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Review: LIVE #Blogchat at Blog World Expo in Los Angeles

You know how a parent isn’t supposed to show favoritism toward one child?  I almost feel that way about the seven Live #Blogchats that have been so far this year.  Every one had amazing discussions and was special in its own way.

But Live #Blogchat at Blog World Expo was my favorite one so far.  By far.

This was the 1st Live #Blogchat where there were several regular and active #Blogchat participants in attendance.  At all the other Live #Blogchats, at best there were a handful that had joined a few times, maybe a couple of regular participants.  But for many, they had little to no idea what a ‘#blogchat’ was.  This group not only knew what it was, but they knew the people that were going to be there.  Many of them showed up 30 minutes early to the session just to meet each other and I lost track of how many times I heard someone scream OMG! and then immediately tacklehug someone!  This was the first Live #Blogchat where I really felt like the community was present.  When the first wave showed up, we all were so excited to see each other that we spent about 5 minutes posing for pictures 😉

This is what I really wanted to see happy at the Live events because #Blogchat belongs to its community.  Yes, I started #Blogchat almost 3 years ago, but there are hundreds of people that have taken an active role in building #blogchat into what it is today.  I cannot wait to see what the Live #Blogchats look like a year from now when everyone is familiar with the format, and the audience is mostly made up of regulars, like it was at Blog World.

We didn't have no stinkin' speakers in Live #blogchat, so the Live-Bloggers got to be on the stage 😉

Thanks to Judy for the above pic!  Now I wanted to explain how this room was structured.  When I got to the room about an hour before Live #Blogchat started, you had a room with 90ish chairs, all facing forward.  The 1st two rows were at tables, facing the stage along with the rest of the chairs.  I wanted the chairs all facing toward the middle, so we switched the 1st two rows of chairs at the tables that you see in this pic, so they were facing the back of the room.  Then as a few people started arriving, James asked ‘So who’s going to be on stage?’  Without thinking, I said ‘You are!’   And all the live-bloggers for the session got to be up on stage.  I *really* thought it was important to have active #blogchat members up on the stage because if the ‘spotlight’ was going to be on anyone in this session, it should be on them.

The discussion, as always, was excellent.  We started off talking about creating a blogging strategy, but as always happens in #blogchat on Twitter, we soon started veering off into other areas like finding a focus for your blog, your content, injecting personal tones and personality to your blog to give it a unique voice; your own.  James did a great job of collecting many of the key tweeted takeaways from the Live #Blogchat via Storify.  I did want to send out a special thank you to Tamsen McMahon, Jason Falls, Marcy Massura and Mark Horvath for making a special effort to answer questions from fellow #blogchat participants.  I honestly think I talked way too much during #blogchat, and I had several participants afterward mention how much they appreciated their help.

And thanks to James for this picture, I don’t like most of my pictures, but this was a good one.  Clearly, being around #Blogchat peeps brings out the best in me 😉

I would hope that most of you had as much fun at the Live #Blogchat at Blog World as I did, but I know you didn’t 😉  Many of you have been asking about the next Live #Blogchat, it is tentatively scheduled for South By Southwest in March.  Right now I am trying to get sponsors and the venue locked down, so if you know a company that might be a good fit for a Live #Blogchat sponsorship, please email me and I’ll be happy to give them a rundown on what’s included, prices, etc.

When #Blogchat started, I told everyone that I appreciated them for coming, and loved them for it.  I meant every single word of that.  As we were getting set up, I went to check my phone to see how much time I had left before we got started, and I realized I was smiling from ear to ear.  I was so damn happy to see everyone and so glad they could share in this experience!  As soon as I thanked everyone for coming at the end of our hour, everyone got up and instead of leaving, all stayed and chatted and I realized how incredible LOUD it suddenly got in the room because everyone was either talking really loud because they were excited to be meeting someone, or because they were laughing at something someone had just said.

I loved it.  And I love all of you that came and made it possible!

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#Blogchat this Sunday will be Co-Hosted by Lee Odden discussing Live-Blogging an event!

