MackCollier.com

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Can You Help Me With a 60-Second Survey About #Blogchat?

Here’s the link to the #Blogchat survey, thank you for helping me out!

A few weeks ago during #Blogchat, we were discussing how you should create blog content that your readers are interested in.  And Collin asked how could you know for sure who your readers are and what they are interested in?  I told him that you could always ASK them, by doing a survey and using a site like Survey Monkey to create one for you.  Survey Monkey offers a free option, and surveying your readers is a great way to learn more about them!

Well recently I was having a conversation with someone about #Blogchat and I lamented the fact that I really had no way of knowing how many people are following #Blogchat that don’t participate.  I know how many active participants #Blogchat has, but I have no idea how many people are actively WATCHING the #Blogchat stream, but not joining in.

And then I remembered that I had suggested to #Blogchat that they use Survey Monkey to learn more about their blog readers, so maybe I could follow my own advice about #Blogchat 😉

So what I’ve done is created a VERY short survey that’s designed to tell me more about the people that follow #Blogchat.  It will let me know basic information like your age and gender (don’t worry, I won’t be asking for your name or email so there’s nothing that will tell me who is answering what), as well as information like if you blog for a company, or just for yourself.  Also, there’s an option that will let you tell me what topic you’d like to see #Blogchat cover in the future.

This survey is very important and will offer several benefits:

1 – It will give me a better idea of WHO is following #Blogchat, and for the first time will give me an idea of how big the #Blogchat community really is.

2 – It will give me  a better idea of whether or not #Blogchat needs to focus on ‘personal’ or ‘business blogging’ topics.

3 – It will give me  a better idea of what topics y’all want to see covered in #Blogchat.

4 – It will give me a better idea of who I need to bring on as co-host to address those topics.

 

And there’s also a couple of other reasons why I wanted to do this survey that I can’t talk about just yet, but that will definitely benefit the #Blogchat community!

So please take a minute or two to complete this survey, it really will help me tremendously.  Here’s the link to the survey.  If you can, please RT the survey link to others, as the more responses we can get, the better the data collected.  I will of course share the data with everyone here and on Twitter!

Thank y’all so much!

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Sunday’s #Blogchat Topic: How to Amplify Your Blog’s Visibility

Build engagement and visibility for your blogThanks to Rosie Taylor for suggesting this week’s #Blogchat topic on our Facebook page.

We all want to know what we can do to make our blog more visible and build awareness for it.  I think when we look at this, we need to consider what we can do on our blog, and what we can do off our blog.  And I don’t want to steal anyone’s thunder, but I wanted to offer some ideas for each, and hopefully this will get you thinking as we get ready for tonight’s discussion.

What you can do on your blog to build visibility:

  • How can you create compelling content?  What type of content is more likely to attract attention?
  • How can you engage with readers via comments?
  • How can you draw awareness to other blogs as a way to draw attention to your own?
  • What about bring in other bloggers to write guest posts?
What you can do off your blog to build visibility:
  • Are you actively commenting on your space’s more popular sites and blogs?
  • Are you actively commenting on your reader’s blogs?
  • Can you write guest posts for other bloggers?
Those are just some quick ideas.  As a primer for tonight’s #Blogchat discussion, what are some other ways you can build your blog’s visibility?  What has worked for you?

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Stop Lying to Yourself, Your Problem Isn’t Figuring Out What to Write About…

writing, blogging, publishing…it’s actually writing the damn post.

You don’t need ideas, open Google Reader or join #Blogchat.  You’ll have enough ideas to write posts for the next year.

The problem is, when you actually WRITE the post, then it’s real.  Then you are dangerously close to publishing it.  Which means suddenly everyone will see it, and read it, and judge it.

And yet, you are often the harshest judge of your own work.  Too often, you assume that your post isn’t worthy of the reader, before they have a chance to dismiss it.  So it stays in your Draft folder, mocking you.

You can’t ‘sell’ until you ‘ship’.

Stop assuming that you know better than your reader does.  Write the damn post.  Then if it bombs, you can figure out why, and make the next post better as a result.  Stop writing with a perfect filter.

