Here are the two questions I keep asking myself:

1. How can we most effectively bring the content and experience of BlogWorld to people who want to go to New York to attend…but can’t?
2. How can we make an online conference as much like being there in person as possible?

See, BlogWorld is HUGE. There are over 140 speakers, and at the live event, ten sessions will be happening at once…pretty much all the time. Even if it were feasible to live-stream the entire conference to our virtual attendees, we wouldn’t want to.

Why?

Because if we did, then virtual attendees would face the same problem that live attendees face: They’d have to choose one session to watch at a time and would, hence, be physically unable to view 90% of the conference due to most people’s pesky inability to be in ten places at once.

The content in the Virtual Ticket isn’t live. You wouldn’t want it to be live. In fact, a huge number of people who sign up for the Virtual Ticket are people who will be there at the actual event. They get the Virtual Ticket to fill the gaps in their live conference experience, so that after they come home from BlogWorld, they can watch that 90+% of the content that they missed.

(NOTE: If you already signed up to attend BlogWorld in New York and would like to add the Virtual Ticket to your registration, you can do so for only $97. Just email us and ask us to add the VT to your registration. If you haven’t yet signed up for the live event, you can add the VT during the registration process.)

But because the Virtual Ticket’s main content is 100+ hours of non-live video recordings (and the accompanying MP3 downloads), that dilemma comes right back at us. How can we best convey the BlogWorld experience? How can we make it “almost like being there live” for people who can’t be there live if most of our Virtual Ticket content is not live?

And the answer, of course, is that we can’t. But we can come close.

See, there’s nothing like attending a conference. If you’re actually there in person, you’ll get the networking and handshaking and hanging out and the strange “inspiration osmosis” that comes from being in the live atmosphere. We can’t replace that, and it’d be insulting to suggest that we could.

But I asked myself…what would be close? What would help simulate an in-person experience as much as possible?

And the solution came back loud and clear: Provide daily content.

The recordings — which you can play, pause, and replay at will for a full six months on the website (or forever if you download them) — will show up about a week after BlogWorld ends. For the Los Angeles 2011 Virtual Ticket, we did a bunch of video interviews — behind the scenes stuff, intended to give that “at the conference feel” — and we provided those about a week after the event, too. And that was cool.

But this year, in addition to all of that (and with an upgrade in video and audio quality for the bonus interviews), we’re going to give Virtual Ticketholders content every day.

There’s something different about daily updates. If you get daily updates, then you can learn about Day 1 stuff while it’s still Day 1. And if you learn about something on Day 1, then you can see what happens with it on Day 2 and follow along.

In other words, daily content gets you immersed in the experience so you don’t feel like you’re just watching from the sidelines.

So, in addition to the 100+ recorded sessions, in addition to the bonus video interviews that are exclusive to the Virtual Ticket, and in addition to our prolific social media activity and picture-sharing from the conference floor, we’re adding two things to this year’s Virtual Ticket:

1. Every day, we’re going to record a handful of audio interviews and behind-the-scenes segments. And every evening, we’re going to post those files on the Virtual Ticket site for attendees to listen to.
2. Every evening, we’re going to write up a daily recap. We’ll tell VT attendees who we captured on video that they’ll be able to watch later, we’ll tell them about big happenings, and we’ll tell them if we spot The Bloggess eating a burrito for lunch. (Or if she brought her giant metal chicken “Beyonce” with her.)

Will this content make the Virtual Ticket “just like being in New York”? Of course not. But will it bring Virtual Ticketholders into the fold, finally making them a PART of BlogWorld as it unfolds instead of sitting on the sidelines, waiting patiently for the event to end and for the session content to be delivered to the private Virtual Ticket website.

If you can’t make it to New York this year, check out this year’s BlogWorld Virtual Ticket if you haven’t done so already. The price is only $347, and you won’t have to book a flight or a hotel room. Good luck finding this insane amount of content for that price anywhere else.