I’m thrilled to announce that this Sunday night (October the 30th), #Blogchat will be co-hosted by Lee Odden!  I wanted to Lee to co-host our final #Blogchat before Blog World Expo because one of Lee’s many talents is that he is a prolific live-blogger!  So for those of you that are heading to Blog World that were considering Live-Blogging some of the sessions, I thought this would be perfect prep for you!

As always, #Blogchat will start at 8pm Central, on Sunday night.  Here’s what we’ll be discussing:

From 8:00pm-8:30pm – What are the Top 2-3 things you should know before you attempt to live-blog an event?

From 8:30pm-9:00pm – What are the advantages to live-blogging an event versus simply doing a recap post once you get home?

So if you have any questions about live-blogging, definitely check out #Blogchat and Lee can help you out!  Thanks again to Lee for agreeing to join us, and please make sure you subscribe to Top Rank Blog and follow Lee on Twitter!

BTW if you are new to #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about.  And if you will be attending Blog World, please join us for a LIVE #Blogchat on Saturday, November the 5th!

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Getting more blog comments vs cultivating more blog conversations

One of the big concerns for so many bloggers is getting more comments on their blog.  There have been a gazillion posts written on how to get more comments, I have written a few myself.  But I think an important distinction we need to make is that getting more comments does not necessarily equal getting more CONVERSATIONS on your blog. And at the end of the day, I think when most bloggers say ‘I want more comments on my blog!’ what they REALLY mean is ‘I want more conversations on my blog!’

So if we really want more conversations, then that requires a slightly different approach than simply trying to get more comments.  And it was this distinction that we discussed last night during #Blogchat.  You can view the transcript here.

In chatting with all the other smarties during #Blogchat last night, I think we agreed upon a few key ways to cultivate more conversations (not just comments) on your blog:

1 – Ask your readers what they think.  I remember @JudyMartin8 specifically made this point.  It’s a great way to encourage your readers to get their point of view out in the open, and that increases the chance that others can agree or disagree with their points.

2 – Push commenters to go beyond just saying ‘Great post!’.  We all get these comments, and I definitely appreciate them.  But as far as cultivating conversations, these really don’t help us much.  When you get these type of comments, ask the commenter to share WHAT they liked about the post.  This way you get an interaction started with them, that could lead to a conversation.  Both @profkrg and @kamkansas made this point.

3 – Help connect commenters that make complimentary or opposing points.  This is a great way to cultivate conversations that I don’t think enough bloggers focus on.  If one blogger makes a point, then another follows up with a comment that either builds on their point or offers a differing point of view, try to connect the two.  Leave a comment like ‘Hey Sarah, I think Pete was making a similar point in his comment’, or ‘Jim I like where you are going with this, but what would you say to someone like Kathy, that thinks the opposite?’

 

At the end of the day, I think we as bloggers need to take ownership and proactively cultivate the conversations that we want to see happen.  I think we need to go beyond simply trying to get more comments, because as I said last night, if you get 10 comments that all say ‘Great post!’, that is NOT a conversation, that’s 10 comments.

What else could we be doing to cultivate conversations in the comments section of our posts?  What works for you on your blog?

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Let’s Connect at Blog World Expo Plus a Live #Blogchat Update!

Blog World Expo is only 20 days away!  Can you believe it’s almost here?  I am knee-deep in getting prepped for my first trip to Blog World, and I wanted to touch base with y’all on a couple of key areas:

First, we have nailed down all the details on the LIVE #Blogchat!  It will happen on November the 5th, a Saturday, at 3:30pm.  Live #Blogchat will be located in Room 150A.  Deb told me this is one of the rooms right next to where they’ll have the keynotes.  She said it can hold between 100-150 people.  We aren’t going to have any type of registration for the Live #Blogchat, seating will be first-come, first-served.  Should also be the largest Live #Blogchat we’ve done so far, so come early!