And if you haven’t figure it out, when I say ‘you’ need to just write the damn post, I mean *I* do 😉

 

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Are Brands Finally Waking Up to the Potential of Sponsored Content?

Dell, Sponsored Content, SXSW, #blogchat, social media, blogging

Around this time last year, and mostly on a lark, I left a post here asking for sponsors for a Live #Blogchat at SXSW.  Honestly, I didn’t expect to get any responses, but within 15 minutes of publishing my post I started receiving offers, and within an hour, my friends at 1680PR were on as the Main Sponsor of the first-ever Live #Blogchat.  That would be the first of 7 Live #Blogchats held in 2011, and I’m planning on announcing the first Live #Blogchat for 2012 in just a few days.

What was really interesting was what happened next.  As soon as I arrived in Austin for SXSW, everyone had 2 questions for me.  The first was ‘So how does a Live #Blogchat work?’, and the second was ‘So who is 1680PR?’  Answering the first question paved the way for my getting more Live #Blogchats throughout the year.  In fact, I met Joe Pulizzi at the Houston airport flying INTO Austin for SXSW, told him about the Live #Blogchat, and that began the conversation that would eventually lead to me doing a Live #Blogchat at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame to kick off Content Marketing World.

But what was really cool was to see how everyone was interested in learning more about 1680PR.  To me, this is how sponsored content should work.  By joining my friends at Dell in sponsoring the first ever Live #Blogchat, Ken and the team at 1680PR were doing two things:

1 – They were helping to facilitate an event that had value to the #Blogchat community

2 – They were becoming RELEVANT to that same community in the process

I got to spend a lot of time with Ken during SXSW, and he got to meet a lot of the people I know in this space, and they got to know him.  To this day, during #Blogchat on Twitter I will see Ken jump in and immediately some of the people he met during SXSW will chime in and say hi!  I had so many of my friends pull me aside during SXSW and tell me how much they liked Ken, and was glad 1680PR had helped sponsor the Live #Blogchat.

Also during SXSW, I got to talk to my friend Tom Martin about how he was providing sponsored content at TalkingWithTom.com.  What Tom did was go around the country interviewing some of the top thought leaders in the social media marketing space, and once a week he would post a new video interview he had done with them.  And Emma sponsored the site.  It was a smart move by Emma, because they got to have their brand associated with all these smart people, but they also made possible the creation of this site, which created value for others.

Tom and I have spent the last year discussing the idea of sponsored content.  But not just that, but the idea of how companies could benefit more from partnering with content creators that have an established community versus simply connecting with influencers.

For example, if a brand contacts an influencer about promoting their product, the influencer may be willing to promote the product if they are properly compensated, maybe with money, or maybe with a free product.

But if a brand contacts me about sponsoring #Blogchat, my first question is ‘Will this sponsorship create value for the #Blogchat community?’  This is an important distinction, because whereas the influencer’s motivation might be in receiving the free product, my motivation is in getting money from the #Blogchat sponsorship, but also in seeing how that sponsorship can be leveraged to create more value for the #Blogchat community.

For example, I’ve begun talking to a select few brands about having them be the long-term sponsor for #Blogchat.  I’m doing this for two reasons:

1 – It will give me a new source of income

2 – The income generated from the sponsorship will allow me to devote more time to building the #Blogchat brand and providing more value to its community.  Which will grow the #Blogchat community, ultimately providing even more value to the sponsor.

I really think you will begin to see more brands moving toward working with content creators to sponsor their content.  In fact, I’ve been talking to several other Twitter Chat hosts over the last several weeks, and many of them had either recently brought on sponsors to their Twitter chats, or were being approached by major brands about sponsorship opportunities.

I also think it makes more sense for the audience, because the content creator has a more vested interest in vetting the sponsors and making sure that bringing them on will provide more value to their readership/audience.  Tom also shared with me a Business Week article on how Expedia is teaming up with bloggers to promote their site.  I thought this ending passage was interesting:

Both company and bloggers say they aren’t concerned that readers may be turned off by commercial relationships between the travel agent and writers. Kim Mance, a Brooklyn, N.Y., video blogger and co-founder of Galavanting, a site aimed at female adventure travelers, says disclosure is important for readers but bloggers need to retain the mission and voice that garnered an audience in the first place. “Bloggers will miserably fail and lose their audience if they piss them off,” Mance says.