And if you’re attending live in New York, definitely consider adding the Virtual Ticket when you register for BlogWorld so that you can go back after the event and review the huge amount of content you missed while you were there live. It’s only $97, and will be the best conference bang-for-your-buck you ever spend. (NOTE: If you’ve already registered and want to add the VT now, you can’t do that through the website. Please email us and let us know you want to add the VT and we’ll add it for you.)

Editor’s Note: To see Chris live and in person, come check out his keynote presentation at BlogWorld New York, “Power Up Your Blog: Lessons Learned Over 11 Years of Blogging.”

Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink.

So the question is…how will you use this new function? Here are just a few ideas for online content creators:

• Run weekly online course
• Broadcast a webinar to promote a product
• Hold a Q&A session with fans
• Hold weekly meetings for a virtual club or group.
• Record podcasts live

And of course…you can just hang out with friends and fans online this way, allowing others to join or just watch if they are too shy.

How will you be using Google+ On Air Hangouts? Leave a comment below!

Feeling unsure about being on camera? Check out Perry Lawrence’s Video Podcasting session at BlogWorld New York this June. We also have a complete Web TV track you can check to learn more about making the most of videos online.

The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Blog, Podcast, or Videos is available starting today, and it doesn’t cost a cent. Simply click on the link to download your copy right now or, if you’re already subscribed to our newsletter, check your email!

Tell all of your friends – they can download a free copy too! Click here to tweet a message to them using our hashtag, #pinbook. And of course, we also hope you’ll consider pinning the ebook as well so you can share it with all of your Pinterest friends.

This eBook won’t be available forever, so make sure you snag a copy today!

Google is currently testing out a new “like” button for YouTube so users will be forced to join Google+ if they want to give videos a thumbs up rating. If you aren’t logged in, you can still watch videos, but you can’t rate them. Not everyone is seeing this button change yet (for example, I still have the old like button), but more and more people are starting to notice this change.

If you haven’t seen it already, celebrity blogger and Star Trek alum Wil Wheaton recently posted a pretty strongly-worded message to Google on Tumblr after becoming aware of the new button:

Oh, go f*** yourself, Google. This is just as bad as companies forcing me to “like” something on Facebook before I can view whatever it is they want me to “like.”

Just let me thumbs up something, without forcing me to “upgrade” to G+, you d***heads.

He elaborated upon that rant in a longer post on his blog, saying,

By crippling functionality on sites Google owns (like YouTube) and forcing users to “upgrade” to a service that they may not want or need to get that functionality back, Google is making a huge and annoying mistake.

Amen to that. Google+ is not dead, but I’m guessing the company has been disappointed with this network so far. Based on the hype when it initially launched, I think they expected it to take over Facebook and perhaps even Twitter. While Google+ isn’t a failure (yet), it also hasn’t really done those things. Super intelligent, long conversations possible on Google+, but the general public is still sticking with Facebook for now, at least for the most part. Does that mean Google+ can never succeed? No. But at the moment, they’re fighting a losing battle and making poor decisions.

Google is  like a cornered animal. Instead of being smart and coming up with a good get away plan, they’re just peeing all over in fear and charging at your face snarling, both of which are not good options.

The Google+ button on YouTube is an attempt to force people to use their network if they want to continue using a service they love (YouTube). But forcing people on the internet to do anything typically doesn’t work out very well.

Beyond that, Google isn’t seeing the big picture. Will some people break down and join Google+ if it’s necessary for YouTube liks? Maybe. But they aren’t going to use the platform in most cases. They’re just doing it because they have a gun to their back. They’re joining so YouTube is still functional. And those who don’t join Google+? They’re simply going to stop liking videos. That’s bad news for content creators, and what’s bad for the people putting videos online is bad for YouTube in general. Fewer likes = less funding for content creators = fewer videos = less traffic.

Assimilation by force never goes very well. On the other hand, if you create ingenious products and tools with the consumer in mind, people will be begging to join your ranks. Look at Pinterest. Millions upon millions of users have joined over the past few months and not one of them has been forced.

I think Neil Gaiman said it best in his reply to Wil’s post:

I wish Google would leave the Social Network thing to others. When Google does what it does, and does it well, it changes the world. When it rides bandwagons, it’s irritating.

