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BlogWorld NY 2011

In Which the BlogWorld Team Wishes You Happy Holidays

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At BlogWorld, we recognize our most valuable asset is our community; the people who we spend time with both online and off. You’ve all been so amazingly supportive of us throughout the years and we want you to know how much your support means to us. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to our entire community including BlogWorld attendees, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, vendors, and all of you who spend time with us on the social networks, and #BWEChat,  or hanging out with us at conferences, meetups and Tweetups.

Our individual holiday wishes are below:

Rick Calvert, CEO & Co-Founder

“I want to say thank you to each and every one of you for choosing to be a part of our community. We are grateful beyond words. I wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays.”

 

Dave Cynkin, Co-Founder, Sleep Deprivationist & Thrill Seeker

“For me, year-end is more than a time to look back at milestones and resolutions for growth in the new year…It’s a time to embrace the good fortune we’ve had in meeting creative, brilliant and insightful people and sharing memorable discussions together. This community is one of the most precious gifts to enjoy. I’m grateful for meeting you and look forward to spending more time together in 2012 (and I hope to see you at BlogWorld!). Wishing you and yours a healthy and relaxing holiday, and a happy New Year! ”

Patti Hosking, Director of Business Development

“Wishing you the peace, joy,  serenity, and excitement of being poised at the top of a mountain on skis just after a new snowfall has covered all the trees.”

Dani Goren, Director of Operations

“Happy Holidays”

Deb Ng, Director of Conference and Community

“Thank you, not only for being a part of our community, but for welcoming us into your own communities as well. My very best wishes to you and yours for the holidays and for a positive, peace-filled and prosperous 2012.”

Jennifer Holder, Executive Assistant

“Happy Holiday’s to you and yours, may they be filled with love and cheer.”

Christopher Castro, Registration Manager & Speaker Coordinator

“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Felis Pasgua yan Año Nuebo! (Chamorro)”

Jennifer Wojcik, Sales

“Happy HanaChristmaKwanzakah to EVERYONE! Thank you all so much for an amazing year! On to 2012 with much pomp and fanfare. Love to you all, BlogWorld community!”

Nikki Katz. Managing Editor, BlogWorld.com

“Wishing everyone a happy and healthy holiday season & a wonderfully prosperous New Year! Can’t wait to see everyone in NYC.”

Allison Boyer, Features Editor, BlogWorld.com

“Happy holidays, everyone! May 2012 bring you all growing bank accounts, shrinking waistlines, so much laughter that your sides hurt, and stats that would make Mashable jealous. Thank you for being the best community in the world!”

Julie Bonner, News Editor, BlogWorld.com

“To a joyful present and a well remembered past. Best wishes for Happy Holidays and an exciting New Year!”

Katherine Randall, Public Relations

”
Here’s wishing you and your family a happy holidays and prosperous New Year! Can’t wait to see everyone in NYC!”

 

Happy Holidays from the BlogWorld team!

‘Twas the Night Before BlogWorld

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Twas the night before BlogWorld, when all through the hall
The hustle and bustle of preparing for it all.
The signs were hung by the rafters with care,
Catching the eye of all who would be there.

The speakers were giving good cheer in the lounge,
While raising their glasses, shouting “one last round!”
And Deb in the sternest voice to be heard,
called “Guys, you have to be up  early, now get thee to bed.”

When out on the concourse there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the barstool to see what was the matter.
Away to the lobby I ran to see,
and looked around to learn what it could be.

The light on the stage in the keynote place,
Gave the promise of new stars in the space.
When, what to my inquiring mind should intake,
But an entrance so grand, there could be no mistake.

With a text and a tweet and a status update,
Who could it be but Rick and Dave?
More rapid than 5G, they took up the fight,
And shook hands, and networked, then put an end to the night.

“Now Brogan! now Falls! now Sheridan and Strauss!
On, Shankman! On Handley! On Simone and Rowse!
Put down your glasses, our attendees, they sleep,
They’ll be here early to hear you all speak!”

As kids who don’t want to go to school groan and moon,
They drained their glasses and headed back to their rooms.
So off to their hotels the speakers were sent,
In anticipation of the next day’s event.

And then, from over in a corner, I heard Alli boast,
She was pulling an all nighter to get in one last blog post.
And Jen and Patti over in their hotel,
Were pushing to get in one last big sell.