Bloggers say they’re ready to deliver travel tales and potential new Expedia customers—so long as they are compensated with exposure and cash. “I’ve spent five years traveling and building up an expertise and a following,” says Sherry Ott, a blogger from South Dakota who was among the Expedia visitors in Seattle. “I want to be able to be paid for my knowledge and for access into my audience.”

This speaks to why I think sponsored content makes so much sense.  Bloggers, for example, that have built up a following, are smart enough to know that if they bring on a sponsor, and their content suffers as a result, that they will lose that following.  So naturally, they only want to bring on sponsors that will bring VALUE to their following, because they want to GROW that following.  Which means they can get MORE sponsors.

It really does seem like a win-win when properly executed.  BTW if your company would like to talk to me about sponsoring #Blogchat on Twitter for either 3 or 6 months, please email me.  Since it is a 3-6 month sponsorship, it will be a bit more, but the benefits will be greater as well versus simply sponsoring one week.

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Here’s the ‘Video’ From Live #Blogchat at Blog World Expo!

Feed subscribers, click here to watch the video on YouTube.

I am so happy to be able to share the following video from our Live #Blogchat session at Blog World Expo.  It’s technically not video, it’s a screenshot of the tweets that were coming in for #BWELA as the #Blogchat was progressing (which is obviously disappointing).  But the audio is very good, and it will give you a good sense of what a Live #Blogchat is like.

As I said in my review post, the Live #Blogchat at Blog World Expo was by FAR my favorite Live #Blogchat in 2011.  A big reason why was because several audience members were active #Blogchat participants.  At all of the previous Live #Blogchats this year, most of the audience had never participated in the Twitter version of #Blogchat, so they had no idea how it would work.

And as I was listening to the audio yesterday, I was reminded of how many great discussions we had, whether it was @JasonFalls talking about how he balances his business blog and his personal blog, or @HardlyNormal talking about using video on his blog to help homeless people tell their story, or @MarcyMassura talking about viewing your blog as a tv channel, there was a ton of #smartitude on display from everyone, and we all learned from each other.

Which is really the whole point of #Blogchat anyway 😉  I hope you enjoy it, and I hope to see YOU at a Live #Blogchat in 2012!

The above video is only one of over 100 recorded sessions from BlogWorld Los Angeles 2011. You can get all of the videos — plus nearly 100 bonus interviews and other bonus content — by picking up the entire Virtual Ticket here: http://www.blogworldexpo.com/virtual-ticket-la-2011/

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#Blogchat This Sunday Will Be Co-Hosted by Valeria Maltoni!

Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent, Posting more often, Blogging as a Subject Matter Expert

I am thrilled to announce that Valeria Maltoni (@ConversationAge on Twitter) will be co-hosting #Blogchat this Sunday!  Valeria is one of the most respected blogging marketers on the planet for one simple reason: She creates incredibly valuable content on a daily basis.  Let me tell you a quick story about Valeria: Earlier this year during SXSW, I was at the Hilton’s bar with Valeria, Ann Handley and Leigh Durst at around 11pm, on a Saturday night.  It’s been a long day, we are all exhausted cause we’ve been on the go since about 6am that morning.  As we are sleepishly chatting, Valeria whips out her Macbook, and after a few minutes I ask her what she’s doing.  She says ‘I’m doing some research for a blog post that I need to get up on my blog for tomorrow morning.”

And there you go.  As I blogged about yesterday, for the 1st half of 2011 I blogged up to 5 times a week.  It was a TON of work, and Valeria blogs more often than that, every week.  I wanted Valeria to co-host with us not only to teach us how she can keep up such a prolific posting schedule, but to also talk about how her blog has helped establish her as an expert.  This is really an area that so many of us want to learn how we can do with our blog.  I’ve noticed in the last year especially that Valeria is one of the people that other marketers in this space are always talking about as one of the truly ‘smart’ people.  She does a wonderful job of creating amazing content on a daily basis on her blog, which really helps her establish herself as an expert.

So first, check out the prep post Valeria has written over at her blog covering what her #Blogchat topic is.

