Mom 2.0 Summit

The high was most certainly the Mom 2.0 Summit, a fantastic conference for moms (and others) who blog (there were many men in attendance, and many non-moms too – my husband joined me). This was my fourth annual Mom 2.0; 2013 was their fifth anniversary, so I’ve only missed one.

This year’s Mom 2.0 Summit was, as always, stellar. The very best thing about the conference was the quality of people there. Mom 2.0 never fails to bring the cream-of-the-crop of bloggers together to share, learn and grow.  These are bloggers who are amazing storytellers, beautiful writers, and really smart marketers. Quite a few of them make their living through their blogging and writing, and they are all wholly deserving of the success which has come to them.  Learning, schmoozing, dining and networking with this group is always energizing and insightful. And it didn’t hurt that the conference was at the Ritz-Carleton in gorgeous Laguna Beach, CA.

The Wall Street Journal Article

If more sponsors understand that blog conferences are a good way to reach digital influencers, we all win

However, in the lead up to Mom 2.0, the conference (and others) got some interesting press. The Wall Street Journal published an article about “The Mommy Business Trip,” which raised more than a few hackles as it portrayed blogging conferences as kid-free boondoggles for women. Many people, some of my good friends included, objected to the portrayal of moms and women in the piece, and I understand their concern.

But ever the contrarian, I didn’t completely agree with them. I found the WSJ piece, while certainly more than a bit condescending, good for the blogging conference industry overall. If more sponsors understand that blog conferences are a good way to reach digital influencers, we all win – the conference providers as well as the attendees.

It’s only recently that some parenting and lifestyle blog conference attendees are beginning to understand the reason that the cost of attending a blogging conference (as a blogger) is only $200-$450 for three days is because of the sponsors who are willing to pay to meet and talk to them.  Other digital industry conferences, from Affiliate Summit to AdTech to New Media Expo, cost between $800-$2,000, and provide far less for that cost than most blogging conferences provide. For the most part, blogger conferences have higher costs and lower margins than any other industry conferences (a fact which I’m intimately aware of).

There’s one big similarity between them: they’re all business-to-business (B2B) events.  Sponsors (businesses) come to blogging conferences to reach business people (bloggers) who will help them reach their target audience (typically, consumers).  This is the same as any other business-focused conference.

(Some) Bloggers Are Businesses

So ladies: stop acting like the Wall Street Journal says you’re acting. Because guess what? Some of you are.

So why do bloggers, at nearly all of the blogging conferences I’ve attended, not act like they’re businesses?  I do realize that if you started your blog as a personal blog or hobby blog, you may not know how to run your business, or even want to run a business, for your blog. But if you’ve spent the money and the time to come to a blogging event, it indicates that you’re looking to learn and grow in some way. (And apologies if you’re at the conference but do not want to grow your business – though given that much of the content at Mom 2.0 and other blogging conferences is related to “monetization” and “sponsorships,” I have to assume you likely do want to.)

So ladies: stop acting like the Wall Street Journal says you’re acting. Because guess what? Some of you are. Start acting like the business people you (mostly) seem to want to become.  Because if you’re not becoming business people by attending these conferences, then you really are doing it just to get out of the house. And then I don’t blame the WSJ for calling a spade a spade.

You need proof? At last summer’s mother of all blog conferences, BlogHer, I saw far too many women drunk off of their you-know-whats, barely able to get back to their hotel rooms. There are now-legendary stories of women pushing and shoving their way to grab sponsor swag at these events. And the social-network-based backchannel conversations before and after these events? Well…if you could see some of the name calling that happens when this person doesn’t get invited to a party but that one does; it’s not pretty.

Yes, of course, men do ridiculous things on the road too, and that’s what many people were reacting to as they read the WSJ article. Why doesn’t a major publication write an expose on the alcohol-filled parties at International CES or the intense city-wide party hopping that is SxSW? I’d love to see that article written, but of course it won’t be any time soon.

Up the Professionalism

If we women want to be taken seriously as business people, we’ve got to start acting like it.

I am certainly not saying that getting away for work to a beautiful location, with amazing content and the very best networking, shouldn’t a pleasurable thing. Whenever I go to any conference – blogging or otherwise – I go to plenty of parties; take time for myself at the beach, spa or touring the city; and often arrange fancy group dinners with friends. I bring swag home just like everyone else. But ultimately, I’m there on business, and I hope that my participation always reflects a high level of professionalism.

If we women want to be taken seriously as business people, we’ve got to start acting like it. Women bloggers need to treat their blog businesses like businesses, not as sometimes or part-time jobs (regardless of how much time they put into them). We must boost each other up, not become the worst versions of ourselves, when we go away to network and learn. And even if we stay home.

Disclosure: My conference, the Digital Family Summit, is loosely affiliated with Mom 2.0 Summit. I receive no direct compensation for my relationship with Mom 2.0 Summit.

