Conference Buddies

Widgetizing Your Blog for Profit

Speakers:

Micah Balwin

Daniel Ha (web service for blog comments Disqus)

Robyn Tippins (BlogLog Widget -> Yahoo Developer Network)

Louis Moynihan (Feedo)

This session was all over the place and didn’t follow a solid organized structure.

Micah Balwin from Lejit  was shamelessly self promoting his product in detail, but the main take away is that you can monetize search results within your blog.   IMHO to make it generate enough revenue off course you’ll need 1000′s of useful articles or page content to really gain enough traffic to make it worth an internal search monetization engine. 

Most  Bloggers do not use an enhanced search, so this is one area that may expand.

One example used in this session for an internal search (by Lejit):  

Learntoduck.com

Components of a blog:

- Content, Comments on Content, Search Result in Blog, RSS Feed

Make sure to add Feedburner for feeds

Build Your Own Widgets / Widget Publishing:

- Use Widget Box (enter your embed 

- Gigya

- ClearStream

Affiliate Ads:

Nooked.com

AdaptivBlue.com (Smart Links)

Misc:

ContestGiveaway.com (Sweepstakes, sell tickets for raffle)

Q&A website from audience:  

SpiritGum.net

- Create a widget Use Widget Box (enter your embed code for your audio player) 

- Need analytics

- Their feed looks good

- Need to use  Feedo or Feedburner to monetize feeds

Bloggeries.com

 Blog Reviews (Paid and non paid listings)

 $27 = Review

Panel asked owner what the value is for his service.   

No discussion about “Widgets”

RedRoom.com

Authors, fans and inspiring writers to connect

10,000 signed up to blog, but only 50 active a day

Panel suggested the need Amazon widget to buy right on the pages

AskTheBoater.com

An information source for Boaters (cooking tips for boaters, boat maintenance, news, info, etc.)

They have amazon links but need additional ideas

Panel recommended to be an expert in a field.   Visit websites resources that your customers are going to:

BoatNerd.com, BoaterEd.com

Not much discussion about widgets in this discussion?

twitter.peoplebrowser.com

New online service to visually see your connections

Owner wanted to know how to monetize w/o being intrusive

Panel recommended a sponsorhip model   (companies sponsor a page)

i.e. viewdi.com = visual search engine (sponsor views i.e. conference page)

Women: The Ultimate…
Where They Are & How to Reach Them

Speakers:
Jennifer Openshaw
Spike Jones

Women are the most active groups within the Blogosphere accounting for 51% of all activity on the Internet.

Other stats:

36.2 million women participate in blogs weekly
15.1 million post content each week
21.1 million read and/or comment weekly

74% of “paying” gamers are women

What does she want:
To participate, to express herself, to be heard, to connect with others like her

Wants you to help her get excited about her life

Credibility:
Give then knowledge
Open the kimono (to share your faults, and to be up front and honest with them)
Content created by women (by women for women)
Create a Movement:
90%+ of communication with women are offline
You need to create a movement to drive your company’s message
People are a medium for your message

Driving Force/Emotion for your Movement:
Passion, Inspiration, Kindrid Spirits, Fans, Organic, Grass Roots, Spreading the word, Evangelists

Women want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves

Engage them:
Focus a headline, less journalistic v.s more conversational
Make them experts
Identify the top and make them evangelists for you

Example:
SparkPeople:
Top 3 in the health and wellness area online
Personalize recipes and connect with people

Example:
Nike’s runners website helps runners talk to each other (many of women runners connect with Nike’s help)

Example / Detailed Case Study:
Fiskars Scissors
150 year old company (orange handle scissors, very recognizable)
You need to reframe your conversation
In this case “crafters” were a big user group
Crafters were using Fiskars scissors as a conduit

Fiskars turn women crafters into “Brand Ambassadors”

Brand Ambassadors who are passionate about a category and evangelize for you, in this case, for free

In this case, these Brand Ambassadors were not online influencers to begin with.  They were regular women who were passionate about their hobby.   Fiskars brought them in and educated and provided them with guidelines about communicating online and representing the brand.

Fiskars also created a barrier to entry for people joining to ensure the current membership is active and to avoid a large list of non-participating sign ups.   Each sign-up would get an automated email which then asks for detail information about that person.   Once approved, they then are mailed a membership kit which includes a personalized Fiskar scissor with their ID#.   This was a unique product given just to their elite members.    So that when they go to craft shows or meet others in the community they will show off their personalized Fiskar scissor.   With 5000 active members promoting Fiskars brand, out of which 1000 are volunteers to train others in their community (including coming to retail stores).