The team didn’t sleep, but they were there before dawn,
in anticipation of the show to put on.
Dani, Jennifer, Chris, Matt and Nikki.
Katherine and Ivan and Julie and Kimberly.

To our attendees, exhibitors, track leaders and sponsors,
to our speakers, and vendors and community members,
from the bottom of our hearts, we’d like to bestow,
Happy BlogWorld to all and to all a good show.

BlogWorld New York & Los Angeles Breaks Attendance Records

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We hope you joined us at our New York and/or Los Angeles events in 2011, and if you did – you helped us break our previous attendance records! Between the two shows, BlogWorld hosted more than 4,750 attendees and 335,000 online viewers.

“BlogWorld West in Los Angeles was our most successful show to date in terms of attendance numbers, exhibitors and sponsors, the caliber of the educational sessions and the speakers we hosted,” said Rick Calvert, CEO and co-founder of BlogWorld & New Media Expo. “The decision to take BlogWorld bi-coastal has broadened our reach and made the event more accessible to attendees all over the country and the world. We are looking forward to continuing this pattern of growth into 2012 and have some exciting news to announce in the coming months.”

Highlights from last month’s BlogWorld West in Los Angeles held at the Los Angeles Convention Center include:

  • Record-breaking attendance of more than 3,250 people, from 41 different countries including, Australia, United Kingdom, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India and more.
  • An additional 208,000 people watched the live stream of BlogWorld’s keynote sessions.
  • BlogWorld’s official Twitter Hashtag, #BWELA, generated 323 million impressions, 40,000 original tweets reaching 30.4 million people over the course of the three-day show, (Source: Hashtracking.com).
  • An economic impact in Los Angeles estimated at $3.3 million in revenue and a total of 3,700 hotel room nights, (Source: LA INC. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau).
  • Entertainment-focused closing keynote talk show featuring Hollywood and Web Stars, including: Jace Hall, president and founder of HDFilms, with guests Aisha Tyler, actress, director and host of the hit podcast Girl On Guy; Rick Fox, three-time NBA champion, actor and producer of the Web TV series Off Season – The Lex Morrison Story,; Justine Ezarik (a.k.a. iJustine), an Internet personality and popular YouTube content creator with almost 2.5 million subscribers and Tim Street, Vice President Mobile Video, mDialog and creator/executive producer of the Viral Video series French Maid TV.
  • More than 300 speakers, 20 session tracks and 150 educational sessions. BlogWorld introduced several new session tracks this year, including Mobile, Music, Web TV, Travel & Tourism and Fitness.
  • Unveiling of Technorati’s 2011 State of the Blogosphere Survey.
  • Keynoters included by Peter Shankman, Founder of HARO; Amber Naslund, VP of Social Strategy Radian 6; Jim Farley, Global CMO of Ford Motor Company; Brian Solis, Principal of Altimeter Group; Shani Higgins, CEO of Technorati; Mikal Belicove, Contributing Writer & Blogger at Entrepreneur Magazine; Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image; Deanna Brown, CEO of Federated Media Publishing; Michael Stelzner, Founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner; Lisa Stone, Co-Founder and CEO of BlogHer.
  • 85 exhibiting companies including brands like Ford, Southwest Airlines, .ME, Verisign/.tv, Century 21 Real Estate LLC, Blogger, WordPress.com, Viddy, Stickam and more.

BlogWorld’s Virtual Ticket, the largest social media conference library ever recorded, is also available for purchase. The virtual ticket includes audio and video recordings of more than 100 sessions, keynote presentations, official BlogWorld parties and access to exclusive interviews and extras.

After Business Plans for Bloggers

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… by Thursday Bram

Business plans can be a scary topic to bring up with bloggers: many of us have very clear ideas on how we want to make money with our sites and the consideration that there are numbers change the ball game can be terrifying.

I knew this going into my session at BlogWorld Expo in New York. I honestly wasn’t sure how many people would be interested in talking about the nuts and bolts of running a blogging business. But I was pleasantly surprised — and I think the audience was, too. We got to talk about what really makes sense, in terms of monetizing a blog, as well as the mechanics of actually putting together a business plan.

The Surprise of My Session

My audience more than managed to surprise me. I expected to attract a crowd that was familiar with blogging as a platform but were newer to the idea of a blog as a business. There were certainly a few folks in that boat, but there quite a few people who had actually already experimented with different strategies to make money from their blogs.