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While much of the value I get out of these events is found in the networking done during informal times, when smart people speak, I like to sneak in the back, observe, take notes and learn. I’ve picked up valuable nuggets over the years from a variety of people, some I consider peers, others zen masters of the communications or social media craft. I’ve even picked up great insights from people I don’t know. Still, the “name” presenters always seem to be the ones who consistently deliver value.

This is why I am excited to tell you about an opportunity for you to learn from a handful of the smartest people in the social media space, all without leaving your office. Michael Stelzner, whose fantastic blog on writing white papers I’ve been reading for years, has put together an all-star roster of social media thinkers to participate in a large, online summit held over four weeks to help marketers and small business owners master social media marketing. The event is called the Social Media Success Summit. It’s website goes live today and the event runs May 27 through most of June.

The presenters are superstars in the world of social media marketing and include: the incomparable Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV; one of my favorite people on the planet, Darren Rowse from Problogger; Facebook guru and relationship marketing specialist Mari Smith; Jason Alba, who wrote an outstanding book on leveraging LinkedIn; Marketing Profs mastermind and sharp tack Ann Handley; Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame; Chris Garrett, a blogging and new media expert if I’ve ever seen one, and Denise Wakeman from BlogSquad. If any of these folks were presenting at a conference I was attending, I’d sneak in to hear them speak. There are 11 sessions scheduled for the summit and each presenter has developed NEW material for the event.

As a measure of disclosure, Stelzner offered me an affiliate partnership with this event which is why you see an advertisement for it on the sidebar of Social Media Explorer. For each person who signs up after clicking through from my website, I get a finder’s fee. But please know I would not encourage you to spend your money on an event that wouldn’t be worth it.

Talk to your boss about this one. Tell them the cost is a better investment since you don’t have to travel. You just need to take a few hours out of your schedule each week for about a month and you’ll wind up with a better set of knowledge than if you had gone to one of the big conferences.

Probably because you won’t be out living it up with all the other attendees at night. Heh.

The Social Media Success Summit is designed to put you in position to leverage tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more to attract what Stelzner calls, “High caliber customers and (to) grow your business during the economic slump.” It’s probably appropriate to add on the Ronco-esque, “Individual results may vary,” tag line, but with people like Handley and Clark leading the way, you don’t have to worry much with disclaimers. These cats are solid.

The cost of the event is $497 (or just $45 per session) but if you sign up before May 14, you’ll get a 40 percent discount. (Yep – Save $200!) If you click through from Social Media Explorer, you’ll get to download a free white paper as a gift (valued at $39) and I’ll get a finder’s fee. If that doesn’t set well with you, you are welcome to go straight to the site at http://www.socialmediasummit09.com. (I promise to use the money I make to improve SME with a redesign I’ve got cooking.)

Don’t miss this event. It’s the best knowledge from the people who normally provide it at conferences you have to shell out hundreds, even thousands of dollars to attend thanks to the costs of travel, hotels and meals. Only now, they come to you, at your desk, in 11 sessions sure to put social media marketing to work for you and your organization.

ACT NOW to receive your 40 percent discount and free gift. I’m confident you’ll think the Social Media Success Summit is well worth the price of admission.

Thank you for the indulgence.

The post Social Media Success Tips Come Straight To Your Office appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Yes, I gave away my last business card, roughly about 3:30 p.m. local time today, to Rachel Luxemburg.

Here’s the recap. I’ll Utterz later and probably digest and post something else this weekend.

Just The Numbers: Understanding Analytics

Avinash Kaushik, and author, blogger and “Analytics Evangelist” for Google. Full time job is Occam’s Razor, but not Occam’s Razr by Ike Pigott because that one isn’t by Avinash Kaushik. And it’s too early in the morning to be that confused.

(To beat it all, I got a Twitter from Ike at the start of this session. My head almost exploded.)

He made a good point that Web 2.0 dictates content creation never stops. A single post becomes a new post when a comment is added, someone blogs as a response, etc. The distribution also never stops and is uncontrollable as links, trackbacks and so on proliferate, provided, of course, the content is strong. The old model of Creation à Distribution à Consumption now has multiple arrows pointing to and from one another rather than just the flow chart pair of pointers. What this session is about is how to measure all the activity in those arrows and the man is good. He spelled it out, blog post style, in a list.