Now here’s the breakdown of our conversation with Valeria this Sunday:

8:00-8:30 PM Central – Valeria will talk to us about the prep work that goes into her posts.  The research she does, how she comes up with post ideas, etc.

8:30-9:00 PM Central – Valeria will talk to us about how she uses her blog to establish herself as a Subject Matter Expert.  This will be equally applicable to those of you that are independent or small business owners, as well as marketers that are looking to stand out within their company and industry.

I’m REALLY excited to have Valeria join us, and I’m sure you are as well!  Please make sure you are subscribed to her blog, Conversation Agent, and please follow her on Twitter!

BTW if you are new to #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about.  Also, I’m excited to announce that next Sunday (the 18th) will be co-hosted by #Blogchat regular Bruce Sallan, talking about how blogging and social media can be used for social good!  And already confirmed to co-host in early 2012 are @MarketingProfs, @GenoChurch and @Pistachio!

See y’all on Sunday!

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How to Increase Participation in Your Twitter Chat or Any Online Community

Interaction and participation.  It’s something many community sites and managers struggle with and focus on increasing.  Engagement is the lifeblood of many online communities, and yet, so many struggle to reach that ‘critical mass’ of participants.

When #Blogchat started in early 2009, participation wasn’t an issue.  Even in those 1st few weeks where we’d only have a few hundred tweets, there was plenty of engagement.  But even then, I noticed some problems.  It seemed that there were a core group of really smart bloggers that were, for the most part, answering the questions of everyone else.  So the core group of smart bloggers were mainly talking to each other, and fielding questions from everyone else.

If you think about it, you see this in a lot of online communities, especially knowledge-based ones.  You have the ‘newbies’ and the ‘experts’.  And early on, that’s what we saw with #Blogchat, the ‘newbies’ were asking questions of the ‘experts’.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the problem is this: If you’re not a ‘newbie’ or an ‘expert’, how do you participate?

What started happening is that I would talk to people that follow #Blogchat, and when they told me they lurked, I would invite them to participate.  “#Blogchat is so much better when more people participate so we can all learn from each other!” I would tell them.  Almost every time, they would reply by saying “Oh no! I don’t have anything to add, I’m not an expert!”

I hated hearing that.  So I added a new rule for everyone in #Blogchat: No experts allowed.

That’s not to say that smart people can’t and shouldn’t participate, but I wanted to communicate to everyone that they should feel comfortable participating.  #Blogchat works best when everyone is comfortable sharing what they know.  Does that mean that some people make some points that are completely off the wall?  Yep, but that also leads to new discussions, because others feel comfortable questioning and debating those claims.

But if your community only has interaction from the experts and newbies, you’re going to be ignoring everyone else.  Kathy had a great point about this several years ago, and her point is the same as mine, that you need to communicate to your community that everyone should participate, and help them feel comfortable doing so.  For #Blogchat, when they hear ‘No experts allowed, we are all here to learn from each other’, it puts everyone at ease.  Most people are smarter than they give themselves credit for, they might not believe they are ‘qualified’ to join a discussion, but they almost always have something they can share that can benefit the group.

One of your key roles as a community manager is to get everyone to a place where they are comfortable contributing as they can.  And remember that when people start participating in a community, they begin to take a sense of ownership in that community.  That greatly increases the motivation they have to help you grow that community, and make it more valuable for everyone.

This starts by finding ways to get everyone more interactive.  Not just newbies asking experts questions, but everyone asking and answering questions.  This will generate more discussions and more value for everyone.

If you want to get more discussions and participation among your community, consider these steps:

1 – Encourage involvement from lurkers.  As I am watching #Blogchat’s stream, it’s obviously moving way too fast for me to catch even a fraction of the tweets.  But if I see anyone tweet that they are joining #Blogchat for the 1st time, I *always* go back and thank them for joining.  Nothing makes a lurker feel more welcome than announcing to the group that they are joining for the 1st time, and immediately getting a thank you tweet from the moderator.  Additionally, other #Blogchat members have started doing the same thing, which only increases the chance that this lurker will move to being a participant.

