But we are going to attempt to focus on the fun and promising and the FREE, because it has been one of THOSE days and I’m 90 seconds from crawling into bed and pretending Monday didn’t happen.

This is, I promise, the last of the BlogHer posts. I may clean up a few of the back ones — but I PROMISE, I’m done now. I’m ready to move on to real life and the here the now and the fact that this week bites big.

I promised that I’d share the goody bag from BlogHer. I know you are all wondering, what free crap did the Queen get? Well, to be kind, I am not going to go through all of the paperwork — this is JUST the stuff.

Did you catch all of that? OK, here’s more details: Sugar sort-of; Soap; Saturn auto thingie (that I fully intend to use to hold my knitting needles; a bib; a Saturn Tee; a Fast Food Fix Book; a Corporate blogging book; and a condom. Oh, and there was this super cool bag.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Session Notes:

Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the
live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

The BlogHer staff requested that today’s presentations not have powerpoints, so I will do my best to share what is going on, but I should let you know that there is a podcast of every session so if you want the details, I’d go to the powerpoint.

Link goodness: www.getgood.com/blogher/index4blogher.htm There is a document of all the URLs from the blogs — I will NOT be linking to them.

Why this session: Because from experience the audience knows as much or more than panels — so this is an unpanel.

45 minutes of the Case Studies: 5 minutes each on 7 case studies.

Second half of the session: Share information/Attempt to build “best practices” then the notes will be turned into a document.

Case Study #1: Toby: Began with group message.

Tim Jackson began a blog called MASI guy blog. Worked for a company that makes high end racing bikes. With no budget he looked to engage people with the emotion behind the brand. In short order, his own personality came out. Mistakes were owned and he allowed controversity. Tim became a celeb in the vertical because of the risks he took. The passion in the blog re-kindled the flame on the brand again. Retail shop had a computer up with the blog up at all times. Challenges to keep up with the blog and keep pace with it and management doesn’t get it. And finally keeping his personality real.

Case Study #2: Yyonne:

Surprise working one: Business blogging boot camps. 6-10 people intro to blogging and in the afternoon they build a blog. A guy wrote a book about personal stories about fathers who have passed away. Needed a way to get in it out in front of people. A few months later, his blog was coming up on page one in Google. He got an intern to help him. Not a visual appealing, but it works. Then his wife a photog built her blog.

Not working so well: Book called “Know your Bones” Build a blog to try to sell lots of copies of her book. How much time do you really have? “A look at today’s fractured health system” Her medical practice interfered; she wasn’t posting much; not many comments. Scheduling posts to go up later. Now, her husband has come onboard and the blog is just sitting there.

Case Study #3: Jody of AskPatty (but Jody is not Patty)

Ask Patty is a help women buy a car and have a positive experience. (80% of complaints about the car buying process). Stragety was to reach out to bloggers who are more women. Begin an intimate conversation. Appealing to have women experts. Common ground for dealers and women can meet to make the enhance the experiences. Problems: Not expecting explosion of traffic to the site — so bandwidth is a problem. New blog — launched 5/21. Not Prepared for the e-mailed questions. Need more developer tools.

Case Studies #4: Heather Web Hosting

Moved our business to a blog. The business is the blog. Didn’t work: Static pages were not working. Comments didn’t work in this part. Search engines wasn’t working. Closed down the comments and opened up forums. Increase in hits which also helped. Tagging helped the search engines.

Case Studies #5: Firefly diapers

Business is to extend the world for customers. Create a context for product for organic cloth diapers. Use the blog to respond to questions. Goal was to tie the company into the commiunity. Keep the blog professional is key. “They give me crazy and I give back calm.” high value content. Rules, not chatty; no children names or information; no personal information; no nasty talk. It has been hard to keep my personal life out of the blog. Doing what she likes online — informative lecture. Kept a posting schedule. What hasn’t worked: since it is just me, posts aren’t as frequent. Posting daily ended. comments haven’t worked. Less e-mail newsletters or full length articles in the site. Works very hard to personalize a global issue.