6 Ways You Can Measure Success of Your Blogs

1. Raw Author Contribution – Users, categories, posts, comments, pages, words in posts, words in comments, etc. He averages nine posts per month and 1,637 words per post. Over time, he wants to know if there is a trend of what he is doing to populate the blog. This is a quantity measurement only, not quality. It helps instill discipline in your blogging efforts.
2. Audience Growth (Onsite, Offsite and Holistic) – Onsite audience growth is simply basic Google Analytics metrics like visits, unique visitors, pageviews, etc. Look for trends in visits and unique visitors. How many come and how frequently do they come back. Audience growth offsite is best indicated by your feed subscribers. He stresses to look at all of the numbers as trends over time, not snap shots. The holistic approach is a report of visitors, unique visitors and unique blog readers. This is an addition of the unique visitors plus the feed subscriptions. While there is overlap, it gives you a perspective on the number of unique people that come to your blog since most feed subscribers see your post, but in their reader, not on your site.
3. Conversation Rate – “Blogs are the most social of social animals. I blog because I want to have a conversation.” He ends each post with, “Okay, not it’s your turn,” and asks questions about the post for his readers to answer. The number of visitor comments divided by the number of posts is his conversation rate. He also looks at the number of words per comment to know how in-depth their conversation is.
4. Citations – He says the best tool is Technorati and measuring citations is done there best. It measures how many other people are talking about you. The number of reactions, authority (number of blogs linked to you in the last six month) and your rank in terms of blog volume compared to the rest of the world. He tracks all these over time but realized that the authority score is a count of unique blogs that cite him and is, therefore, what interests him more. It measures relevant, recent conversation (ripples) you have created in the blogosphere.
5. Cost – Very few people measure cost. Why? Technology, Time and Opportunity Cost are his three measures. Technology is the domain name, hosting, etc. Time is the hours times his rate of $100 per hour, which he just made up. The Opportunity Cost is what else you could be doing. In that same time, what money could you make doing something else? His total cost is $220K.
6. Benefit – Technorati has a comparative value badge, which is neat, but define your own benefit measurement. Are you making money from speaking engagements, AdSense, exposure? Is your network growing? Does it expose your business. But also consider this: Does it make you happy?

Analyzing what factors are most important to you and weighting them appropriately is up to you.

Anecdotally, Avinash did say, in answer to my question for the group, that he hasn’t seen any social media measurement firms that are producing anything different or exceptional in their reports or methodology. He did say they were trying and many of them are well-intended, but most of this measurement, specific to blogs, can be done without outsourcing the task and your dollars.

Creating A Coherent Social Media Strategy

Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Brogan are two guys who have received the (insignificant) benefit of my blog post link pimpage for the last two to three months. So not coming to their presentation would have been rather stupid of me. Being a brand evangelist for these two guys was a pretty fair networking strategy. They both knew who I was before we ever got to Blog World. Jeremiah is pulled from a lot of angles but we chatted a couple of times. Everyone at Blog World and beyond probably heard verification Brogan and I get along well.

Like the Creating Conversations With Your Readers session with Wendy Piersall, et. al., yesterday, Owyang and Brogan started by asking the community what they wanted to get out of it. The difference in this session was Jeremiah and Chris were able to keep the presentation on topic while addressing the questions of the group. (Wendy did a good job of steering yesterday back. I don’t mean to imply it was her fault.)

Jeremiah, who has branded himself well as The Web Strategist, offered up the point of a social media strategy was to develop the long-term decision-making for your website and web outreach that meets three spheres: users (or community), business objectives and technology. To define your strategy is to plan for the long-term direction using web tools.

The first step in the Brogan/Owyang process of devising a strategy is curiously the one most of us think is last: Measurement. They both stressed that beginning with measurement gives you a benchmark, which then gives you something to shoot for and measure future efforts against. Makes perfect sense. Why do we not think of this?

As an aside, and I think both would agree, this point sort of proves something I often entertain while at conferences. It’s not that the speakers we’re watching are so much smarter than the attendees. It’s that they’ve had more experience and deep thought in the topic and have clarity of thought there. (I still thing Jeremiah and Chris are brilliant, but knowing their revelations are the product of a logical thought process and not some divine genius gives you some confidence as a payoff.)

Their take-aways were five easy things to remember.

1. Understand The Elephant – Listen to the conversation about your brand. Know what is being said, who is saying it and where.
2. Turn bullhorns into party hats – Don’t yell at your customers. Create an environment for them to join the party or join the party they are already throwing.
3. Develop a plan – Self-explanatory. Nothing done well just happens.
4. Be holistic – Jeremiah’s case study of his work at Hitachi and their look at the recent Dove campaign both illustrated the ways the social media plan touched all parts of the day in the life of the consumer. From marketing materials and advertisements to customer support functionality and response mechanisms, good strategy reaches each ingredient in the marketing mix.
5. Just tools – All of the mechanisms and methods of your social media strategy are just tools to achieve the work of marketing. And marketing, according to Jeremiah, is simply connecting consumers with products. At the end of the day, that’s what you’re doing with a social media effort.

Jeremiah also discussed his successful advanced strategy deployment of the Data Mining Wiki. It was (and is) and unbranded resource for everyone in that specific industry. The introductory paragraph there says:

Dear Storage Community,
Thanks for visiting this resource ‘wiki’ for the Storage Industry. Deciding on the right storage solution is important –You’ll need to get expert opinion, and opinions from your peers. This wiki can help you get quick and up to date information on the Storage Conversation. I want you to succeed, hope this helps.

This is a genuine outreach to offer relevant tools or content to the community in an appropriate and acceptable fashion, done with context in mind (links to Hitachi competitors were on it from the beginning) that made (makes) the company appear to be a thought and practice leader. My assumption would be that it ultimately led to improved perception of the company and perhaps even better sales results in the long run (though other factors had to gel well for this to occur.)