Now, as for the topic….we asked y’all to pick from one of 5 possible Live #Blogchat topics over at the Blog World Expo blog.  The most popular topic was How do you create a strategy for your blog?  So that will be our topic BUT, the 2nd most popular topic was How do you use other social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Plus) to grow your blog?  Deb and I decided that it made perfect sense to discuss how to create a strategy for your blog, but that in the course of that discussion, we could also devote some time to discussing how to use other social sites to grow your blog!  So the best of both worlds!

So here’s the LIVE #Blogchat at Blog World Expo skinny:

When: November 5th (Saturday) at 3:30 pm

Where: Room 150-A, Los Angeles Convention Center

Topic: How do you create a strategy for your blog?

Registration: NOPE! Attendance is first-come, first-served!

I cannot wait to see y’all at the Live #Blogchat!  I’m so glad we’ll finally have one on the West Coast as I know a lot of #Blogchat regulars like Bruce and Marcy have been asking about when we would!

Now, the second reason for this post is to let you know how we can connect at Blog World Expo.  Since Blog World is so ginormous there are a TON of people that I want to meet, so for most of Thursday and especially Saturday, I will be at the Convention Center, meeting and mingling with all of y’all.  I won’t be attending many sessions, because I want to have as much time to catch up with old friends, and meet new ones!  So if we haven’t already connected and you want to, please email me and let’s try to get together!

Besides catching up with old and new friends at Blog World, I am going to actually be doing some business there as well.  To this end, I want to connect with you at Blog World IF:

1 – Your company or event is interested in having a Live #Blogchat in 2012.  I would be happy to meet with you and give you more information about how a Live #Blogchat works, show you video from previous Live #Blogchats, go over prices and sponsorship packages, whatever you want.

2 – Your company or event is interested in having me speak or provide on-site social media marketing training.  Same as above, I’ll be happy to give you more information on how this could be structured, fees involved, etc.

3 – Your company has a brand ambassador/advocate program you’d like to talk to me about.  I am always looking for new case studies to profile here and in my presentations of companies that are doing innovative things to embrace and empower their advocates and fans.  If your company has something you’d like to share with me, please email me.  Bonus points if you have already documented a case study you can point me to 😉

So if you’d like to have a Live #Blogchat at your company or event, or you’d like to work with me, or you’d like to tell me about your company/organization’s brand advocate outreach efforts, please email me so we can talk about setting up a time to meet.  I am going to try to keep Friday the 6th more or less free so I can have on-site meetings with as many companies as possible.  If Friday doesn’t work for you, let me know and we’ll see about finding a time that fits in both our schedules.

That’s it!  I can’t wait to see all of y’all in LA in just THREE weeks!  Please leave a comment if you’ll be attending so we can start connecting now 😉

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What happens when you lose your love of blogging?

Last night’s #Blogchat topic was getting inspired again if you’ve lost your love of blogging.  It was a fabulous discussion once again, and here’s the transcript if you missed it.  I wouldn’t say that I no longer love blogging, but over the last few weeks, I am loving it a lot less, and it seems more like ‘work’ than FUN for me.

One of the things I continue to struggle with is how often to post here.  I want to create as much amazing and valuable content for y’all as possible.  But I also know if I only blog when I have something amazing to say, y’all may not hear from me for a few months 😉  So then it becomes a trade-off between posting more often with slightly less valuable posts, versus posting slightly more valuable posts, but less often.  Sometimes I just want to stop blogging and only blog when I have something that truly think is worth sharing.  If that means I only blog once a month, so be it.  But at the same time, this blog isn’t my personal soapbox, it is a business development tool.  So I can’t afford to only post once a month, I need to use this tool to create and increase visibility for myself.

So how do you find the optimal number of posts for your blog?  I would like to shoot for a consistent 2-3 posts a week here.  I’ve talked to other bloggers recently and they are going through the same ‘I don’t want to blog more for the traffic, I want to blog less for my readers’ struggle.  Sure, I know if I write 5 new posts a week, that traffic will skyrocket, and overall post quality will also likely fall.  Is that tradeoff worth it?  I don’t think so.