Google has amazing abilities. Why do they have to take over every part of the Internet? Why be a jack of all trades when you already are the master of one?

I sincerely hope that Google rethinks this Google+ YouTube button. They can still put such a button there – just give us a way to like without connecting as well. I think that’s a fair compromise. But even better would be to simply leave the like button as it is currently. I’m on board with changes when they’re good, but this one just plain stinks.

What do you think of the new Google+ button on YouTube? If Google makes this change permanent, will you sign up for/log into Google+ so you can use it? Or will you just avoid rating videos from now on?

Original image (sans text) via thms.nl at Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Murray Newlands went to BlogWorld Los Angeles in 2011 and interviewed a variety of attendees, including Ramon (you can also check out his interview with Scott Monty that we posted last week). Here’s Murray and Ramon dishing about social media:

Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to Like Future of Publishing on Facebook!

In addition to running Ford’s social media presence, Scott also owns a widely-read social media blog called The Social Marketing Blog, which gives him an outlet to share his expertise among social media professionals.

Pinterest is one of the most addicting networks out there (I swear I don’t have it open in a second window as I’m writing this post…), but while it functions well for hobby pinners, it doesn’t give content creators many options for tracking Pinterest marketing efforts. Enter Pinerly. This Pinterest analytics and marketing site received 36,000 signups within one week of launching and, so far, its 500 beta testers (of which I am one) have created over 1,000 campaigns to track pin performance.

Pinterest is an AMAZING marketing tool for digital content creators (and we’ll actually be releasing a free ebook covering that topic soon – stay tuned). Pinerly is part of that equation, at least in my opinion. So I sat down with Pinerly’s Rick Kats to talk more about this site and how it can help pinners build a bigger following on Pinterest, drive more traffic back to their content, and more.

Allison: For people who don’t know, tell us a little about yourself and Pinerly.

Rick: My name is Rick Kats, CEO of Pinerly. Pinerly is an analytics dashboard for online visual content sharing platforms – starting with Pinterest. We provide tools to allow users to post content and easily compare the virality, reach, and engagement of each campaign. Designed with the simplicity to make it “just work,” Pinerly allows brands, bloggers, marketers, sellers, and agencies to focus more on their customers/content while optimizing their posts to increase on their returns.

How did you come up with the idea for Pinerly?

The inspiration behind Pinerly came about when we were using Pinterest to market our old business (www.setnight.com) and noticed that our traffic increase by 30%. We really loved Pinterest from day 1 and enjoyed how friendly the demographic that uses it really is. Although it was a lot of fun, our biggest pain was trying to measure the amount of traffic brought to us from certain pins (ROI – or return on our time). This is the fundamental reason why we started Pinerly. There is a nice phrase that we saw some time ago “if you cannot measure it, then it’s just a hobby.” We believe that it’s completely true and are creating the tool that we wished we had for ourselves when trying to get more exposure to our brand.

I think the “Pinalytics” section is extremely helpful for online content creators who want to see how well their links are doing. I love how it shows your total reach, based on others who have also pinned it. Can you talk to me a little about how the Pinalytics section works and how content creators can best use it?

The campaign and pinalytics is certainly one of the most compelling features on Pinerly. What we allow you to do is easily measure click-throughs, re-pins, and likes on a pin that is pinned through Pinerly. In a similar process to Pinterest, you select an image or input a URL to fetch the images, add a description, add a destination URL and then post the pin onto Pinterest. Once you do this, you are able to easily compare the campaigns against each other and see which work better and try to understand why. Although this may seem like a simple concept, there is a lot that we (and other brands) have learned about our posts and now do more of to optimize on our postings. We talk about some of these things here. There is certainly a lot to be understood in terms of times, descriptions, images and boards to find out what converts best and why.

My First Pinalytics Campaign

The ability to schedule pins is something I think a lot of pinners want, especially people who are using Pinterest to market their content. When will this feature be available?

For the scheduling feature, we are completely dependent on the release of the Pinterest API – ability for third party services to post data to Pinterest. As soon as Pinterest publicly releases its API we will be able to flip the switch and enable this feature.