Jeremiah said the PR folks asked him what he was doing, linking to the competition. He replied, “I’m making us relevant by joining the conversation.” I would say Jeremiah made them relevant by leading it.

Other relevant quotes I jotted down:

• Brogan on the appropriateness of Facebook, MySpace, etc.: “The question is ‘Can you engage them?’ The people are there. Do you need lots of people or just a small group of the right ones?”
• Brogan on blog comments: “You want to attract the negative comments so they happen on your site and not someone else’s.”
• Owyang on lifecasting: “Lifecasting is only interesting when you are interesting or you’re at an event.”
• Some research stats from Owyang: The internet is the No. 1 medium in workplace in North America. It’s No. 2 at home. White collar professionals over 35 represent the largest growth market in Facebook.

Expectation: Walk away with a 368-pound brain full of enough web strategy knowledge to take over the world, or at least frighten a small village.

Success? Close. Like Marshall Kirkpatrick yesterday, these two guys have mad smarts and you just feel smarter being in the room with them. And, of course, I’m drinking their Kool-Aid pretty hard, so I was going to love it anyway. For perhaps a less glorified (read: unbiased) view of things, check out Lisa Barone’s recap.

The last session I went to isn’t even worth blogging about. It’s not so much that it was awful more than it was my desire to get work done (this blog post and actual work for my real job I was behind on). I simply didn’t pay enough attention to know if it worked or not. But as I type this, 14 people have walked out on it and two folks haven’t cared to let their cell phones go off, so I may not be missing anything.

Once again, for the coverage of these and other sessions from Blog World Expo, check out the other bloggers by searching for the Expo on Technorati or check out a few I’ve singled out below.

1. Lisa Barone at BruceClay.com
2. Conquest Chronicles
3. Jack Army
4. Jeremy Wright
5. Blog World Expo’s Live Feed

[tags]Blog World Expo, Blog World, BlogWorld, conferences, blogging, social media, measurement[/tags]

The post Blog World Expo Friday: Planning & Payoff appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

www.flickr.com Jason Falls’ BlogWorldExpo 2007 photoset

While BWE has done a great job of dividing the sessions into tracks, I sometimes leave thinking I didn’t get out of it what I wanted or expected because the speakers dumbed it down too much or, worse, got side-tracked and wound up talking about, say, RSS feeds, when the topic was supposed to be promoting your blog. (Hypothetical, not something I encountered today.)

Today was also full of laughs. There were your typical lobby rats, furiously blogging, IM-ing and emailing instead of actually attending sessions. The live bloggers (linked below) were pecking away, sometimes loudly, through a lot of the sessions, but certainly provide varying degrees of great rundowns of what happened today. And Todd Earwood, Chris Brogan and I Twittered back and forth all day on tonight’s pajama party and subsequent Falls after party at a friend’s bar, which made for some chuckles. You can see the feeds on each of our pages linked in this text.

Here’s a rundown of what I saw, learned and thought about today’s sessions:

Corporate & CEO Blogging

Moderated by Debbie Weil, author of “The Corporate Blogging Book,” (Recommended reading, by the way.) and featuring Jennifer Cisney of Kodak, Pete Johnson from HP, John Earnhardt from Cisco and Paula Berg (Blogger Girl) and Brian Lusk (Blogger Boy) with Southwest Airlines.

The session was really a nice overview of corporate blogging from different perspectives. I noted Cisney said that Kodak had no interest in building a platform, but focused on content. Their blog is stories from their employees, not product pushing. It’s all about promoting the fun and fulfillment of photography. HP was the opposite: They build platforms and want to show that off so they play to their strengths. Not bad, just different.

Earnhardt reported that a PR person is responsible for basic editorial guidance for their team of bloggers but also for going out into the blogosphere and promoting the various posts by searching for similar conversations, commenting on them and directing folks to Cisco’s blog for more on that topic. He also admitted they tried having their CEO blog via video post from his travels (“Not a typer”) but it didn’t quite work. So, they tried a different approach and have him answer three questions each week on video and it seems to work better.

Admittedly, I dig Southwest Airlines’ blog. I fly them frequently and enjoy browsing their stuff. Berg said there’s a huge media benefit from having a blog and with 70-percent (from something she read recently) of media turning to blogs for research and resources, it makes a lot of sense. She also earned everyone’s respect by admitting with the recent miniskirt controversy, they didn’t handle it as well as they could have. Her self-criticism was that they didn’t state their position early enough and the conversation got out of control.

Berg and Lusk also discussed the fact that not only are all posts and comments moderated, posts given basic editorial polish, but one of two executives review and approve every post. They report the response time (from C-Level folks … can you believe this?) is less than one hour!

The top-level takeaways were that corporate blogging takes a lot of preparation and thought. It is a lot of work for several people, but doesn’t seem to be a full-time job for anyone. Companies are afraid of negative comments and losing control, but with comment moderation, fair editorial guidelines and the ability to respond responsibly to the negative, the bad can turn good for your company very fast. You should also coordinate your company news/press releases with your blog because people expect to see that information there. (I say build your press release/news room engine using the Social Media Newsroom model and everything is then a blog post, but that’s my opinion.)