Case Study #6: Average Jane for the Lee Jean

Goal was “do something online”; but came up with doing a blog as a giant from a commerical. Worked hard to keep it very obvious that this was humor. Did lots of research, including finding out that there is a fetish about this. By the end “that was the audience.” Backdating posts didn’t work because people don’t read archives. Ran out of ideas to posts. This was entertainment. And it was fun.

Case Study #7: Research on Fake Blogs

Link goodness: www.sumofmyparts.org/blogher.htm

People get freaked out when the blogger turns out to be someone not who they really are. 90% of authors provide name. 54% give details. Blogging fictionally is considered taboo. Is Blogging journalism? People demand credibility. Blogs are really a subjective medium.

Sum up: if you block your ID you may think you are safe, but you are not.

Drawing from own experiences: What Works and What Didn’t:

It Worked:

Owens-corning wanted “pink panther” to do the blog. It isn’t the most popular blog without comments. But to them this is popular and a greatest experience. But now they want MORE.

Change the “blog” language. Pull “comments” and change to something more real.

Character blogs, may not be loved of A list bloggers, but they can work.

It Didn’t:

Character Blogs: Wanted to launch a blog by a horse that was going to die in a year.

Question:

What type of business does comments work? (No answer was really given)

How do you blog about when things go wrong? Advice: Don’t start one when something goes wrong. Otherwise it is a crisis blog. Tell the truth. Make the customer affected problem information out as fast as possible. Start small and be ready to make mistakes. Own errors and put it up quickly even if it is just we are looking into it.

Tag Section:

blogher_06

Session Notes:
Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

Special Disclaimer: This is the session I begged to live-blog. So, I’m thrilled to do this section. However, before I begin, I’m required to announce that Mir, Alice, Marrit, and Tracey are all really pretty. And they are. (However, they all refuse to look at the camera at the same time)

Approaching Discussion is Primary Q&A this is not a presentation — asking questions and answering them.

But first a word from our sponsors: Our Story. (a public or private place to house the stories of your life)

Winner of their story contest: (they get a great prize plus BlogHer ‘07 paid trip): Bernie for “Corn on the Can”

And on with the show. Welcome to ask any question — the “leaders” may or may not answer

Question: Linda Herishman? Any one?

silence. dead silence.

Mir: Says she sets back the feminist movement because she is over educated and stayed home with her kids. Feminism should be about choices.

Merrit: Linda is “old school” feminist. But it is totally ok and radical to have power and still choose to opt out.

Question: I blog about my kids and blog about other things. I struggle with the term mommyblogger. Why am I looking for something to Id myself as other than a mother. Why do I not want to be a MommyBlogger? Not hostile about it — but not sure why am I looking for a different ID?

Alice: May burst into song. Struggled with the MommyBlogging term. It is inheirly dismissive. I am a MommyBlogger, but I do other things.

Tracey: How are we using the term? Am I one? But I’m a mother and a blogger. It tends to mean blogs of parenting or is it any mother who has a blog? What is the needed content to be one.

Alice: It is a way to dismissive. You are “just a mommyblogger”. BUT these blogs are “reproducing” But despite the dismissive name, this builds great community.

Merrit: Great to discuss the CRAFT. If the writting is good. Are diapers and poop less important than your recipes? How dare they.

Alice: talking about our families were called Naricists — but other blogs later were extolled.

Question: People are searching for stories for people who have the same life stories. There is no meeting everyone’s needs.

Tracey: Because mother’s aren’t supposed to be dynamic people.

Question: How could expose your kids? As opposed to the what you hand your kids the history of your young life. I don’t care.

Question: Comment — this is how people snear mommies. Q: Should we come up a new labels.

Alice: I don’t think we are under attack. Are the attacks vicious because the stakes are higher?

Mir: It isn’t the label that is the problem. It is how the label is USED.

Alice: But people snear at blogs — that’s so cute for you.

Tracey: Discent.. the MommyBlogger means you have nothing interesting to say and you are boring. It is sexism. The problem is the word “mommy”

Alice: Maybe not all people think this is dismissing. It is different when your kids call you “mommy”

Question: (the line grows): it is easier for me to talk about the insecurities about being a mommy online instead of in person with my co-workers. Blogging allows me to work out how to parent, instead of with family where I’m more than just a mother. There is a huge difference between writting stories about your kids and exploring the feelings and how to parent.