Now, I’m personally a fan of running the numbers on a new project before I get started. I have several blogs (at different levels of success or even starting), but for each of them, I have an informal business plan.

At the same time, though, I didn’t have business plans of any sort for the first couple of blogs I launched. A few of those died quiet deaths and the rest got business plans after the fact. It is more than acceptable to write a business plan even after you’ve been in business for a while; in fact it’s often necessary. With some more traditional models, the only time a business plan goes beyond the informal stage is when the owner wants to sell it!

If you’re in the position of working on the business end of your blog after the site has been up for a good while, that’s perfectly fine. It happens to a lot of us. But, just as I said at #BWENY, it’s important to sit down and write out a plan for that business. If you’re working with a written document, no matter how informal, you’re far more likely to actually get the numbers necessary to help you figure out how much your blog might earn, as well as address the potential barriers to increasing your blog’s income.

Curation: The Blogger’s Ally

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… by paper.li

What is content curation?

Simply said, online content curation is the organizing, filtering, presenting and sharing of the most relevant digital content for a specific audience. Good content curation requires both technology and people working together. Only by adding “the human element” can you truly bring relevance and context to content.

We often see that content curation is misunderstood, overlooked, or even dismissed in a bloggers’ content development plan because the benefits have not been made clear.

As a blogger your unique value proposition to your readers is the expertise that you provide in a niche or micro niche. People have found their way to you based on recommendation and interest in your area of knowledge and they trust your opinion.

The addition of content curation to your content development strategy can help you strengthen your position as a knowledge holder as well as provide additional value to your readers.

A few good reasons to curate:

  • Strengthen your reputation: Curation further strengthens your position as the “go-to” person in your niche or area of expertise. You elevate your status in the eyes of your audience by pointing them to good content discovery.
  • Saves you time: Keep your readers engaged with the content you would like them to discover and win time in between writing your posts. You off-set your down time with a mix of interesting content.
  • Reinforce loyalty: Provide your readers with fresh and valuable content. Good content is time consuming and not always easy to find. They will remember you for pointing them to it.
  • Brand visibility: Brand managers are looking more and more to niche markets to connect with users. Compelling content can elevate your visibility by building the bridge between them and their users.

A few curation tips to remember:

  • Keep it focused: keep your content focused on your niche and your area of expertise. Good curation is about quality, not quantity.
  • Prefer quality over quantity: readers place phenomenal amount of value on the discovery of good content. Take the time once to research quality content sources, develop focused twitter lists and develop a good query.
  • Keep it human: Good curation is not about automation. Technology, algorithms and data intelligence are the tools that make it easier for us to curate and provide value to our audiences. However, it takes the human touch to fine tune the message.
  • Be aware of the echo chamber: It’s easy to remain amongst specialists in one field. The outcome after time can be tunnel vision. Stay within the realm of your subject area, but weave your interest graphs and networks to allow also for sporadic discoveries that stretch to unknown territories.

Content curation helps bloggers put relevant content in front of the perfect audience. It provides you with an additional value proposition to your content strategy as well as a natural extension to your social media blueprint.

Good content curation requires the “human element”. By taking the time to tailor your message through curated content you can help strengthen your position amongst your peers, and your readers, and helps further cement your position yourself as an invaluable “go-to” resource.

Paper.li is a content curation service that enables people to publish newspapers based on topics of interest to share with, and be discovered by, other like minded people.

Learn more about our services on our blog, meet our publishers on our community site and follow us on Twitter @smallrivers

How Journalists Can Make the Most of Facebook

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… by Andrea Vahl

I had a wonderful time at BlogWorld NY. It was a bit of a whirlwind with meeting people I had known on Twitter for years as well as making new friends, attending great talks, and trying to see a few NY sites while learning the art of walking with nine blisters on my feet.

I also was honored to speak at BlogWorld on How Journalists Can Make the Most of Facebook.

Twitter has been a little more of the social media darling for journalists because of its open and very searchable format. But according to a recent Pew Research Center study, Facebook is becoming increasingly important for journalists. Many of the large news sites are getting a significant amount of their traffic from Facebook.