And alas, Lusk had perhaps the best quote of the session.

“Not every company should blog. If you’ve got a bad culture, a blog is just going to expose you.”

Expectation: Learn more about corporate and CEO blogs, how to use them and what are some of the thoughts you should entertain in building them.

Satisfied? Yep. They did a nice job. I heard a couple new perspectives, learned more about how some successful blogs are done and came away entertained at the late-Q-and-A debate about the merits of ghost blogging. (I think there’s none, but one audience member, listed as “Ghostblogger” made a good point that most CEO communications are cleared through legal, PR, etc., anyway and it’s not different.

Secrets of Video Podcasting & Vlogging

Gary Rosenweig, whose credentials I couldn’t find to elaborate on but the first slide indicated he worked somewhere that did a lot of video podcast production, gave a nice, how-to presentation on video podcasting and production. He spelled out what you would need in terms of equipment, software, microphones, lighting and such. He basically gave a quick review of my Radio-TV broadcasting 105 class at Morehead State. Not bad, particularly for a crowd that didn’t get a high-quality edumakashun like me.

The best pointers were those of making an archiving plan, making sure you have enough computer power, memory and such. People don’t realize how quickly 40 gig hard drives can be eaten by your cute kid vids. Then there’s the whole issue of hosting, bandwidth and the like – all of which is important in your planning.

Rosenweig amazed Todd with the term “pod-fade” referring to burnout that equates to less frequent episodes, gave some pointers on how to shuffle the deck a bit and took the room through some learning curve features that anyone trying this will benefit from.

The biggest takeaway for me was his run through on distribution. He made a good point-counterpoint on uploading to YouTube versus developing a real podcast (an RSS feed with your videos). Yes, there’s a great audience at YouTube – 10% of all web usage by some stats I looked up once but can’t successfully cite at the moment – but without the RSS/podcast, you’re limiting yourself since iTunes and other pod-picking-uping sites won’t automatically see your show. Of course, you have to log in to all these places to tell them you have a podcast, too, but he made a good point that just throwing your videos up on YouTube isn’t enough to be successful with an episodic programs

Rosenweig did offer up an either-or approach to video podcasting to start it all off. He said, “Just do it with reckless abandon and learn from your mistakes … or go to a workshop conducted by someone who’s done that and can tell you what not to do.”

And that’s pretty much what he did.

Expectation: To learn some tricks of the trade of good video podcasting.

Satsified? Yes, but the level of my experience compared to the level the presentation was designed for didn’t match up perfectly. Gary was informative, though.

Creating Conversations With Your Readers

Wendy Piersall of eMomsAtHome.com, Dave Nalle, the politics editor from BlogCritics.com and Matt Coulbourne, CEO of CoComment.com were the presenters and took a different approach to the presentation. They wanted the session to be about meeting the community expectations, so they asked folks to raise their hands and tell them what we wanted to know. Among the topics were measuring comments/conversation and what’s the norm, censorship or policing in the conversation-sphere (Coulbourne’s term).

While the point of the approach was admirable, the unorthodoxy led to scattered thought. Coherency was not easily (read: not) achieved in the discussion. Certainly, good information was offered and learning occurred, but the conversation lost my attention pretty quickly.

Much of the discussion revolved around measuring comments and being able to rate, score or measure how successful your blog post is. Off-topic. The session is about community building not measurement. Coulbourne seemed to want to move the conversation along, though, and quickly steered them to the censorship … another form of community monitoring … which was good information, but had little to do with the topic. The session was supposed to be “Creating Conversations With Your Readers” according to the show directory and room signage. It was also called “Building Online Communities” on the photocopied schedules, indicating the speakers and topic may have changed a bit from the print deadline version. And the confusion apparently bled through to the discussion. Yes, the topics were what the community wanted to hear, and again, good information was discussed, but this session didn’t deliver on its promise.

Nalle did throw out the suggestion that having a widget that posts a snipit of the latest comments on your sidebar is a key traffic and conversation-driver. Nice suggestion.

Then, with minutes to go, Wendy said, “Let’s talk a little about community building.” She said it’s clear on her blogs that the reader’s come first, push readers to mingle with each other, encourage them to read each other’s blogs, comments, etc. She also encourages readers to work with each other to research or solve problems. And then she offered the notion to spotlight or write a post about a good commenter. Now, there’s some payoff.

Expectation: Learn tips and tricks on establishing or building an online community OR creating conversations in them.

Satsified? It took a while to get there, but yes, there was some payoff. Not a whole lot of it, but I didn’t leave completely disappointed.

Managing Information Flow With An RSS Reader

Hanging for a few moments last night with Marshall Kirkpatrick convinced me to switch sessions hear his talk on RSS feed management. The guy’s just smart. I had the same reaction the first time I spent five minutes with Drew Curtis, and that was when we were Governor’s Scholars together in high school. For those of you who are keen to social media name-dropping, he’s the brilliance behind Fark.com. Yes, a fellow Kentuckian.