One of the most important things about Pinterest is to disperse the pins over time. So instead of just pinning everything at once, it would be great to have a way to spread content throughout the day so that even when you are away from the computer, pins that you may have found earlier in the morning will be posted to keep your followers engaged. We hope that this will allow many avid pinners do all of their pinning in one time and concentrate more on the things that matter (spend time engaging with their followers, customers, users, or even with their family =) )

I also noticed in a recent email you sent out, you mentioned a Pinerly button. What can you tell us about it? Will this be similar to the current Pin It button that a lot of people already use?

Yes! But even more exciting, it’ll be a “Pinerly It” button that will now allow you to pin things at the same ease as the Pin It button and will tie directly into your pinalytics so that you can basically create campaigns on the fly. We’ll also be tying in other cool features like the scheduling into this as well.

Currently, Pinerly is not open to the public, but you do allow people to get access sooner by promoting it to their friends. You’ve come under fire for asking people to promote in order to move up on the waiting list. What is your response to those critics?

I think it’s really easy to forget that there are real people behind Pinerly and that sometimes there are things that you really just can’t expect. We wrote a full response with all of our thoughts here: http://not99.posterous.com/all-cards-on-the-table.

What else can we expect from Pinerly in the future?

We’ve really got some really really exciting things in the works (and I’m not just saying that =) )

1) Pinerly Bookmarklet: Discussed above.

2) Scheduling: Also discussed above!

3) Multiple Accounts: Ability to manage multiple Pinterest accounts through Pinerly. The idea is to provide a seamless way to control multiple business accounts or personal accounts simultaneously and easily switch between them to making posting content even easier.

We’ve also got things like monitoring, campaign analysis and recommendations, and a lot more coming… so stay tuned!

Thanks all of the great information, Rick! I’m super excited to see how Pinerly keeps evolving, and I hope you’ll keep us updated!

This Week’s Topic: Retweeting

Retweets are a great way to spread your content well beyond your initial audience, so this is the topic I wanted to feature as today’s Brilliant Bloggers. How do you get more retweets? How can you track your retweets? How can you best retweet others?

These are all questions answered by the bloggers below!

Advice from Brilliant Bloggers:

The Science of Retweets by Dan Zarrella

This post from Dan Zarrella at Mashable isn’t light reading, but it is well worth your time. Well worth your time. In this post, he covers the four factors most likely to make a tweet go viral with retweets. Writes Dans,

ReTweeting is a rich source of data for this type of analysis: a larger number of ReTweets are posted every day, pertaining to nearly every imaginable topic and Twitter’s API gives us the ability to quantify and map viral behavior in a way that has never been possible before.

When I set out to answer the question of what makes certain Tweets more viral than others I found four factors that I believe have strong impacts on how far content spreads on Twitter.

After checking out this post on Mashable, you can read more from Dan on his blog, as well as follow him on Twitter @DanZarrella.

Twitter 101: 55 Tips to Get Retweeted on Twitter by Pam Moore

If you want quick tips, rather than the complete analysis that Dan has provided, Pam Moore’s post is for you. What works for one person will not necessarily work for another, depending on your Twitter audience, but Pam provides tons of tips in this post, so you can pick and choose those that work for you. From the post:

Retweets are good in that they help spread your message, can increase brand awareness, visits to your blog, and help you meet business and marketing objectives if you have properly integrated social media into your business.

Whatever your motivation may be to increase the retweet love, below are a few tips (55 of them) to increase those retweets. No promises. No guarantees. But heck, what do you have to lose?

You can find more from Pam on her blog and follow her on Twitter @pammktgnut.

How to Increase Your Retweets, Twitter Followers & Klout by Kristi Hines

Kristi’s advice is always pretty spot on, but I love this post about retweets (which also covers getting more followers and building your Klout score). It’s not a list of tips or an analysis like you’ll find with the above two posts, but rather a tutorial and other information about adding social media sharing buttons to your site. Writes Kristi,

It STILL amazes me every time I come across a blog that has no social sharing buttons. At the bare, bare minimum, you need a retweet button on your blog post pages. Why? Because if you don’t have one, you are missing out on a lot of retweets of your posts by your readers to their followers and as a result, a lot of traffic as well.

