Impressions Of The Blog World Expo Conference

My first impressions of the BlogWorldExpo are it's a good start. I see lots of "famous" bloggers here, and have run into a lot of people that I read on a regular basis. Stephen Green, Glenn Reynolds, Rob May from Business Pundit is sitting behind me at the Cult of Blogging session from Leo Laporte.

I've also been able to say hello to Easton Ellsworth from KnowMoreMedia, Bill Owen from NutsAboutSouthwest, folks from Townhall and Pajamas Media, and I've managed to avoid even making eye contact with the Izea folks (the PayPerPost people). I still want to run into Jim Hoff from Gateway Pundit, Rohit Bhargava from Influential Interactive Marketing, and Jeremiah Owyang, the Web-Strategist.

What's great is most of the people here are all hands-on bloggers, and have moved far away from the theory of blogging into the practical applications. There is a growing movement here, and it's more than blogging, it's the sense that we can create communities and affect change in business, politics, media, and in every other sphere of human endeavor.

When I first started blogging, I was a true believer. I felt that blogging gave voice to the masses, and changed the way we communicate to each other. As I started to turn my blog knowledge into a business, some of the wonder went away. Sitting in this conference, I'm getting that old familiar feeling that I really am involved in something that is fundamentally different. It's not the rush of revolution, but it is the powerful sense of massive change, slowly making its way through the population.

That alone is worth the price of admission. Franki and I are already planning on coming back to the next one next September.

BlogWorldExpo: The Benefits of Small Business Blogs

Liveblogging Scott Allen of the Virtual Handshake, listening to him discuss how Small Business blogs help support your small business.

1) Don't have ads. (we teach this too - ads make it look like your primary business can't make money).

2) Reasons to use blogs
a) search engine visibility
b) educate customers
c) Branding (personal and business)

3) Lead Generation
Not that great, but lead conversion is very, very high. Some people do get leads, but we find that there's often more people that trust you after reading your blog. Scott says this is all about trust.

4) Search Engines: The fastest way to get to the top 10 (page one) of Google is to start a blog. here's an example. Go search "labor relations consulting". The first entry is one of my clients, and they rank first in their industry.

Update:
Do's and Don'ts

Do's:
1)Commit to regular posting. It's better to delete the blog if you stop posting. A dead blog is worse than no blog at all.
2) Be Authentic
3) Spend at least 50% of your time off-blog.
4) Encourage Conversation (this is harder to do then it seems)

Don't
1) Don't beat yourself for not posting. If you miss a few days, it's okay. As long as you come back to it regularly.
2) Be afraid to Market. It's okay if you're a business blogger
3) Fall for the Field of Dreams syndrome (just because you build it, doesn't mean your marketing it done. Creating a blog does not mean that by magic, you'll get traffic.
4) Don't let people be abusive

Scott is talking about how much time you spend a week. He maintains that 5 hours a week spend blogging is a better use of your marketing time than other pieces. And that's just the direct metrics. Another guy points out that blogging also makes you smarter, as it gives you more information.

Scott could have read our training documents, because he's saying the same thing that we teach in our Blogger Boot Camp. Best speaker so far in terms of content.

on Ghost Bloggers: it's okay to hire bloggers that speak in the company name, and it's okay to have someone edit your writing, and it's okay to have someone write posts for you, and then you edit it. As long as you are involved in the process, it's okay. Scott doesn't agree that there is some weird kind of taint because someone edits for grammar.

Live At The Blog World Expo: Tracking Reputation In The Blogosphere

Franki and I are here, blogging at the courtesy of free WiFi in the Las Vegas Convention Center. After a great breakfast at the Grand Lux Cafe, and a restful night at the Paris hotel, and a pretty decent sushi meal late at night (Shibayu at the MGM Grand), we're here at the conference and in a session with filtrbox, umbria, collective intellect.

These three companies are talking about the need to perform constant monitoring of the blogosphere if you are concerned about your brand online.

The general speech is simple. More information is out there, and the cycle of time that you have to respond is now measured in days, maybe hours, instead of several weeks.. Howard Kaushansky, Robin Seidner, and Ari Newman are speaking.

Robin is saying now that the time to perform online monitoring is before you have a crisis. You need to understand a baseline of what the current chatter is so you can identify a crisis (or an opportunity!).

Also, understand who the influencers are. Now this is the tough part. The definition of influence is much harder. Robin does a good job of explaining that influence has to be eyeballed, one-on-one. Her presentation also makes the point that companies should be proactive, instead of reactive, and corrective, while remaining authentic.

Conference Note: Arianna Huffington is on the cover of a free issue of Blogger and Podcaster magazine, which is funny, because Arianna blew the conference off to speak at another, fancier venue.

Update: An interesting use for Twitter. Rather than spamming people when you write a new post or want to push an idea, put it on Twitter, and it's not considered spam. Interesting.

(More of this panel is listed over at StlRecruiting.com)