MISC Notes:

Some of the top women portals include:
iVillage.com
Glam media
AOL Living

Other website mentioned:
Girlfriends.com (women community)

Facebook Fortunes
How to market your blog, brand, and business
Speaker: Shama Hyder (After the launch.com)

Mari Smith a Facebook expert, was brought in from the audience to also speak on the topic.

Kevin Nations (Big Ticket Mastermind), another Facebook expert was brought in from the audience to speak.

On Twitter:  @MariSmith @KevinNations @ShamaHyder
 

Shama mentioned not to use company name as profile (focus on people)

Use your people to advocate your company.    However, the audience had questioned that, and Shama reinforced it.   I had to then Tweet her a suggest that a corporate profile helps with branding.

Community:   Direct Connection

5000 Friends limit, but unlimited Fans (so have Fan page)

Twitter (Friend you on facebook)

Use feed of Facebook

Mari Smith:

Don’t just offer products or push marketing to people

Radical Strategic Visibility

Relationship building and marketing tool

Idea + Exciting + Need = Movement  

Create Movement on Facebook

Example:

HARO = Help a reporter out (PR guy started this)

Create group of experts and reports (questions to him then ask experts)

Get them offline, teleseminars, etc.   

30,000 people (started on facebook)

Kevin Nations – Big Ticket Mastermind: 

- Development interactive conversation  (write about passion, disagreement, etc.)

- Clean up your group (delete un-useful stuff, set up rules, etc.) 

- Tell them exactly what you want  (tell them how to invite their friends, viral approach)

Have a domain that will redirect to group!

Example:

FreeRice.com  = answer question, then gives rice to the needy, 64000 fans in facebook.

Think relationship marketing

Passion = community

Start with FB and Build Out

MISC:

Facebook Audience:

White collar = Facebook

Blue collar = MySpace

PingFM.com (post across sites)

Cross post  content and agregate it.

Search Engine Optimization, SEM & New Media
Lee Oden, Brian Clark, Stephan Spencer, Michael Gray (Gray Wolf)

OPENING COMMENTS:

Michael Gray:

Link Out is Good (to who makes sense to you.  It tells Google what you are about)

Ego stroke people to get people’s attention to get link back

Stephan Spencer:

Meta Tags won’t help your ranking move up.

But Meta Description doesn’t help you except for the click through by users

Alt Tag won’t really do much for you (except for Google’s image search)

No follow tag = no penalty, just paStephan Spenceres no link juice

Brian Clark:

He admits Not to be a ninja like others, but you don’t have to be.

Write for people not for search engines

Ultimately a person will click on your results  (win the battle, lost the war)

Stephan Spencer:

over optimization (don’t go over the top)

link bait, what content is compelling

WHAT BLOGGERS SHOULD DO:

Michael Gray:

Micropost (posting too many small posts just for SEO keywords)

Create a page for people

Brian Clark:

Write content for people

KEYWORD TOOLS:

Stephan Spencer:

Google Insights for Search

Word Tracker, Keyword Discovery

WordZe.com

WordPot.com

Michael Gray:

Quintura.com

SpyFoo.com (off and on)

Lee:

SEODigger.com

Misc (For  Big Companies):

Hitwise

Comscore Marketer

Compete

MISC TIPS (From Panel):

Make sure keywords in the title

SEO Title Tag (separate post title and browser title)

WRITE:

How Tos

Answer Questions

Solve Problems

TAG:

Sticky Post

Tag Conjunction Pages (Tag Pages, Tag Clouds) (Funny, Videos, Funny Videos)

Hardest Part = Getting Link

Stephan Spencer: WordpreStephan Spencer Rocks, it’s amazing

Michael Gray:

Do not use multiple category for search engines (chose 1 and block others, no follow, no follow old posts i.e. 2007)

How important is really good copywriting skills for SEO?

Link Building:

Michael Gray:

Have an opinion and piStephan Spencer someone off (controversial, turn off comments)

Stephan Spencer:

Blogging time, spend as much time with insightful comments, other half blogging (50/50).   Building relationships in the blogosphere.