Kristi’s home blog is Kikolani, but you can also find her work on Social Media Examiner, KISSmetrics, and a number of other blogs. Follower her on Twitter @kikolani.

Even More Brilliant Advice:

• 4 Retweet Tools and Trackers by Darren Rowse (@problogger)
• 5 Tips For Going Viral On Twitter by David Risley (@davidrisley)
• 5 Tips to Get More Retweets on Twitter by Matt Fields (@smchimps)
• 7 Ways to Thank Someone for a Retweet by Angie Schottmuller (@aschottmuller)
• 8 Ways to Get More Retweets by Brian Gardner (@bgardner)
• 1o Ways to Get More Retweets by Neil Patel (@neilpatel)
• Are All Retweets the Same? by Kirsten Wright (@kirstenwright)
• Are You Biting the Hand that Retweets You? by Jordan Cooper (@blenderhd)
• Do Retweets Mean Endorsements? by Lindsay McComb
• Do You Endorse Everything You Retweet? by Becky McCray (@BeckyMcCray)
• Don’t Stick It In Their Mouth – How to ReTweet by Scott Stratten (@unmarketing)
• Exactly How Powerful Are Tweets & Retweets? by Jen Lopez (@jennita)
• How To Get 1000+ Retweets by Mario Schulzke (@themarioblog)
• How to Get More Retweet Action on Twitter by David Cantone (@DavidCantone)
• How to Get More Retweets On Twitter by Kim Garst (@kimgarst)
• My Twitter Retweeting Policy by John Scalzi (@Scalzi)
• The Naked Retweet Dilemma  by Caitlin Johnston (@cljohnst)
• New Study Shows How To Rack Up Retweets: Pull Their Heartstrings, Piss Them Off, Make Them Laugh by Kit Eaton (@kiteaton)
• No Retweets Needed, Just Be Remarkable by Jim Kukral (@jimkukral)
• Please Don’t Retweet by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan)
• Please Retweet, Share, and Snail Mail this Post to Everyone on Earth You Know by Marcus Sheridan (@thesaleslion)
• The Problem with Retweets & How Journalists can Solve It by Jeff Sonderman (@jeffsonderman)
• Retweet Hijacking – What Would You Do? by Mari Smith (@marismith)
• The Secret Behind Whispers, Retweets & Yells by Lisa Barone (@lisabarone)
• There’s a Better Way to ReTweet! by Miles Tinsley (@milestinsley)
• Vanity Retweets – Are You Guilty? by Deb Ng (@debng)

Did I miss your post or a post by someone you know about retweets? Unintentional! Help me out by leaving a comment below with the link.

Next Week’s Topic: Facebook Shares

I’d love to include a link to your post next week – and if you head to the Brilliant Bloggers Schedule, you can see even more upcoming posts. We all have something to learn from one another, so please don’t be shy! Head to the schedule today to learn how to submit your post so I won’t miss it.

Two weeks ago my wife was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The hospital called us four hours after I stepped off the flight back from South by Southwest. For a few minutes, I didn’t know what to do, how to handle the emotions that were set off by the word ‘cancer’, and I needed to be there for Vikki.

Then I found my anchor. Drew Olanoff.

By that I don’t mean that he mysteriously appeared to hold our hands, but having watched him in his documented and public fight against his own cancer, rallying his friends around the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer, and the subsequent work with the Livestrong charity, I had my life raft.

“That’s how Drew fought it,” I thought, “and I can’t think of a better example or guide than that.” Time has moved on, but those first few days I held on to the attitude of Drew while I learned to cope.

We found another benefit as well in being so open about the diagnosis. After speaking to our family and close friends, we posted the news online, through our blogs, through Facebook and on Twitter. And as the comments came in, with their mix of sorrow and best wishes, it was good to know Vikki (and I) have so many friends who are thinking about us, and supporting us in the fight. And of course we now have #BlameVikkisCancer.

Our communities online offer more than the words in the timeline or the Twitter stream, they offer support, they offer strength, and they offer reassurance.