2 – Understand that statements are NOT discussions.  Often, I will notice that a member of #Blogchat isn’t directly engaging with anyone, but rather they are tweeting out general statements like ‘Blog from the heart!’ or ‘Make your post as long or as short as it needs to be!’  These tweets will probably get a lot of RTs, but by themselves, they don’t often generate a lot of discussion.  If I see someone that’s constantly leaving tweets like this, I try to engage them.  I’ll ask them questions about their statements, and hopefully get a discussion started with them.  Then, others have an opportunity to join in.

3 – Encourage all members to be helpful.  When I first started #Blogchat, I asked regular contributors to please help me by welcoming new participants, and to help them with any questions they have.  The #Blogchat regulars do a wonderful job of being helpful to everyone.  Now I tell everyone that if they are new to #Blogchat, to feel free to ask any of us any questions, that we will be happy to help.  And I am constantly seeing others tweet about how helpful and friendly the #Blogchat community is, so I think the #Blogchat regulars view it as a badge of honor.  At least I hope they do, because I do 😉

4 – Clearly spell out for all members how they can participate and what is expected of them.  All it takes is a simple post listing out the purpose of your community and any guidelines.  This is important, because if someone stumbles upon an established community, it can be a very daunting thing, and a ‘road map’ can definitely help put them at ease.

5 – If you are active in your community (as you should be), then make sure you are following your own rules.  For example, when I participate in #Blogchat, I am usually asking questions of other participants.  I try to avoid always making statements, and I use the words ‘I think….’ a lot.  If I am asking questions as the ‘moderator’ of #Blogchat then it sets the tone of everyone else to the same.

 

Remember at the end of the day if you can reach a point where community members are creating value for themselves, then everyone wins.  A great way to do this is to increase the level of participation within that community.

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Join @LisaPetrilli co-hosting #Blogchat tonight on How Introverts Can Use Blogging to Boost Their Careers!

I am very excited to announce that tonight’s #Blogchat will be co-hosted by my good friend Lisa Petrilli!  Lisa will be joining us to discuss how introverts can use blogging to boost their careers!

If you’ve been following Lisa’s blog over the past year, you know that she’s written several extremely popular posts on how introverts use social media.  As an introvert herself, Lisa understands how we communicate with others, and how we use social media.  Plus, she launched her blog last year, which has become incredibly popular in a very short time, and has opened up many career possibilities for her as a result.  So she’s the perfect person to lead this discusson!

Tonight’s #Blogchat (Sunday) will start at 8pm Central.  Here’s the topics we’ll be discussing:

1 – What it means to be an introvert.  What I love about Lisa is that she does a great job of explaining what our introversion means.  What we often view as weaknesses, can actually be strengths!

2 – How a blog can boost your career.  We’ll talk about how introverts can use their blogs to help them get a job, everything from getting an interview, to doing well on it, to getting the job!  We’ll also talk about how introverts can leverage their blogs to help get promoted and lead others after getting that job!

3 – Finally, we’ll close with talking a bit about how introverted CEOs can blog and use it as a tool to communicate with and lead others.

All this awesomeness will get started at 8pm Central tonight, so please make sure you are following Lisa on Twitter, and also check out her post covering it!

 

Now tonight’s #Blogchat is special for another reason, as this will be the official launch party for Lisa’s new ebook, “The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business and Leadership!”  This is a project that Lisa has been working on for a LONG time, and I’m happy that #Blogchat can help others learn more about this ebook.  Lisa was kind enough to give me a copy of the ebook, and I have to say that if you’re an introvert, or if you work with or lead introverts, you will love this ebook.  What I love about Lisa’s approach is that she understands that introverts have certain advantages, and she always explains the situation in a way that makes sense to introverts.

For example, I am an introvert, but thanks to social media, I can be much more extroverted online!  I have talked to many other introverts about this, and all of you have told me the same thing, one of the reasons that we love social media is that it makes it easier for us as introverts, to comfortably connect with others.

But for me, this can present a problem because most people only know me ‘online’ and via social media, so as a result, many people assume I am an extrovert.  But since I am actually an introvert, when I attend conferences and events, this can be a disconnect for others.  I actually struggled with this a bit at Blog World, because I went out to a few parties and I felt very uncomfortable trying to ‘network’ with strangers.  Yet at the same time, I realized how this could be ‘hurting’ me if I am not as social offline as I am online.