Marshall, a former TechCrunch writer who is now at Read-Write Web, showed us his personal Netvibes start page where he has a well-organized display of not just feeds he reads, but organized combinations of feeds, divided by category. While this isn’t a lot different than the way I organize my Google Reader feeds, it’s displayed a lot more neatly and with multiple feeds displayed on one screen.

He was joined by Eric Engleman, the general manager of Bloglines, who joined Marshall in sharing several sites and services that help optimize your use of RSS feeds, both as a reader and as a publisher. Included in this list of productivity-improving sites were Dapper.com, ZAPtxt.com, Feed Digest, FeedYes, AideRSS.com, FeedHub.com, FeedDemon and more. The level of productivity the integrated use of some or all of these sites is mind-numbing.

Kirkpatrick also showed off a client he worked with to create dynamic content for their website from outside sources using social bookmarking solutions like del.icio.us and article tagging and using RSS feeds derived from that bookmark to provide content styled to provide the “latest news” section of the client’s website. The news is almost all third-party, actual news reports, linked off-site, but providing fresh content for the site, engaging the readers and keeping them coming back. To see it for yourself, go to RevenueRecognition.com.

As suspected from my 10 minutes chatting with Marshall last night, I got more out of this session than any of the others. Having recently gotten creative with RSS use myself, or what I might consider creative but on-time adopter by others, this session was well worth switching for. Marshall is obviously energized by coming up with RSS solutions and seeing how someone can take a simple mechanism for productivity and make things thousands of times more productive with it, you feel the need to go out and try to reinvent the wheel.

Too bad my next task is just posting this recap.

Expectation: Be amazed by Marshall Kirkpatrick’s knowledge, insight and creativity; Learn more about using RSS feeds for myself and clients.

Sastified? Most definitely.

Tonight, we’re all off to the pajama party at the Hard Rock Café, then to my Web-Famous Mardi Gras gathering at Fat Tuesdays near the Planet Hollywood Casino. An old college bud, Kevin Kevgen, runs the bar there and I’m hopeful he’ll give me free drinks if I bring the 3-400 people I’ve invited to this thing with me.

More tomorrow. For more session reviews, check out the live bloggers: (Random list from my search, not inclusive. If I left you off, let me know via email or leave a comment with your URL!)

The post Blog World Expo Thursday: Learning, Laughter appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

So whatâ€s the conference attendee formula for winging your way through the game and racking in the friendship chips? Here are the five things that will help me at BWE this week:

1. Find A Friend Who Knows The Territory
   
   Knowing just one connected person in the room makes meeting the rest 90-percent easier. They can introduce you. Rob May of BusinessPundit.com is a fellow Louisvillian and someone Iâ€ve had the pleasure of working with over the last few months. He actually told me I should come to Blog World with him and Todd Earwood, that they would introduce me to folks.

   While not everyone has the advantage of knowing a SuperBlogger, wouldnâ€t you agree that itâ€s easier to reach out to one person than the room full of strangers? Do that ahead of time and have someoneâ€s lead to follow.

2. Reach Out To The Must-Meets Informally

   Of course, itâ€s better to lock in times to meet folks, but Iâ€ve floated out a couple different, “like to meet, chat, etc.” notes, blog comments and such to Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan and Jeremy Pepper, among others. These are folks I read and respect for their thought leadership in what I do. I may never have a direct business reason for needing a connection to them, but being friends with the quarterback keeps the third string long snapper from getting hazed.

3. Make Nice With The People In Charge
   
   At Blog World, this is easy. Rick Calvert actually reached out to me first, when I put the conference logo on my blog. Heâ€s commented on a couple of posts and maintained a connection with me (and plenty of others, Iâ€m sure) leading up to the event. (Hint: Smart networking … learn from him, too.) Your first priority when checking in, particularly when someone like Rick raises their hand and says, “I know youâ€re coming and want to meet you,” is to find them, introduce yourself and chat as often as their hectic schedule will permit.

   These folks are running the show. They probably know the speakers and influential attendees personally. Walking up to them at the cocktail parties can put your name and face in front of the right people faster than, say, chatting with the bartender. That is, of course, unless you have a different interpretation of, “the right people.”

   I admittedly didnâ€t do as good a job of this at SMX Social Media last month. I traded business cards, hand shakes and a greeting with Danny Sullivan and Neil Patel, but failed to really establish a communication with them. I wonâ€t make that mistake anymore.

4. Be Friendly And Flexible

   Neither of these are easy for introverts (read: computer geeks). Fortunately, Iâ€m not one (introvert, not computer geek). While Iâ€ve not met him yet, Iâ€m told a perfect example of this advice is Robert Scoble. The king of our media is well known as everybodyâ€s friend and not just because heâ€ll allegedly “friend” anyone on Facebook, Twitter, et al. He built his web dynasty because he was a genuinely nice guy, willing to talk, share and engage others.

   So be Robert. Stick out your hand, smile and say, “Iâ€m Jason Falls … nice to meet you!” People will look at you funny if youâ€re not fat, goateed and bear a distinguishing Southern accent, so you may want to insert your own name, but you get the point.