Panel Q&A:

MidlifeBlogger.com
Database parameters in the URL
Custom 404  (200 code = ok, 300 = move)
Midlife, need to be 2 words: mid life

http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Multiple links from the same page, only the first one counts
Image Replacement (for navigation)
11 gilder method (maybe too spamming out of margin)
MezzoBlue.com (image replacement technique articles)

Misc:

SEO-Browser.com used to review websites from a search engine robot perspective

Ten Things You Need to Know About Search Engine & Findability
Speaker: Dave Taylor    DaveTaylorOnline.com

Search Engines can only use semantic and contextual analysis to figure out THEMES and TOPICS

Semantic = What are you saying? What words are you using, and how frequently do they ocur?

Contextual = Who links to you? How do they link?
Five Easy Pieces:
- The overarching importance of titles
- Thinking about keyword density
- Smart image filenames and filenames in general
- The ALT and TITLE attributes can be your friend
- “more…” is definitely less (this anchor text is dumb) (don’t hyperlink non keyword text)

Make Your Titles Work!  (Article Titles)

Is the title good enough to draw in traffic (usability)

Does it have the right keywords

Google Adsense is one way to see your keyword density (Ads served up related to your content).   Use the title of the product instead of “it” when referring to your product.

Image name = use keywords in the image file name

“Each is a grain of sand, but all things put together becomes a sand castle”
Secret Attributes

Image Alt tag = text for non-graphical browser
i.e. alt=”Nintendo DS”

Image Title tag = info that can “title” a link
i.e. title=”Sony: Home of Bravia TVs”

Instead of home, use the website name.

Additional Tips:
-Use savvy permalinks
-Use HTML too, not just CSS
-Minimize exit links
-Use internal links to corss-promote conten
-Encourage easy commenting

Use Good Permalinks:

Not Good:  index.php?id=6409

Good: askdavetaylor.com/how_to_keep_track_of_company_buzz_online.html  (keywords in URL)

Google links HTML

Use <H1>, etc. not just fancy CSS

Don’t just use CSS but with HTML tags

H tags invented at Boeing separating out content

Too many blogs have <div class=”qst3″>This is really important</div>

Six Apart (Hybrid HTML with CSS)

<h1 class=”page-title”>Six Apart news Evens</h1>

<h2 class=”entry-title”>…

Interweave your internal links

Cross Promote Entries  (WordPress related entry Plugins)
Invite & Encourage comments

Users help your page be fresh. (add text too)

When created, when last modified

Mechanical Turk = Transcribe your video ($10)

ONE BONUS TIP:

Don’t be afraid of keyword research

Keyword Discovery.com

Used for Category Name, Article Titles

One word versus two words (Cell Phones)

Search Engines are your friends

SEO is a win, win, win:
It helps readers find your high quality material
It helps you gain more readers
it helps the search engine deliver optimal results

Keyword Density Rule:

5% to 8%
Enough but not having too much
Read out loud to make sense
Err on the less density and more content

Blog World Expo 2008
Affiliate Marketing Secrets for Bloggers

Conference Speakers:
Mike Allen: Shopping-Bargain.com
ShawnCollins: AffiliateSummit.com
Tim Jones: TheRealTimJones.com

———-

According Mike Allen, integrate your paid Ads in a creative way.

Some examples (Most Ads integrated as part of the blog):
StealtheStyle.com
Shoeaholicsanonymous.com 
WorkInMyPajamas.com 

Affiliate Resource: Popshops.com = word press plug-in (4M products, 1400 merchants)

Think and plan for the long-term

 - your blog is you so build your brand carefully (your blog is your brand)
 - become an expert in your field
 - Share your space and write on other blogs

Affiliate Marketing is a great start but don’t stop there
Be careful advertising can tarnish your image
Think like a business and set goals
Craft a business plan and follow it 
Look for other retail and media opportunities

Examples:

VanityKippah.com
Selling Kippah based on the politicians (went from as an affiliate to become a merchant)

Cooking with Ellen.com
Being a brand on her own right, and getting a follwing.   Doesn’t look like Ads.   Become affiliate, become a big biz, then become a merchant with other affiliates signing up to your program.

Economics of Affiliates (by revenue share):

Electronics = 1%
Beauty Products = 20+%
Average 5 to 8% range

Affiliate Ads has a lot of potential and growing for bloggers to monetize their work

———-

Shawn Collins offers the following video tips:

YouTube (add link in title, in the video)
Use TubeMobil
ie. Affiliatetip.com/pr = redirected to amazon link
Where the URL on your shirt
Embed video on website, and put affiliate link in body content.