Another option is to allow guest posts.  Honestly, I don’t like using guest posts, and don’t like reading blogs that allow a lot of guest posts.  A few months ago one of my favorite bloggers turned their blog into a group blog, and I rarely read the blog anymore.  Because the reason why I was reading it (that blogger) never posts there anymore.  So while I may rarely use guest posts in the future, I want to be driving the majority of the content here.

So how did you set your posting schedule?  How did you find a method that works for you?  Think it’s time for me to shake things up here, what’s worked for you?

Pic via Flickr user ptrktn

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#Blogchat This Sunday: How Sports Teams Can Connect With Fans Via Blogging With Lou Imbriano!

This Sunday at #Blogchat we’ll be joined by Lou Imbriano, who will talk to us about how sports teams can use blogging to connect with their fans!  Many of you know Lou, as he’s been a regular participant in #Blogchat for well over a year now.  Besides being the CEO of Trinity One, Lou is the former Chief Marketing Officer for the New England Patriots!  Additionally, he’s just published the book Winning The Customer, which he’ll be giving away a couple of copies before and after #Blogchat on Sunday!

Speaking of Winning the Customer, I wanted to share with you part of what Lou wrote in his acknowledgments section: “I have to give a big shout out to Twitter.  It’s the reason Elizabeth and I met, and it also led me to Mack Collier and #blogchat, which gave me the notion and the tools to write a blog.  That blog is what made me think I could actually write a book.”

How great is that?  That means every one of you that participate in #Blogchat have helped Lou in seeing Winning the Customer come to light!  Which is another reason why I’m so excited to have Lou join us!

Here’s what we’ll be discussing:

8:00pm Central – 8:30pm:  How can sports teams use blogs to connect with fans?  Should they start a blog based on the franchise as a whole, or one area?  If the Patriots said today that they wanted to get into blogging, how would we make that happen?

8:30pm Central – 9:00pm: Who should be blogging for the franchise?  The owner?  The players?  If the players, how much freedom do you give them?

That’s it, and although we do want to focus on blogging, if you’d like to talk to Lou about how sports teams and franchises can use other social media tools to better connect with fans, feel free!  And please in preparation for #Blogchat this Sunday, please do follow Lou on Twitter!

See you Sunday at 8pm Central!

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Think Like a Rockstar is coming to Atlanta and #SMIATL this weekend!

I am beyond thrilled that I get to spend the weekend in Atlanta at #SMIATL!  The event will be very important for me because, besides seeing all my friends again, there will be a LIVE #Blogchat on Friday afternoon!  This will be the FIFTH Live #Blogchat so far this year, and is SOLD OUT!  I cannot wait to see everyone!

But I am even more excited about what happens on Saturday.  That’s when I get to give my favorite session of all, Think Like a Rockstar.  This session will answer two of the most important questions that online marketers have today:

1 – How do we build engagement around our Social Media efforts?

2 – How can we better connect with our customers and WHY should we?

One of the highlights for me in getting to attend South By Southwest Interactive in 2008 was getting to meet Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba.  The two literally wrote the book on Customer Evangelism, and are co-authors of the popular Church of the Customer blog.  When I met them, I told them both that what THEY were talking about, why companies should embrace and empower their most passionate customers, was the future of successful marketing.  NOT Social Media.  I believe that even more today than I did then.  Social Media are simply tools, but there is true business value in embracing and empowering your most passionate customers, and I’m going to make that case on Saturday morning at the Think Like a Rockstar session.

So all this week, I’ll be outlining some examples of how rockstars are connecting with their fans, and giving you ways to think about how you can apply these same methods to your company’s marketing efforts.  I’ll deep-dive into all of these areas on Saturday at #SMIATL, so if you’d like to attend, I have a special discount code you can use to get 20% off admission!  Just use code SMISPEAK when you register and you’ll get to attend #SMIATL for the insanely low price of $128 for the 2-day event.

BTW if you want to get a sense of what will be in this session, here’s last year’s deck, which currently has over 14,000 views on SlideShare.  I will add though that the deck I will be presenting at #SMIATL will be completely revamped and restructured with new case studies and format.  About 33% of the slides you see in this deck will make it to the one at #SMIATL, and even those will be used in a different context.