Alice: this is where it is radical. It hammers home that there is no one right way.

Merrit: this is what is empowering and that message doesn’t get across in other mediums than blogging or forums. When writting her book, she was told “mothers don’t want to hear about this stuff.” Have you ever met mothers? Mother’s don’t always want experts or celebrity. Blogging is ligit media. Passing along the message that there is more than one way to raise a kid.

Tracey: One of the most powerful thing about these blogs is expressing the “I don’t know what I’m doing” Trying to find your way and hearing other voices and getting responses to your own insecurity is strengthening and that is community and there is supprt there. and that is way it is SO powerful.

Question: Motherhood is the hardest job. Moms should be worshipped. Parenting information is passed online over the old-fashioned classes.

Question from a non-mother: Lack of single mommybloggers. Esp. young ones. is there a resource.

Alice: single mom blog idea.

Mir: but I’m too old.

From the crowd: they are out there.

Mir: there may be less in the under 25 group because of the need to go to school, etc.

Question from a non-mom and teacher: Research for a book on the relationship between the media and your children. there is more than anti-feminism issue here. Corporations are against you, because you STAND between them and YOUR kids. Bottom line is we need to ban together to support and lift up parenting.

Merrit: Adding to this — When we are caring for our kids or our parents we are no longer making moeny for anyone — thus we are useless to the corporates.

Statement from the crowd: Mother are the most powerful marketing group there is. People want your money.

Merrit: They respect us more as consumers than workers. mother’s are less likely to receive job offers.

Question: We blog for the community. Now that we are wanted, how do we stay true to why we do this and how do you handle the hits and comments.

Alice: didn’t come into this for the community — I write and this was a place to write. I’ve thought about turning off the comments then felt awful. When you get into 100’s of comments and then it takes a nasty turn. I have no answers. it is hard when you address serious issues.

Mir: what is your blogger philisophy. Long ago, I responded to all of them. i get comments that I respond to if it strikes me — but I’ve seen love matches in my comments. I hope that the people understand that.

Tracey: Is that the expectation?

Q: Do we lose community?

Alice: i think it spwans new community.

Q: I’m happy to be a mom. because I have a choice to stay at home and I embrass it. I’m a snarky writer. I often write about my son, and then I get comments back because someone takes me too seriously — esp. to make a story funnier.

Alice: I wrote about my dog being sick and got outraged comments because I was being funny. It is easy to write like you are talking and people often miss what you mean.

Tracey: It seems to happen more with people who are new and don’t understand it.

Q: it is bullshit to say — I put my website out there and I don’t care. i wish people would really own what they do. Because it is cool.

Q: Last Year — lots of anger. How has it changed in the last year.

Alice: (Who wants her own mike): I’m embarassed because were so dismissed. We were such a small group last year, but now I feel like we are a power force.

Tracey: We also have to thank Heather from Dooce for some of this. She shows women with kids are smart, funny, and amusing things to say.

Mir: Not here last year. The big change is the advertising dollars are growing which means people are taking notice. it has helped validate what we do too.

Q: I blog because I was shocked that motherhood was an isolating experience. Advice wasn’t real until you found the blogging. Why don’t Daddybloggers get the same backlash?

Alice: The NYT article did include daddybloggers.

Mir: it is novel for men to be “involved with their kids”

Q: My blog changed me as a woman. i love the community, but my confidence has grown. It has changed how I look at myself and empowered me to do more while being a mom. How do you feel this has happened to you?

alice: it has helped me as a parent. step back and get prespective. And as a woman, When you hear that something you dismiss and people say it changes your life.

Tracey: You write and People read. it is exciting and gives you a voice in the world. i am a stronger person.

C: You can say, I am a writer. I am a mother. It expands the roles.

W: Don’t diminish the title. We are taking back the term MommyBlogger back. There was a hateful post about “I hate MommyBlogger” — quote: I want to rip their ovaries through their noses. Acknowledge it and walk away.