RSS subscribers via email  (aweber.com)

———-

Tim Jones offers the following Social Media tips:

Use Digg, StublUpon, Reditt, Facebook, Sphinn

Use Twitter!

Try the all!  Then pick the ones that best fit you

Plugins:
Ad Server:  Max Banner Ads 1.2.5      MaxBlogPress.com     
Put Ads anywhere on the page

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate 1.5 (Ads automatically ad links even for contributors)

WordPressAffiliate Pro

Be the expert, the find residual type of Income like educational tools monthly subscription.

———-

Other Tips:

www.affiliatetip.com/affiliate-newbies/

Use Yahoo Answers:
Answer Questions, then when appropriate point to your blog

Affiliate Networks:

CJ
Shareasale
LinkShare
Performix

Contextual Ads:
Kontera.com
Hubpages.com

Misc Tools:

ClickBank.com
DISQUS = Community
OpenAds.com
PeelAwayAds.com (corner peel)

Blog World Expo 2008
Making Money Online with a Blog

Speaker Panel:
John Chow, Brian Clark, Zac johnson, Jim Kukral, Darren Rowse, Jeremy Schoemaker

Overall the panel gave some insights from their background and experience as Bloggers.

Zack accelerated to reach his success in less than 1.5 years.  However, being in the industry for many years helped by picking up experience as well as contacts.

John chow has been successful giving away free tips.   He and others recommend to give out useful free tips, save those tips up to then build an eBook to sell to your user base.

(more…)

Blog World Expo 2008
Generating Traffic Through Social Media 
Speaker: Don Crowther (Social Marketing Traffic Strategies (SMARTS))
 

In 1998 Inktomi or AltaVista (see in a day results from your seo changes) 

Social Media, Social Networking (all the same), but call it Social marketing

Instant Ranking = Huge Profits

Google is not the only place.  Compared to Google:
Facebook almost as high in page views
MySpace  is higher in pageview
YouTube almost double in size in page views

Facebook 100-250K new users every day  (Most age 35+)
Comscore study = 51% is age 35+
And 9% is 65 or older
So Facebook is not just for kids, more than have is age 35+

Moveable Type = higher seo rankings

Don’t have to be a rocket scientist to Get into Google!
Average Competitor is Clueless!
How to Get a Million MySpace Friends

5000 Top Terms (more than 50 cents a click)
18% of all first page results were social media sites!
With 2 Sites per page

Search Engine Placement + Traffic from the social Sites = Traffic To your Site (overall)

Use Squidoo:

 Monetizable (split rev) 
 Bild content 
 Build links

Use HubPages.com:

 Content sharing site
 May outpull your regular blog
 60% revenue share!

Rewrite the articles in different words  (Ask what percentage how different)
(2 links to the same site then no follow)
 Publish articles
 Link to site
 Demostrate expertise
 Monetize 

Tip: Footer, link to this page, which uses affilate code (10% links will be your Adsense code, and sign up credit)
 

Use Wetpaint:
 Quick, easy Wikis (how to articles)
 Post how to articles
 Link into site

Use Twitter:
 Twitter only your best stuff?
 Build follwing
 Don’t to irrelevant posts
 Don’t do private twits to your group (i.e. LOL?)
 

Create Online Video

YouTube 51M U.S. unique monthly visitors
Affordable Video Recorders:  Flip Phone (also try one from Sony)
Video Strategies
 - Video blog
 - Read your posts or articles to the camera (like news caster)
 - Daily video (set 5pm time slot = 365 videos a day)
 - Video Reviews
 - Video comments  (encourage people to comment, raves, etc.)
 - Top x lists on video (Top 10 christmas presents for boys, etc.)
 - Screenscast video (screenflow, camtasia)\
 - Bloopers (save up your bloppers – know you, trust us, see as human beings)
 - Tour of your world 
 - Video content
 - Guest videos
 - Licensing
 - Freeline for paid

FREE

- Free for a limited time then paid (like: MarketingSherpa)
- membership site (3000 members or more, $100K+ rev)
       Not worth it below $49/mo
       Takes X hours to calculate how much you should charge
- Paid podcast
- Video products
- Specialty offerings
- Video consulting