Think Like a Rockstar: How to Build Fans and Community Around Your Social Media Efforts

View more presentations from Mack Collier

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#Blogchat this Sunday Co-Hosted by @SheilaS & @BeckyMcCray!

We have a special treat in store for this Sunday as we’ll be joined by TWO co-hosts!  Sheila Scarborough and Becky McCray from TourismCurrents will both join us and help us discuss how bloggers can connect with companies and vice versa.

We’ll be discussing two many areas:

1 – How do bloggers that have publishing and content-creation skills find companies and organizations that are looking to hire them?  And when they do find the companies, how do bloggers pitch themselves?

2 – How do companies and organizations that want to hire content creators find them AND how do they vet their skills?  Also, how do they determine an acceptable compensation rate?

 

And as always, #Blogchat will start at 8pm Central on Sunday night, with ‘tailgating’ starting at 7pm as always!  Please follow Becky, Sheila and Tourism Currents in preparation for this Sunday, and cause they rock!

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What story does your content tell about you?

You can learn a lot about someone and how they use social media by the content they create.  Pick a blog, any blog, and look at the last 10 posts.  Is the content instructional?  Inspirational?  Self-promotional?  Educational?  All of the above?

The same thing applies to companies, and that will be the topic of the LIVE #Blogchat on Tuesday at Content Marketing World (Did I mention it’s at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame?).  We’ll be talking about companies can tell their story via the content they create on their blog.

One company that I think does a fabulous job of telling its story via the content it creates on its blog is Patagonia:

With The Cleanest Line, Patagonia does a fabulous job of creating content that isn’t focused on the company and its products, but rather the ideals and beliefs that are core to it, and its customers.  It’s a wonderful example of focusing on The Bigger Idea.

From The Cleanest Line’s About Page:

Build the best product, do no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
– Patagonia’s Mission Statement

The goal of The Cleanest Line is to further Patagonia’s mission by encouraging dialogue about the products we build, the sports we love and the environmental issues we’re concerned about. By talking openly about the products we build, Patagonia users can help us achieve ever greater standards of quality and functionality. By spreading the word about specific environmental issues, we can increase awareness and take action as quickly as possible. By sharing field reports, we can inspire one another to keep experiencing the natural wonders of our precious planet. And like any good conversation, there’s always the possibility for pranksters and poets to direct the conversation towards territories lacking any seriousness whatsoever.

Patagonia is clear to let the readers know that the content it creates will be focused on issues larger than simply its products.  In fact, most of the content is focused on environmental and wildlife stories and issues that are important to the company, and its customers.  And by taking this approach, I think it also makes the content being created far more interesting.

Look at your company blog; what story are you telling?  Which company blogs create posts that you actually ENJOY reading?

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#Blogchat will be LIVE at Blog World Expo in Los Angeles!

Whenever I announce on Twitter a new Live #Blogchat, a few people always have the same response: “But when are you coming to the West Coast?!?”

This November.  In Los Angeles.  At Blog World Expo! 

I am beyond excited about this announcement, as this is the conference that EVERY blogger wants to attend.  It’s our Super Bowl, and I cannot wait to see #Blogchat become a part of it.  We are still fleshing out some of the details, so I will be talking more about the Live #Blogchat at Blog World Expo here in the coming weeks.

For now, please go over to the Blog World Expo site, and check out Deb’s post on it, and also, you can vote on the topic you want for #Blogchat!  We’ve given you 5 options so pick your favorite topic, and that might be what we discuss when #Blogchat comes to Blog World Expo!

Finally, Blog World Expo has given us a special discount code for registration!  Use code BLOGCHAT20 to get a 20% discount on a conference pass!  As you might expect with Blog World, the speaker lineup will be the Whos-Who of this space, with Amber Naslund, Peter Shankman, Liz Strauss, Jason Falls, C.C. Chapman and David Armano some of the people that have already been confirmed.  It’s Blog World, you know it’s going to be huge 😉

Cannot wait to see y’all in a couple of months.  If you’d like to see a full schedule of where #Blogchat Live will be around the country, click here.