So I was thrilled to see that Lisa addresses how introverts can network in her ebook.  I won’t give away her secrets, but she explains exactly how she does it, and looking back, I realize now that if I had used the methods she described, Blog World’s networking events would have been a lot more comfortable for me.  I will definitely use her advice at the next conference I attend!

Please do join us for tonight’s #Blogchat with Lisa, as it will be a fabulous discussion!  And if you would like to purchase Lisa’s ebook, ““The Introvert’s Guide to Success in Business and Leadership,” you can click here to buy it on Amazon.  Or if you click here and buy it from Lisa’s site, you can enter in code BLOGCHAT and get a 50% discount so it only costs $3.99!  But please hurry, that code expires at Midnight tonight, Pacific time.  And please note the ebook does include sections on how introverts can use social media, especially blogging, to succeed in business!

And in case you were wondering, no, Lisa isn’t paying me anything for all this gushing about her or her ebook or co-hosting #Blogchat.  I am doing it because Lisa is a great friend and wonderful person, but also because I really do believe that she has created a wonderful ebook and that SHE was the person to write this ebook.  Lisa has been a very wonderful and supportive friend to me and so many other people, and I believe that she deserves to see her good efforts rewarded.  I know many of you think the world of Lisa like I do, and understand what I am saying 😉

See you all tonight at #Blogchat!

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Turning Blog Comments Into Customers and Clients; Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

Thanks to the suggestion of Rick, tonight’s(Sunday night’s) #Blogchat topic will be How to Turn Commenters Into Customers.  Rick wrote a post on this topic, and also referenced one written by Marcus.

One of the great unwritten rules of blogging is that if your posts get comments and interaction, then they are successful.  But if you are blogging for a business or organization, you can’t survive on comments alone.  You need to convert those comments into something of real value to your business.  In other words, getting more comments is NOT the end goal of your blogging strategy.  You want your blog to generate more sales, or leads, or donors, or awareness, or SOMETHING else besides comments.

Now that’s not to say that comments don’t have value, because they absolutely do.  But the point is that YOUR company or organization has to decide what value comments have in relation to YOUR blogging strategy.

Let’s assume that you blog for a company that sells Adolescent Radioactive Blackbelt Hamsters.  If your blogging strategy is focused on sales, then if you are going to invest time in cultivating comments on your blog posts, those comments need to lead to sales, either directly or indirectly.  Here’s a snazzy diagram I drew to outline this simple process:

Now the problem that many blogging companies have is that they work to encourage blog comments on their posts, but they don’t do anything to leverage those blog comments to help them reach their ultimate goal of generating a sale.  Many people will read a blog post, then comment on it, and then nothing happens to move them closer to a sale.

Let’s look at how we can correct this, first starting with the approach that we want comments to DIRECTLY lead to sales.  Or in this case, we want our commenters to buy something.  If that’s the case, then obviously we need to give them the OPTION to buy something.  Think about it, if you want your blog to directly generate sales, how can this happen if you don’t offer goods for sale ON your blog?  It can’t, the best you can hope for is that the commenter will contact you and ask how they can buy something from you.  But if you want your commenters to buy something from you, you need to give them that option.

Now the other option is the one that far more of us likely employ, and that is using comments to indirectly lead to sales.  In this scenario, we need to understand that since comments won’t be leading directly to sales, they need to lead to people taking some OTHER action that eventually WILL lead to a sale.

For example, in my own blogging case, I want to encourage comments here, but I know that they will likely INDIRECTLY lead to sales for me.  I know that the more comments I have here usually leads to more RTs and sharing of my content online, which means I have higher visibility, and am more likely to be viewed as a ‘thought leader’ when it comes to how companies and brands can better use social media.  This increases the likelihood that I will be hired as a speaker, a trainer or consultant.

But also notice that I have pages here dedicated to my speaking, training and consulting.  So if someone does comment here, and is interested in hiring me, I have given them information on how to do that.

This is the one area where many blogging companies (or even solo bloggers that want to monetize their blog) fail: They don’t focus on calls to action and closing the sale.