But how else can it be leveraged? In my session I covered the four C’s that journalists needed to give to their Facebook audience to make the most of it:

  1. Content. It needs to be relevant to the audience to encourage sharing and interaction.
  2. Conversation. You need to be there. People want to talk to people, not a news site. Let people know who is doing the posting. Have a signature with the post or tag the journalist’s page when they are presenting the information.
  3. Consistency. Make sure you show up regularly. Have a schedule of the types of posts or stories that will go up at certain times. Have a question of the day that appears regularly if you decide to incorporate that into your posting mix.
  4. Community. Make your Facebook Page a safe place to be. Moderate the posts so that people aren’t attacking each other within the threads. It’s ok for people to disagree, just have some rules of engagement. If people are attacked, they won’t participate again.

Those are the things your audience wants from you. But what do you get? If you use Facebook well, you also get four C’s:

  1. Connection. Facebook gives you the opportunity to appear in people’s News Feeds over and over. You get the opportunity to reach people where they are hanging out and remind them of your site. You also build a loyal following that will turn to you for the news rather than one of the many other places they can get it.
  2. Check your sources. You can search Facebook through www.Facebook.com/search or use http://www.fbinstant.net/. People will also share tips on your Page.
  3. Clicks. Yes, if you do Facebook right you will get traffic. But it’s not only a broadcast platform. You have to talk to people and get a conversation started to reap the rewards.
  4. Credibility. When you participate regularly and let people get to know you, you will receive the trust of your audience.

When you give your audience what they want, you will get what you want. But you have to give to receive. Facebook is a powerful force when it’s used right.

Andrea Vahl is a Social Media Coach, Speaker and Strategist. She is a co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. She uses her improv comedy skills to blog as an entertaining character named Grandma Mary – Social Media Edutainer. She is also the Facebook Community Manager for Social Media Examiner, an online magazine with more than 45,000 Facebook Fans. You can find more information at http://www.AndreaVahl.com

Grow Your Blog Now Via Social Media: Wrap-Up

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… by Lori Randall Stradtman

Were you able to attend BlogWorld Expo in New York? If not, you missed a wonderful opportunity to meet really cool, savvy people and to learn what they’re best at, complete with tips, tricks, and tutorials. I love the tutorials part.

My session was “Grow Your Blog Now Via Social Media” and I was thrilled to see so many people excited to learn more about integrating Social Media into their blogging activities. These days, one truly supports the other if done well. I shared some of my favorite tips and tricks about Facebook Edgerank. Few people knew that only 1% of status updates make it to the “Top News” wall and that by changing the way you post you can do a lot better than those odds. After all, you can have the goose that lays golden eggs, but if nobody knows about it… It’s not nearly as much fun for all involved.

One of the highlights of the session was to share my Blogging Jump Start Project. It’s a free plan that anybody can use to build their blog much faster and to support their blogging friends. Most of our parents and neighbors don’t understand what it means to have a comment shared on your blog or the excitement you feel when somebody shares a link to it on Facebook or Twitter. Only bloggers really understand. Who better to support each other than other bloggers? I’ll be sharing more about this in my next newsletter, but would be happy to share all on here for those who might have missed this session or those I didn’t get to respond to after we were done. We had to clear out to make room for the next speaker!

It was particularly exciting to see how many women authors responded to my message and have contacted me since then. It’s opened my eyes to where I want to focus in Social Media. Now I’m refining my approach to address their need to build a Social Media platform that will help to sell their books as they publish. It’s a daunting task now that more publishers demand this before they will consider even the most accomplished writers.

Without this uniquely enjoyable BlogWorld speaking experience I would never have met the same people and made the same important refinements in my business plan. THANK YOU!!!

Would you like to know anything else about growing your blog via Social Media? I’m happy to help.

Lori Randall Stradtman designs, speaks professionally, and uses her 8+ years experience in online community and social media to write for Social Media Examiner, Smart Brief, and Enterprise Efficiency. Her company works with clients across North America, the UK, and Australia.

BlogWorld NYC Featured on CBS Sunday Morning

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You may have noticed a few camera crews roaming around the expo floor at BlogWorld NY and interviewing some of our bloggers. That was CBS Sunday Morning producing a segment about blogging from our conference.

We’re excited to share the segment here with you – featuring interviews with bloggers, Srinivas Rao, Dave Ursillo and Danielle Liss.

CBS also included one of our conference sessions, “How to Make Real Money From Your Blog” led by Janice Croze, Jennifer James, Wendy Piersall and Heather Solos.

Are You Playing the BlogWorld Follow Up Game?

