- Scobleizer readers. While you're here, please check out our plans for the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference.]* Just got logged onto the NCA&T network, so can now liveblog the ConvergeSouth conference. The first session was a rambling conversation (read: covered a lot of ground) with Elizabeth Edwards, Ed Cone and others in the crowd, talking about various experiences and observations about online community building. Now, Robert and Maryam Scoble on the "killer blog": Blog cause you want to. Maryam says Robert tried for years to get her blogging, and when she finally did, Robert said, “Stop, you can’t blog about me!” Laughs in the crowd. Read other blogs. “Have you read 50 blogs for two weeks?” By reading other blogs, you find other people you want to talk back to. If not impulse to talk back, then you won’t be a good blogger. You should feel impelled to be part of the conversation. Maryam: “What he said.” Pick a niche you can own (be different). Two types of bloggers: those writing for a few family members, and those who want an audience. “It’s a Google world.” How will people find you? Search. Linking behavior [the more you blog about one thing, the higher you’ll be on search results.”>
- Politics for three-fingered people, for example of owning a niche. I didn’t know another blogging poet [he says about Billy the Blogging Poet]. Maryam: An example is a blog about the London Underground. [Elizabeth Edwards, sitting in the crowd, says her daughter started a blog and found a niche.] Robert: If you do write about a lot of topics, tag them and categorize them so people can subscribe to just the category. Robert: These are guidelines, not rules. Someone in crowd: sometimes the passion will find you, so just hone the skills. Link to other blogs. Maryam: When I first started blogging, I didn’t want him to link to me. But Dave Winer linked the first day I started blogging, and I had 3000 hits. It’s a network. Give ‘em link love, and they’ll link back to you. Robert: I watch my referrer log … you can see who links to me, and I always click when someone new links to me. … Internet will continue to reward those who link to interesting things. Pam Spaulding talks about posting comments on other blogs as a way to draw traffic to her blog. Puts pressure on you: if you’re going to link back to your site, you’ve got to have something to say. Robert shows Techmeme and Memeorandum, which use an algorithm to see which blogs link to which blogs, and most-linked posts float to the top. (There are hundreds of thousands of scrapbooking blogs, but they don’t link to each other.) Admit mistakes. Maryam: Robert is a fast blogger. If you’re doing blogging as fast as he does, you’re apt to get some things wrong, and his readers point out his mistakes. He has tough skin, and admits to his mistakes. Robert: [tells story about blogging that HP chairwoman needed to quit when story came out about HP snooping. He said she was a “cancer on HP and needed to be cut out” but then learned she had cancer, so he apologized.] Write good headlines. Robert: I just switched to Google Reader, by the way. Just doing quick scan of title and text. I noticed that people don’t write catchy headlines that I will be interested in. [Maryam as she runs up steps to hand microphone to someone: I always wanted to play Oprah.] Dave Beckwith refers to stat that 85% of people only read the headline. Ed Cone: I don’t like the aesthetic of headlines over a two-line post, so I didn’t put them on my blog. What changed that was aggregators. I write my titles for the aggregation. People say, that was the prize in the cracker jack box. Billy : You need to become a resource on something. I have the largest resource of local blog aggregators. Use other media. Techcrunch, for example, puts an image on every post. [I snap an under-exposed picture of him pointing to the camera in my hand.]
[Mention of Second Life.] Have a voice. If I only have four words to write, how can I say this. Question about using a blog to take on a big corporation. Robert: Be accurate. [Talks about standards of libel and slander, higher for public figures.] Dynamite can help you get gold, but it can also blow your arm off. [Robert tells about pressure against Microsoft support for gay rights bill. News spread. He alerted P.R. office about story. Went from local news item to front page of NYTimes in days, bloggers took the story and spread it around the world.] On Friday, Ballmer wrote a memo to all employees. I asked pr office if I could post that to my blog. Then I wrote that ceo should show leadership, and Ballmer backed off. Bill became law finally after eight years. Get outside the blogosphere. Come to conferences. Talk to people. Get face-to-face time. Market yourself. Figure out how to get people to talk to you. Write well. Expose yourself. Share what’s happening in your life. Help other people blog. Maryam: Share what you know, share what you learn. Engage with commenters. Keep your integrity. Disclose your conflicts of interest.
Posted by mistersugarmistersugar at 09:06 AM. Filed under: ConvergeSouth •
