Blogher08 – In the rearview mirror
Blogher08 has come and gone and the pixels are settling, and the blogseeds are sprouting.
The weirdness of the final session has stayed with me – the exchange between Jenny the Bloggess and Dooce – which has been well blogged here and elsewhere.
But from that session was a real gem that came straight afterward in the shape of a question from the audience on how Dooce manages her time. How does a professional blogger structure her day – is it in one or two hour chunks, or is it in marathon writing sessions, or is it squeezed into the interstices of the day?
Heather: Depending on what product I have going on inside of my blog, it can reach 10-12 hours a day. I’ve worked harder at this blog than any other blog in my life. Are you dedicated to working your ass off? It is way more than a full time job.
– you can read the full transcript here
And like any conference the main game can be in the margins – and that’s where Weber Shandwick’s Screengrab interviews work really well. Check them out on YouTube. I particularly liked the one with Susan Getgood – a marketer, social media consultant and blogger.
I really liked her take on the four P’s of marketing. There’s the traditional ones of Product, Placement, Promotion and Price. But she has four more for bloggers and it works this way:
- Prepare – read blogs, find out what the market is – and do so over time. It is not something you can pick up in five minutes, or with a google search. Remember, blogs are about people;
- Participate – leave comments – but don’t spam. Leave comments that are relevant to what is being blogged about. Big companies love ‘mommybloggers’ because it is a good broad demographic;
- Pitch – Identify how you fit in the community, and if you’ve done the three Ps above, then;
- Publish – get out there and do it
This all seems like very sound advice – and is a spin-off from the biz breakout session at BlogHer08.
Here’s the Weber Shandwick interview:
Blogher is still the world’s biggest blogging conference (bigger than the blokes’ ones) with over 1000 participants in San Francisco, and a whole host in SecondLife and on the web.
I enjoyed Erin Kotecki Vest’s vlogs – she know how to interview people, and was one of the organisers of BlogHer08.
I would like to see three things next year:
- Better bandwidth allocated to streaming video into SecondLife – along with camera on proper low light settings etc so we can see it in SL and hear it without (so much) choppiness;
- transcripts of sessions put up online – during or soon after the conference – especially the keynotes and key points from the breakout sessions – especially those that didn’t make it into SL – that way you get a global audience; and
- more micro vlogs – like the screenshot interviews – three to four questions across a lot of the participants.
And finally – I know it’s a political thing not to have prepared papers and it’s great to have discussion-style panels, but I would like to see the keynotes at least do a structured ten minutes on their key themes rather than just ‘riffing’ on the audience questions/comments.
But these are minor things in what is obviously an incredible, wonderful experience for those who participate – and even for those of us who participate through the smaller bandwidth version via SecondLife. Blogging is about the conversation – whether you are a Mommyblogger or a Tech blogger the great thing about it is that it is open to everyone.
Cheers
Jerry