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BlogWorld, whether it is in Las Vegas, New York, or (soon to be) Los Angeles, is always great for meeting new people. Some of the people you meet are actually “old friends” through social media even though you’ve never met face to face. I always find that very rewarding. Other people you meet might be friends of friends, people who happen to randomly cross your path, or even connections that are interested in you in a business sense. If you want to make new friends and business contacts, BlogWorld is definitely the place to be.

Yet, it only lasts for a week, and then we all head back to our “real” lives. We go back to houses that need cleaning and friends who want to go for happy hour after their office jobs. We go back to Twitter and Facebook, occasionally commenting on our new friends’ blogs. We go back to raising our kids and caring for our significant others and doing all those others things we do on a daily basis. Basically, we go back to living our lives. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But now that BlogWorld New York has been over for a few weeks and life has gone on as it always has, it’s time to start playing the BlogWorld follow up game if you aren’t playing already.

The rules to this game are simple – take the time to actually care about the people you met at BlogWorld, following up with your conversations on Twitter, Facebook, their blogs, or other online presences. If you met people who happen to live in your area, make plans to have lunch together sometimes in the near future (don’t just say you’re going to…actually set a date). Talk about what these people are doing on your own blog or at least retweet a few links that you find especially helpful. Start planning JV projects together. Sign up for their mailing lists.

Are you willing to make that effort to stay connected with all the cool people you met? Sometimes, when you aren’t hanging out in person, it just isn’t the same. While some people might be super passionate in real life, their blogs might be “meh” or they might not make much time for social media. When that happens, it’s okay. You don’t have to stay in touch with everyone you met. But to people you truly enjoy, reach out. If you don’t, they might not either, and then that connection is lost.

In other words, don’t drop the relationship ball. While at BlogWorld, it’s easy to enjoy the company of the people you meet, but when you’re not standing in front of one another, it can be easy for those relationships to die unless you work at it. You’ve had some time to get back into the swing of your life after BlogWorld, so there’s no time like the present to start reaching out to your BlogWorld friends again. What are you waiting for? Say hello and get the ball rolling for what could be awesome friendships.

Erica Douglass’ Seven Steps to Passionate Pitches

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I’ve been a bit of an Erica Douglass fangirl since I first read her Failure Manifesto back in August 2010. So, when I heard that she would be speaking at BlogWorld New York 2011, I made sure to put her session on my “absolutely cannot miss” schedule. I even wrote it in pen. Pen!

I wasn’t disappointed. If you missed Erica speak (or missed BlogWorld New York 2011 completely), I highly recommend keeping your eyes peeled for the forthcoming virtual tickets that will be available at the BlogWorld Expo site so you can listen to a recording of her session and see her slides.

Erica’s session was called “How to Passionately Pitch without PO’ing Your People” – and like many others at BlogWorld, she spoke about how we need to remember that email marketing can work. Erica gave us seven great steps to creating the best pitch emails possible:

  1. Have a clear, concise call to action. What do you want your readers to do? Don’t make them try to figure it out. Tell them exactly what they should do!
  2. Include at least three links to buy – and one within the first 200 words. Don’t make them read a huge email if you hooked them in the first paragraph.
  3. Never apologize for pitching a product. Whether its yours or an affiliate product, you’re recommending something of value. Don’t apologize for the price because it makes it sound overpriced. If it’s worth the cost, stand behind it.
  4. Set a price anchor. When you start talking about a product, your reader will automatically start comparing it to things they already know. You want to do that first so that when you tell them the price it is much lower than the thing already in their head.
  5. Make readers feel like they are getting a special deal. Why should they buy from you, especially if others are selling the same products? Many people are happy to give you a special discount code for their readers, or you can throw in some of your own giveaways for people who buy from you.
  6. Give readers a sense of urgency. If not, they’ll put it off until “someday” and someday will never come. Make your offer only available for a limited time before the product is no longer available or the price goes up.
  7. Follow up with at least one additional email – preferably two. Erica’s formula is a post and email on the first day, a second email about two days later, and a third email (plus additional post) three to four days after that. You don’t have to be annoying, but if people are responding well, sending follow-ups allows you to earn even more.

Of course, this is just the bare bones information from Erica’s awesome presentation. Again, if you want to listen to the whole thing, stay tuned so you can pick up a virtual ticket, which will give you access to recordings from BlogWorld New York 2011.

Thanks, Erica, for a great session – easily one of my favorites of the show! Readers, check out her story and more great advice at Erica.biz and follow her on Twitter @ericabiz.

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