerry

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