(so much for the lack of hate in this year’s session)

Let’s not give them a huge forum.

C: MommyBloggers is ageless. Common with being a mom and not the age thing. I’m an old school feminist. Linda H is more the NOW feminist movement. Marketing is taking over the term. MommyBlogging is policatial.

Q: MommyBlogging and Profanity. Does this diminish our words?

Tracey: No, shit, I should be the person to address that. It is a word. it is how you employ it. I don’t think that words are bad or good, they are just words. I’m not using those words when dealing with my daughter — it is my blog not my daughter’s. It is for mothers.

Mir: I think it is an individual thing.

Merrit: My mom says to me. Stop using that “blue language you might be turning someone off who would otherwise listen to you.”

Alice: Sometimes I think it is lazy — going for the cheap laugh.

Merrit: At times it is important to use strong language when you have strong feelings. and Mommy gets mad.

Q: Come back to what we call ourselves and trolls. On the first one: Do you feel that you taken as seriously as a writer because of the mother ID? On trolls, do you engage or walk away?

We should be proud to be attacked because we are force and we threatening.

Tracey: Had a bad troll experience. The advice I got was Ignore, Ignore, Ignore. I engaged and it was a huge mistake. Don’t feed the troll.

Alice: it is critical that you not allow them to control it. “writing well is the best revenge”

Mir: You engage someone who is powerful. If they are trying to be powerful by attacking you, engaging them makes them powerful.

C: Developing a healthy relationship with cursing helps kids.

C: Moms on an issue will take the Hill.

C: When Gloria Steinem got married she said it was about choices. There shouldn’t be a division. There just shouldn’t be a wall. You should not worry about the name MommyBlogger. From the beginning of time women have had places that men were afraid of. It is the greatest gift we have we give each other.

Q: How much of a mother do I put out there in my more professional blog?

Tracey: being a mother is a huge part of my ID. Therefore I talk about it, but I have other interests.

Alice: But it is tough to be naked.

C: Be able to say. I have a child. I have time constraints. AND I’M WORTH IT.

Tag Section:

blogher_06

What this session is supposed to be about:

Do taxonomies & folksonomies fill you with ennui? Charlene Li & Marnie Webb will help you discover why you care & how it gives you an edge.

Session Notes:
Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

Why are you here:

I know what tagging is, but is it worth my time? Correct form for tagging, words, sequence? Process behind it and the new tools — how it works and thought behind it? Make it more effective, easier to find me, learn about getting noticed for the RIGHT things?

What is tagging?

You’re It OR Secret Code word to ID geeks.

Truly it is a label to classify and organize things. Assigned Casually but not a taxonomy. This is personal to you and fairly freeform. This is AdHoc by nature. This is not a heirarchy. Categories are tagging — this is high level organizing. Invisible tags? Yes, you hide things in the MetaData.

Tags allow people to find things on your blog.

Tag Clouds: Alpha order and size determines popularity of the keyword. You can see this on all sorts of sites. it is more a navigation tool.

Meta Data: literally data about data. it is how other sites categorize you.

Why should you care?

Collecting and organizing your own infromation on services like del.icio.us. A way to organize links – you can quickly add tags and you can easily get 200 tags.

Also a way of finding like minded people on same topics. Questions and need an answer go to google. but want to know what people are saying about a topic — use tags, like Technorati. (encourages serendipity). Conventions for dealing about synomns. hard core answer is NO — use them all or use the most generic of the words. However, avoid phrases — use words. Some search engines are beginning to use ties to help (related).

There is much discussion about difference between keywords and tags. There doesn’t seems to be a real difference. Tagging is more social and keywords are more in isolation.

Keywords in MetaData aren’t always seen. There is a plugin for Technorati for WordPress. You may want to look for TagFetch.
Why Tag?

Add tags to make yourself discoverable. There is a way to search to by just tags, by what people think there posts are about. A way to share interests.

And you then can create an ongoing dialog with tags.

But this is great, everyone now wants to tag — but how do you follow the tags you care about? Hence…

What Tools?

You can subscribe to a RSS feed for a tag. Think about it you can get a feed reader on the “photos of BlogHer” if you want.