If you want to use your blog as a way to generate sales, either directly or indirectly, then you have to help your visitors get to that point.  If you want the blog to directly generate sales, then you need to give them an option to buy on the blog.  If you want your blog to indirectly lead to sales, then you have to figure out what Action A and Action B is above, and how to move them along the cycle toward a sale.

And that’s what we’ll be discussing tonight at #Blogchat, how to convert comments into sales/clients/donors/etc, either directly or indirectly!  Hope you can join us starting at 8pm Central tonight on Twitter!

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Review: Blog World and New Media Expo, Los Angeles 2011

Somehow, I had never attended a Blog World until last week in Los Angeles.  I came close a couple of times, but couldn’t make it work until this time.

Overall, it was a great event and I’m going to make every effort to attend the next one in June of 2012.  Inevitably, Blog World draws a lot of comparisons to South By Southwest.  While SXSW is easily 10 times bigger in scope, I found the networking at Blog World to be better, because most of the same people were there, but in a much smaller space.  For example, I got to catch up with Chris Brogan and Scott Monty at Blog World, even though they had been at previous SXSWs, and I’d missed them.  Other vets of both conferences told me the same thing, that you’ll meet more people and have better conversations at Blog World.  They were right.

One thing that I really appreciated from Blog World was offering free shuttle service from all 4 partner hotels.  This alone probably saved me $100 or more on cab fees.  And on top of that, @YouCast offered one of the smartest sponsorships I’ve ever seen at a social media conference: They offered FREE shuttle rides from LAX to all 4 hotels, then return service from the hotels to LAX when attendees left.  This saved me another $100, and guess what, You Cast is one of the few sponsors I remember from Blog World, and the only one I am blogging about.  Bobby and the team did a great job with this.

The Sessions: Sometimes More is Less

If there was one area where I think Blog World fell short, it was the sessions.  Not the quality, but there was simply too much to choose from.  The sessions I did attend were all pretty good, in fact several of them were great.  But attendance was low in almost all of them.  When you walk into a room that seats 200, and 15 people are in the audience, you cannot help but form opinions about the topic and presenter even before the session starts.  What made matters worse was that I began to notice that about 20 mins into every session, attendees started leaving.  My guess is that they had at least 2 sessions they wanted to see at that time, and if the one they picked wasn’t amazing to them, they left to go to their backup choice.

Another problem with having so many sessions running at once is that you need a LOT of rooms to hold them all.  That means that you literally need a tour guide to find some of the rooms.  For example, the room where the Live #Blogchat was held was at the end of a LONG hallway and then wrapped around a corner.  There were no signs and it was really isolated.  We still had a great turnout, around 70 people, but I tweeted several times exactly where the room was.  Another session I attended had 10 people, and as soon as I walked in, I could tell that the panelists looked totally dejected at the low turnout.  I get what Rick and the Blog World team were trying to do, they were trying to make sure that they had all the blogging topics covered, as there were a ton of niche blogging areas/topics featured.  But when there are only say 30 people interested in a particular niche at an event, and you give them 14 other session options in the same time slot as their niche, well you are going to have a low turnout.

The Parties Were a Very Pleasant Surprise

In keeping with the comparison to SXSW, I have to say that I absolutely HATE most of the parties at SXSW.  Usually, these are held at a bar with loud music and a few hundred geeks standing inches from each other screaming as they try to have a conversation.  It is painful to watch, and a miserable experience.  But the parties at Blog World were far better.  I missed the closing party, but attended the opening party and the one on Friday night.  In both cases, there were a ton of nice comfy chairs and couches to sit at.  There was loud music, but it wasn’t TOO loud.  It added a nice sense of background, but you could still be standing next to a group and have a chat.

Overall, I think Blog World was a great event

No, it wasn’t perfect, but I think the experience as a whole was a good one.  And even with the issues I did see, such as way too many sessions at the same time, I think Rick and his team had the best of intentions.  If you want to spend a couple of days having amazing conversations and attending a few excellent sessions and parties, then Blog World is the place for you.  And who doesn’t want that? 😉

If you attended Blog World, especially if it was your 1st one like it was mine, what did you think?