3:00 p.m. -- Identity/Passions: Enough About You...Who's Reading You?
(If you come to BlogHer, get to your session EARLY in order to get a seat. Score!)
Moderated panel; how to build a fan base/community.
Do comments on your blog ever affect what or how you write?
More talk about Google Analytics. Must investigate. Search for topics of interest to post about?
Clicktale.com to see where your your readers went, what they saw. Also Google "heat map". Quantcast.com is another good resource for stats on who is reading you, what you write about.
More questions about identity. How much to reveal. How much to self-censor.
Do reader surveys if you want to know more about your readers.
Sometimes comments spur your writing, sometimes they detract from it. Only go down the path if it's your passion; not because it's the "flavor of the month."
[Personal observation: Being "authentic" on your blog does not necessarily mean spewing out every little thought or action for the internet to digest and regurgitate back at you. Either you claim your privacy boundaries and stick to them, or you risk giving over too much control to what other people think of you, instead of what you think of yourself. For me, authenticity means sticking to your own voice, your own standards, your own ethics and your own interests.]
Need to consider moving to hosted weblog, take the "blogspot" out of the blog name, to build Google juice.
If you are worried about readers being offended by a certain post, post a content warning at the top; if they're still offended, it's their problem, not yours.
Legitimate criticism is different than unreasonable criticism. Engaging is different than participating. You want legitimate criticism, and you want your readers to be engaged. Slowly built relationships bring more over time than random commenting.
One good use of Twitter is to alert your audience that you've posted.
"The Gift of Fear" about boundaries and personal blogging. "Tracking Everything" is another good source for tracking scary trolls. Take threats seriously. Report all instances.
Is it time for the Keynote yet???
1:30 p.m. -- Room of Your Own 1: Women Writing In The Age Of Britney: Pop Culture & Gossip & Feministy Stuff, Oh My
Crap. This is the only session that remotely interests me in this group, and it's so full people are sitting on the floor all around the room, up the aisles and out the door.
Fine. I needed a break anyway.
Crap. This is the only session that remotely interests me in this group, and it's so full people are sitting on the floor all around the room, up the aisles and out the door.
Fine. I needed a break anyway.
Side note: This is the first time today the free wi-fi connection has worked worth a damn. Very frustrating. Glad it's fixed.
Second side note: The best part of last night? Sitting out under the stars next to the river having cocktails with Miss Nancy, Fausta and Mamacita. We talked and laughed and had a wonderful time. (And, Denny? Your name came up... a lot!)
1:25 p.m. -- Yay! Drop swag bags in the room, grab laptop and power cord and run for the slowest elevators on the planet again.
1:15 p.m. -- Elevator, elevator, where in the hell ARE you elevator? Argh! Four elevators in the bank for our room and every one is stopping at every floor on the way up and on the way down.
Noon to 1:15 p.m. -- Skipped lunch and hit all the vendors in the exhibition hall with Miss Nancy. Since she's in a wheel chair, I'm carrying swag for two... and my arms are two feet longer by the time we finally make it through all the vendors. These people seriously get that women are their target market, and they practically throw all sorts of cool stuff at us. I'm going to need a hand truck to get it all home...
11:00 a.m. The Business of You – Advanced Social Media, Syndication and Stats
Quick Notes:
The room is packed!
Need to find out where traffic is coming from; who your audience is; what tools they are using. Helps give clarity and direction to your content.
How do you pick? Which are best? Twitter, Facebook, Friendster, Curtsy.
Look at demographics, content, their social profiles.
Digg doesn’t really perform well for BlogHer; Digg more for straight technology, politics.
Stumbled Upon, Digg, – hard to find demographics, etc.? Niche? Pay attention to what content is popular. Psychographics. Stumble is random, a discovery engine. Has to be used a lot to for Stumble to discover your own preferences. Don’t Stumble your own content very often. Be choosy.
Post Rank – how do you track where your community takes your content and what they do with it?
Ego feed – set up Google Alerts. (Set up for work!!!)
Bit.li.com – create account; add your URL, gives you short URL, tracks clicks.
Tracking – “Google is your friend.” Yahoo pipe application to track Stumbles, Diggs. Feedburner for tracking RSS feeds. Friendfeed.
Do Google search for “social submission tracking”.