Within most blogging tools you can find ways to easily get tags into your blogs.

Furl.net — a different kind of social bookmarking service. It is a web filing cabinet. Furl Save a complete copy of the Web Page. It saves a copy in the file cabinet — prevents issues with URL changes or things behind a firewall. Full text search. Create your own metadata. Make categories of tags. You can share certain categories. Finally — easier to spell del.icio.us

Del.icio.us — Serendipity. When you don’t know enough about a topic to search for it — but keep clicking on the tags and find ways other people tagged things. Use it for a loose knit group of people for a community (Agreed on specific tag) — can opt in and opt out. Can’t Tag hop (show me this tag from all users). You may want a private del.icio.us account for those things you want to share.

There will be some type of Wiki that will help.

Structured Blogging and Micro-formats?

Blobs contain great info, but but isn’t always organized well. So the idea behind this is to provide this great structure. Microformat is the behind scenes stuff and structured blogging is the front end. This is to have your blog content on other sites. Hreview create: fill out a form and then cut and paste the code into your site OR use a plug-in. find the plug ins on structuredblogging.org.

Questions:

Mircroformats sounds neat? the format is really new. Yahoo Local just began using it. Looks good, but is still very new. Google is beginning to use it called GoogleBase.

Thank you and “tag on”

IMPORTANT: the wiki on this is www.taggingblogher.pbwiki.com

Section Tags:

blogher_06

What this session is going to be about:

Instructors will be on hand to serve all user levels. Beginners will create & post an audio entry with Susan Kitchens. Advanced users will get hands-on instruction and interactive Q&A about advanced techniques, plus best practices in promotion and distribution from Nicole Simon and Anita Campbell.

Notes on the session:

Please note that I am typing during this session. I expect a blanket forgiveness on any spelling, grammar, or nonsense mistakes. I may come back and clean this up and add any content in the “post production” of this entry. If I have anything to say that isn’t part of the live-blogging itself (read: my personal running commentary), I will note it by the italics.

Ok, I just found out that they are going to be spliting the group up into parts, so I’m going to do my best to follow one group in each of the repeats, so here goes nothing.

Session One: Beginning Podcasting with Susan Kitchens
Audicity is a cross platform tool with one set of instructions that Susan LOVES. It is available on the BlogHer Box.
Steps:

Record; Bring it into the computer; upload it.

This is kinda visual — sorry. (there is a podcast of this session — the guy getting the sound has been trying to “stick something on Susan, but and I quote “I don’t want to touch you.” — poor fellow)
Methods: a Mic connected to an iPod (external recording of a podcast) OR record directly into your computer.

Go to the sound control panel under preferences. Go to input — watch for sound levels going through it.

Launch Audicity — make friends with red record button and yellow stop button. Check the Audio I/O and that it is recording from what you want to record with — like the external mic. Under file format, you need to download lamelib (a library) install it in the same place as the audicity. Then you choose how compressed you want the file to be.

Be sure to save the file where you have the most space.

Monitor Sound Levels. You can turn on a red indicator so you can see the slider.

How loud? Idea to go loud without “clipping” — going to the far right red. So loud without being too loud — understand? Like mud, right?

Then you record. Susan interviews a group member.

Stop and Save. Easy to create the audio file. If it is perfect we export. (editing is an advance technique)

Little editing: to delete silence — highlight the sound wave that you want gone and HIT DELETE. Save again.

Next step, make sure the file name has no spaces — for the net. Use the software to create an MP3 file to upload.

Susan put up a site to house the beginning podcasters interviews.

Create an enclosure: rel=enclosure — this is the thing that makes the podcast downloadable within a feed. This is the enclosure part.

It is the feed thing that takes care of the World Wide Wait — to download while I am sleeping. This allows you not to have to click on long files and WAIT. (You should have seen the dance Susan did — sorry, missed the photo)

Then they interview each other. I’m going to let you enjoy the podcast for this fun.
Sesson Two: Promoting Your Blog With Anita (So you Started a Podcast — Now What?)

Podcasting since 2004, blogging since 2003 — Anita is now internet radio.