   Another point to keep in mind is that everyone else there is a little meet-phobic, too. Or they were once upon a time. For some more tips on breaking the ice, check out this episode of The Daily Idea.

5. When Time Is Tight, Meet First, Ask Questions Later
   
   Half the introductions you make or receive at conferences will be in the 15 minutes between sessions or while mingling from one conversation to another at a cocktail party. Make a human connection with folks, but know that you can get to know them, exchange business ideas and so on for days, weeks or years to come after you leave the conference. Introduce, shake hands, exchange cards, establish who you are and what you do, get the same from the other party, then be prepared to move on. If you have the opportunity to continue to conversation, do. If not, say, “Iâ€ll email you. Letâ€s catch up when we have more time.” This makes efficient use of your networking time and allows them to do the same.

While I personally think No. 4 is all you really need, these tips will work at any conference, networking event or get-together. In terms of the bankroll that is my professional network, personal connections and blog audience, Iâ€m confident Iâ€ll leave Las Vegas with more chips than I came with.

IMAGE: “Shaking Hands” from Aidan Jones on Flickr.

[tags]networking, conference, conferences, tips, howto, socialize[/tags]

The post BWE Vegas: How To Cash In Your Networking Chips appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

When I sat down Monday night to think about some goals and objectives for the week, I thought about the possibility of live blogging a bit. Fortunately, I have a little gnome inside my head named Reality who sufficiently beat me about the head and face.

Donâ€t get me wrong, I love the fact there are committed, focused individuals who engage their audiences and provide coverage of a conference session or two others canâ€t attend. Itâ€s a service and a badge of honor to be a live blogger. But itâ€s not for everyone and hereâ€s why it isnâ€t for me:

1.  Iâ€ll miss out on the learning

Thereâ€s a big difference between paying attention to take notes and paying attention to report. As a journalist, which in essence is what a live blogger becomes, you are focused on getting the dictation right, the quotes accurate and also observing the scene, mood and etc. As a participant, you weed out the important nuggets of information, jot them down and absorb the topic. Iâ€m not new to blogging, but Iâ€m still going with the attitude that I have a lot to learn. I donâ€t want to be distracted from that task.

2. Live blogging can make you anti-social

Once the session is over, live bloggers spend any break time between polishing, spell-checking, posting, etc., and donâ€t actually take the valuable 10-15 minutes to meet and greet. I practically stalked Rebecca Kelley at SMX because I didnâ€t want to be rude and interrupt her finishing touch application to the live blogging she was doing. (Rebecca isnâ€t anti-social, by the way. She was busy. But it prevented another opportunity to meet, greet and so-on. Fortunately, she split live blogging duties and wasnâ€t locked in her computer screen for the entire conference.) The primary reason (narrowly edging out the learning) I go to these things is to network. With the exception of the opportunity to meet up with an old college buddy who tends bar in Vegas, I donâ€t want to miss a chance to grow that network and meet new people. Besides, Iâ€m taking Rob, Todd and anybody else who wants to go to the bar with me.

3. I donâ€t need the ego boost

The one sure-fire thing live blogging will get you, provided you let people know you are doing it, is a lot of links. While no blogger in their right mind would ever turn away inbound links, live blogging isnâ€t the way Iâ€m going to build a long-term audience. The additional link love would only make me think Iâ€m better than I actually am because my Technorati authority jumps a couple of points. And as Rob and Todd can attest, thatâ€s like throwing a gas can in the fire place.

4. Someone else is probably doing it better

At this writing, Iâ€m not sure who will be live blogging Blog World Expo, but Iâ€m sure thereâ€s one or two that have done it before. I read 6-8 live blogs of each session at SMX Social Media and marveled at the thorough-ness and thoughtful scribblings of Marty Weintraub and Vanessa Fox, among others.  Yeah, I can pepper my session recaps with jokes and Falls-isms, but I can also provide that in a daily journal entry posted just after dinner, too.

5. I donâ€t want to be rude

When I type fast, I pound the keyboards like Iâ€m Lars Ulrich. Iâ€ve had IT guys come up to me courtside after basketball games, while Iâ€m writing an AP wire story recap, and said, “Dude, youâ€re going to damage the motherboard if you donâ€t lay off.” Because I was on deadline, I probably snapped back, “Yeah, weâ€ll your mother should watch where she puts her board, pal.” Still, me live blogging in a convention hall is paramount to allowing me to play spoons during the presentation.

There are other reasons, the least of which isnâ€t that itâ€s hard to do it right. Iâ€m also anticipating Iâ€ll be either really tired, perhaps a little hung over, or perhaps a little of both, at least one of those days. What happens in Vegas, right?

That is, unless I live blog THAT … (Eyes bulge at the possibilities).

IMAGE: Apparently doctored funny I found at Ross Matthews’s Blog.