Be very careful about intentionally gaming the system. If you’re caught, most uncool.
(Bluehost.com – great hosting service; phone always answered by a real person.)
Tweets pointing to blog posts, articles, upcoming conferences, speeches, etc.
Facebook fan pages a good idea for branding. Good for sending content without having to friend and have friend comments on your page.
Quantcast.com? Not needed for personal blog. Must be in top 25,000 sites for any metrics to be useful. Very general.
80/20 rule – 80% conversation; 20% promotion.
Here's what I want more of next year: A list of all the different social media sites and their functions. The discussion assumed everyone in the room knew all about and use all these forms of social media, rather than recognizing that a lot of us were there because we don't know much and are hungry for more information. Argh!
9:30 a.m. -- Keynote Speakers
Holy crap. The very nice "Tina" I was talking to yesterday after the Room of Her Own session? Tina Brown of The Daily Beast! Good thing I didn't put it together at the time, as she was very, very nice.
Second side note: The best part of last night? Sitting out under the stars next to the river having cocktails with Miss Nancy, Fausta and Mamacita. We talked and laughed and had a wonderful time. (And, Denny? Your name came up... a lot!)
Third side note: The Sheraton is a lovely hotel and the beds are quite frankly gardens of sensuous delight. Getting from level to level and event to event can be frustrating, however, particularly for anyone on crutches or in a wheel chair.
Fourth side note: Get personal business cards, dammit.
1:25 p.m. -- Yay! Drop swag bags in the room, grab laptop and power cord and run for the slowest elevators on the planet again.
1:15 p.m. -- Elevator, elevator, where in the hell ARE you elevator? Argh! Four elevators in the bank for our room and every one is stopping at every floor on the way up and on the way down.
Noon to 1:15 p.m. -- Skipped lunch and hit all the vendors in the exhibition hall with Miss Nancy. Since she's in a wheel chair, I'm carrying swag for two... and my arms are two feet longer by the time we finally make it through all the vendors. These people seriously get that women are their target market, and they practically throw all sorts of cool stuff at us. I'm going to need a hand truck to get it all home...
11:00 a.m. The Business of You – Advanced Social Media, Syndication and Stats
Quick Notes:
The room is packed!
Need to find out where traffic is coming from; who your audience is; what tools they are using. Helps give clarity and direction to your content.
How do you pick? Which are best? Twitter, Facebook, Friendster, Curtsy.
Look at demographics, content, their social profiles.
Digg doesn’t really perform well for BlogHer; Digg more for straight technology, politics.
Stumbled Upon, Digg, – hard to find demographics, etc.? Niche? Pay attention to what content is popular. Psychographics. Stumble is random, a discovery engine. Has to be used a lot to for Stumble to discover your own preferences. Don’t Stumble your own content very often. Be choosy.
Post Rank – how do you track where your community takes your content and what they do with it?
Ego feed – set up Google Alerts. (Set up for work!!!)
Bit.li.com – create account; add your URL, gives you short URL, tracks clicks.
Tracking – “Google is your friend.” Yahoo pipe application to track Stumbles, Diggs. Feedburner for tracking RSS feeds. Friendfeed.
Do Google search for “social submission tracking”.
Be very careful about intentionally gaming the system. If you’re caught, most uncool.
(Bluehost.com – great hosting service; phone always answered by a real person.)
Tweets pointing to blog posts, articles, upcoming conferences, speeches, etc.
Facebook fan pages a good idea for branding. Good for sending content without having to friend and have friend comments on your page.
Quantcast.com? Not needed for personal blog. Must be in top 25,000 sites for any metrics to be useful. Very general.
80/20 rule – 80% conversation; 20% promotion.
Here's what I want more of next year: A list of all the different social media sites and their functions. The discussion assumed everyone in the room knew all about and use all these forms of social media, rather than recognizing that a lot of us were there because we don't know much and are hungry for more information. Argh!
9:30 a.m. -- Keynote Speakers
Holy crap. The very nice "Tina" I was talking to yesterday after the Room of Her Own session? Tina Brown of The Daily Beast! Good thing I didn't put it together at the time, as she was very, very nice.
1 comment:
And while Leslie was up dropping off the goodies.. I did the rest of the room and grabbed more goodies..for both of us.
I swear, it was like they were throwing the stuff at us. And we caught a lot of it.
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