Attracting people to come to your podcast and get people to be loyal to your podcast. And some of this applies to what you do for blog promotion.

(the powerpoint is available online at the BlogHer Digital Locker — and there is other stuff Anita is making some other things available)

Promotion begins with great content. Crappy content can’t be well promoted. Ounce of upfront thought is worth a pound. What is your purpose? Personal Branding? Expert? tips series – serve customers? Just to have fun? have ONE purpose.

Distinguish your podcast. Think of something that makes it different or unique. Jokes, humor, something that is YOURS. Understand your audience. Easier to craft content by knowing who you are speaking to.

Be natural. Feel comfortable in what you are doing. You need to do what feels good for you — it is a personal medium and you must be true to yourself.

Length. What is the right podcast length? there is no one right answer and it depends. Research determined:

Long Podcaster likers: These are searchers for content and will download the show and not listen on the computer. You may not want to reference tons of URLs because people might not be in front of the computer when listening.
Short Podcaster likers: Surfers and quick read of the blogs.

8 tips:

1. Have good Sound Quality — use better quality tools.
2. Prepare, prepare, prepare — write down your notes — have something in front of you. But Don’t READ it.
3. eliminate Ums and Ahs — be mindful of what you are saying.
4. Stand up be heard — it will help projection and will come across so much better.
5. Master the sound bite — be quotable. — be pithy quote and make great show notes for the blog.
6. Use power words and create theater of the mind — Concrete nouns and evoke a picture. Kiss of death is conceptual words. Jargon — words without real meanings.
7. Vary your voice tone — use highlights to emphasis on some words.
8. Be YOU. — show off your personality.

Blog, Podcast, and RSS go together. Marry the pieces together. Use this as your number 1 tool to promote your poscast. Everyone and communities are jumping on the bloggin bandwagon — and the search engine benefits are great for this. So think of your podcast as being in partnership with your blog. Use Robust bloggin software. This gives you the capability of doing this things.

do you set up a blog for housing your podcast or put your podcast in your blog.

Podcast specific blog: Really highlight your podcast. it is easier to find the podcast. Disadvantage is unless you write good show notes you won’t get the good search engine benefit out of it. Use keyword rich and optimized show notes to get people there

Or you can podcast without have a blog. It is another idea too.

Turn your blog into a promo workhorse:

1. Optimize your blog pages to highlight your Podcast and blog. Descriptive name, tagline, and URL.
1. There are catchy name people and descriptive people. Great if you combine the two.
2. Pay attention to your Meta tags. The description Meta tag — spend time writing this.
3. Enable Trackbacks. If you need to moderate them, to control spam. But it allows someone to get a link out there without asking for it. Be sure to write words to get the search engines to help promote the show.
4. Use categories wisely.
5. On-site audio Players
6. Create some key information pages
1. set up a good about Page.
2. index Archived shows
3. Contact form – FAQ and guest inquiries and how to get on this show is invaluable.
4. how to listen instructions — bring it back to the basics again. the more you know the harder it can be for the newbie to get to what you want them to get to.
7. One click subscribe button — ADD THEM. (Yes, I’m screaming — DO THIS NOW!!!!!) Pick a few of them and not a long list of the one-click options. Look at your traffic and apply the 80/20 rule.
1. Think of iTunes, myYahoo

Create Loyal Repeat Listeners with RSS feeds. This is becoming more user friendly and people are slowly catching on to this. Optimize your feeds with Feedburner. So you can learn lots about what your readers/listeners are doing and how they are getting to you.

Creating text on your blog to talk about your podcast. (Don’t podcast as a way to avoid blogging — you need to blog about your podcast). Consider getting a transcription — it is fairly cheap (castingwords.com) Put the transcript up if you don’t wish to blog your podcast.

To make a site a destination site, which means you need to write additional information and not just podcasts.

Market your blog:

1. E-mail newsletter and alerts. and easy way to do this is to recycle your blog content.
2. Press release sites. prweb.com — otimize your press release.
3. Blog carnivals. BlogCarnival.com
4. Voting aggregotor: Digg.com and reddit.com
5. Traffic trading sites: blogexplosion.com

Tag Section:

blogher_06