Other Posts Youâ€ll Find Interesting
1.    Conference Blogging 101
2.    8 Things Conference Officials Donâ€t Advertise
3.    I Wish I Was At Chinese BloggerCon
4.    Political Bloggers Speaking At BlogWorld
5.    Live Blogging The Torre Press Conference

[tags]blogging, live blogging, Blog World Expo, conference blogging, conferences[/tags]

The post 5 Reasons I Won’t Be Live Blogging appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

While I learned a great deal and networked a great deal more at SMX Social Media, I did come away with a handful of reminders that conferences are sometimes not what theyâ€re all cracked up to be. With no direct reference (okay maybe one) to SMX Social Media, and pulling from about a dozen or so conferences or workshops Iâ€ve attended over the years, here is my list of 8 Things Conference Officials Donâ€t Advertise.

1. Roughly 75 percent of the presentations will be off-topic.
   How many times have I sat down to hear “Insider Tips” on social networking sites or Dreamweaver or Photoshop and gotten a 30 minute spiel on how to add friends, toggle the code view or apply a drop shadow? For all you future conference presenters, we donâ€t want to see examples of your cool work for a client unless it provides what the session title promises.
2. Computer geeks are brilliant. Organizers of computer conferences need some work.
   Put 250 computer nerds in a room with A) No surfaces for their laptops and B) No power outlets and be glad theyâ€re not fixated on red staplers.
3. There are never more than two types of people at conferences.
   Half the crowd will be lost midway through the overview session. All the others will claim they could have done each presentation better.
4. The cell phone with the most annoying ring tone will be the one that goes off during sessions … twice.
   I have honestly sat two rows from a woman who not only had K.C. and the Sunshine Bandâ€s “Shake Your Booty” as her ringer, but who answered the call.
5. The speakers donâ€t want to talk to you … right away.
   Those 10 people who rush to the podium to “network” with the speaker or ask questions right after the presentation are only preventing him or her from taking a deep breath and going to pee. My bet is their business cards get tossed first.
6. Associated banquets provide the worst food.
   Okay, so sautéed roast beef and chicken cordon bleu arenâ€t bad meals in and of themselves. But you needed no prompting to know which two meals I would list, which makes it funny.
7. Regardless of your level of homework or enthusiasm, you will always call someone by the wrong name, mistake their presentation for another or get caught acting like you know their work better than you do.
   We all want to network like pros. Fortunately, we are better at other things, like our jobs.
8. No matter how comfortable the chairs, your butt will be numb.
   Thereâ€s a lot for the conference organizers to cram into a day. Count on breaks that are too short, sessions that are too long and chairs that make you Google “sciatica.”

Hereâ€s hoping presenters, speakers and officials from my next two conferences read this … and that the ones from previously attended ones either donâ€t or know Iâ€m not referring to them.

Related Links You’ll Enjoy
1.    Attending a Conference Without a Laptop
2.    Packing for a Conference and Other Wiley Tricks
3.    What I Loved About (And Learned From) SMX Social Media
4.    10 Presentation Tips From A Professional Trainer
5.    How to “Web 2.0 Enable” Your Live Event

IMAGE: From RustyBrick on Flickr (some rights reserved)

[tags]conference, conferences, presentations, presenters, annoying, pet peeves, networking, humor, parody[/tags]

The post 8 Things Conference Officials Don’t Advertise appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What’s almost more exciting is finally getting to put faces with names … er, better put, blogs. Not only will I get to meet Sullivan, a pioneer in the field of what we do, but others I’ve found that are scheduled to present include Rand Fishkin and Neil Patel, who will present the opener, a seminar entitled, “Social Media Marketing Essentials.”

Then I’ll get the Linkbait treatment from Sullivan with panelists Brent Csutoras, Rebecca Kelly and Cameron Olthuis.

After lunch there’s Sullivan moderating Patel, Chris Winfield and Rusty Brick’s Tamar Weinberg on a Social News Sites panel. The late afternoon session on the Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking and Tagging will feature Patel and Michael Gray of Atlas Web Service, then we’ll bow down and worship Garret Camp and Joshua Schachter, founders of StumbleUpon and del.icio.us, respectively.

And that’s day one.

Day two in a nutshell? I’ll get to absorb knowledge from the likes of Cindy Krum, Dave McClure, Helen Overland, Sarah Hofstetter, Rob Key, Adam Sherk, Liana Evans, Lise Broer, Jonathan Hochman, Matt McGee, Stephan Spencer and Don Steele of Comedy Central, among others. The last six and Patel will make up the Wikipedia Clinic Sullvan blogs about.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about going. The opportunity to learn and share is enough. The fact I’ll actually put down my laptop (and Blackberry) and do some real, live networking is icing on the cake.

If you haven’t registered, you should. If you’re going, drop me a line. Let’s meet up and compare notes.

And while we’re at it, what the most fun you’ve had in the Big Apple? I lived there for two years but haven’t returned since I left in 1998. Tell me what I should take in during my return visit, besides the obligatory tribute-paying at Ground Zero (that’s a given since my Jersey City-to-PATH-to-subway route took me through the WTC each day).

Where should I go?

The post SMX Social Media To Provide Actual Networking appeared first on Social Media Explorer.