Use TubeMogul (submits your videos to other sites for you – see competitors user names to see their stats) / Trafficgeyser (40 to 100+ sites.  Different people like different sites, not duplicate content because SE can see video).
-Twitter
-Facebook (50% views from facebook)
-Myspace

- Embed in Squidoo and Hubpages
- Embed contest
- Podcasting directories
- Controlled access

Example: Hubpage, kenent (multiple accounts) = toyota way

Facebook:

- Can only have one profile
- Unlimited pages
   – Can be ranked
- Alternative audience source
- Embed RSS feed
 

Facebook Groups:
- Separate forum

Digg (in the title):

  incoming links
  Get into search engines with 1 Digg (pontiac body kits)

Propeller (netscape version of Digg, blogs counts as news):
- Submit Best Stuff
- Add Value
- Submit Other people’s Stuff 

There is a Right Way and Wrong Way 

WalMart and blackberry = Wong Way

Never be self serving

Always go in helping the Internet World

Overall Don Crowther was the best energetic speaker that I’ve seen for a while.  Great information and overall presentation.

Blog World Expo 2008 (#BWE08)
Las Vegas, NV – Las Vegas Convention Center

Speaker: Deborah Micek  aka. CoachDeb

http://www.TribalSeduction.com 

Twitter @CoachDeb @Blogis360 

CoachDeb is a very exciting and motivating speaker.   This was a very useful and information session.

General attributes of Social marketing:
Grass Roots
Ground level
People focused

People
Participation
Persuasion

Emotional
Entertaining
Engaging

NewMedia Marketing (aka.  Web 2.0):

1. Blogs
2. Podcasts
3. Online Video
4. Social Networks
5. Social filtering  (Digg it, Tag it, Stumble Upon it, etc.)

Expand your network to get knowledge
i.e. Use Twitter.com (Tweet, ask questions,  give credit)

2 LEVELS:
Tribal Marketing
Tribal Seduction

Tribal Marketing:
2 Components:
The Market (Tribal)
You (The focus)

Tribal marketing Matrix
Tribe (groups like seinfeld fans, a movie you like, a sport, hobby, etc.)
Band
Clan
Individual  (find influencers.  traditional was hit all tribe)

New Economy Demands Different Marketing

You will buy from people you like (even if a little more expensive)

Me Too Marketing = Herd

Trigger emotional response

1920s -1980 Old Style Marketing = Mass Production, underestimate buyer
2003-2004  Emergence of New Media (listen to audience)

Tribes  – natural feeling for human beings

New Media Marketing

People are Tribal

Business is Personal

Attract, connect, convert
Prequalitfy
Profit with out selling
Higher lifetime value

What is Your Brand?
Who are You?
What is your story?

Tribal Seduction  (Seduce don’t Molest)

CHARM:

C aptivate attention

H ook emotioin

A advance trust

R adiate desire

M otivate to action

People buy Who you are Not what you sell!

Example:
Jimmy Choo Shoes=$4,000
Beauty, Elegance and Sexiness protected by price
1988 received a free 8 page spread in Vogue
Endorsed by Princess Diana
Sex in City (Product Placement)

Secret formula = all about soft sell

Raise the Discussion (ask questions, not provide answers know it all)

Soft, Seductive, Subconscious
 

Hard Sell = Make the Sale = 1-Way

Soft Sell = Be top of mind = 2-Way

Talk to customers and win their hearts

TribalSeduction.com/womenrule.com

Trigger human emotions

Love, Sign, Variety, Seecurity, Gowth, Contri.

Social Marketing = WOM = Word of Mouth Marketing on speed
Twitter = Tribal
Twitters IS PR
PR = Top of Mind

SEO Value:   Every tweet is it’s own web page.

Overall CoachDeb is a wonderful speaker, and gave great information.

Blog World Expo 2008 (#BWE08)
Las Vegas, NV – Las Vegas Convention Center

The opening day of Blog World Expo as part of the E&E, was day pact with informative and useful information. This included information on Blogs, SEO, Web 2.0 Social Media Marketing and more.

The majority of the speakers on day really delivered great content in a very powerful way.

This is the 2nd year, however this year has improved greatly in terms of content over last year, and over many other conferences.   However some of the logistics need fine tuning.  Overall I strongly suggest this conference to all Marketers and Technologists.   This is so far one of the best conferences I’ve been to this year.