Live Blogging from BlogHer ‘08 - DIY Content Syndication & Promotion

This BlogHer ‘08 session is part of the “What We Do” break-out sessions entitled DIY Content Syndication and Promotion. It features panelists:
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Anne-Marie Nichols, The Write Spot
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Gwen Bell, Gwenbell.com
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Esther Brady aka Faintstarlite
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To kick off the session, Kristen took a quick survey to see how many people had a blog, wanted a blog, used social networking sites or wanted to learn more about social networking sites and building more traffic.
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Many audience members wanted to learn how to incorporate networking tools along with live-streaming, video and audio into their blogs. Learning how to choose which items to syndicate and how to manage all of the different accounts is a big part of this session.
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First question:
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Kristen: Talk about which social media tools bloggers should use to drive traffic to their sites. Should they use social bookmarks like Digg and Kirtsy?
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Anne-Marie: She recommends to use them, but don’t just “digg” your own stuff. The Point isn’t to get traffic/exposure for only yourself, but for others as well. Backlinks are very important. This shows that people are linking to you because they find something about your blog particularly interesting. Google looks at who views your content. The higher your rank, the higher you show up in a search. If people find you more while not necessarily looking for a blog to read, it speaks well of your content.
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Building a community is very important. Find people who can promote your content as well as you promoting theirs. Job the system. “Why not help yourself promote yourself while helping others?” StumbleUpon is great for creating a lot of traffic. It allows you to download a tool bar, which makes it easy to give a site your viewing a thumbs up or thumbs down. One downside to StumbleUpon is that it seems to work for a while, but all of a sudden the traffic stops. This may be a good place to take a break from that site and explore others. Find smaller sites. Find people who are in your niche. Make a community. Link love is a great traffic tool. “If you do nice stuff for people, hopefully it will come back to you.”
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Esther was a video blogger who was discovered by CNN/Weight Watchers.
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Kristen: Give us a quick rundown of video syndications you use and how you choose your content.
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Esther: I have tried about two dozen different platforms. After a trial-and-error process, she has compiled a top four.
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1. YouTube. It is a popular site that is great for traffic. Even if you’re going to host your video some where else, post it on YouTube.
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2. Blip.TV is great for episodic content. There is a lot of freedom unlike YouTube. TOS is very laidback and liberal. YouTube can pull your content if a complaint is filed against you. It doesn’t need to be proven.
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3. Brightcove is very customizable. There is a lot of control over the visual aspects of the page. It is also very good for search engines. A downside is that you don’t get any revenue sharing using the free version and the paid version is very expensive.
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4. Vimeo.com is more for people who are interested in high-quality videos. There is HD-streaming quality. People who really care about visuals will choose this site.
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Kristen: Do you have any experience with video live streaming?
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Esther: Only a little experience. I’m not really the best person to ask about this.
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Audience member asked if she had opinions on Vidler.
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Esther: I don’t get many comments or views on some of the newer sites. I like YouTube because of the video responses. Video responses and tags are really important to build a community.
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Kristen: (Question for Gwen Bell) There are a lot of tools that people use to syndicate content online. Where should someone who is new to using a tool start and what are the rules of engagement?
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Gwen: I’ll start with Twitter. It’s a matter of jumping into and becoming part of the conversation. Engage in conversation with the readers of your blog or users of your product. Zappos.com and JetBlue did this successfully. Also be sure to get comfortable with the jargon.
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Gwen is an editor for Kirtsy. She described it as “Digg for chicks.” It is a “content-driven recommendation engine.” People “kirtsy” stories they like or products they’ve used. It’s a way to share things you love with other women.
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Kristen mentions that depending on your area, there may be another site specifically created for what you’re writing about. Anne-Marie reiterates that point and how it’s beneficial to community building. Finding people who are passionate about a certain topic will provide great traffic.
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Audience member asks Gwen’s opinion on Plurk vs. Twitter.
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Gwen: “I have spent two days of my life on Plurk and it was a black hole. I couldn’t keep up.” Plurk was more of a cute toy than a tool. Twitter streams better. Plurk is not a networking tool or community building tool like Twitter is.
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Audience member: In addition to submitting our own content, how do we use Kirtsy to get followers?
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Anne-Marie uses web 2.0 submitter. It helps to copy your URL, title, description and tags. It will log in on various sites you’re a member of. She likes Kirtsy because it’s women and mom-based. Her advice is to experiment. Find a tool that works for you. It can be very time consuming and you need to decide if it’s worth it. Is the site meeting your goals for your RSS, readership, traffic, etc?
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Audience member: What about spending time on the site voting other people’s contents?
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Anne-Marie: Look like a real person. Vote on other’s posts, backlink, etc. Spend time getting to know their content.
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Gwen: I am not into spam. I would rather use a few tools very well and effectively instead of using tons of sites and seeing fewer results. (She uses six sites max.)
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Audience member: Feels like she needs to be in a remedial class because none of this is making sense. What would be recommended if she said she wanted more people to find her site. She’s been on various networking sites and didn’t like it. What can she do to gain more readership and traffic without investing a lot of time?
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Anne-Marie: Go to BlogHer.com and submit stuff there. Try MyBlogLog. It will help build community and doesn’t require a lot of time either.
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Kristen: Analyze where traffic is coming from and focus on what is already working. Try Google Analytics or a similar site. There isn’t one tool that will work for everyone. It depends on the content, how active you are (how frequent you post) and how often you comment. Build on what’s working…
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Audience member: What if you’re getting NO traffic - you’re just starting out?
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Panelists: Comment and write great content. Use other sites and take advantage of it. Post on Flickr or Twitter as well as your blog.
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Kristen: Comments are important as well are Trackbacks. They’re great because you’re linking to someone’s blog, which helps them get traffic. Often times you will show up on their blog and that will send people to yours. They’re effective because you’re reaching people who are already interested in that content.
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Esther: For video blogging, find someone to collaborate with who is already making videos and posting them. Ask a blogger to post the HTML of your video blog on their blog. Tagging is important. Find a video that is similar to yours. Copy their tags and add on. That way when people find that video, yours will show up near it.
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Audience member: How much time would you recommend that I interact with my readers. How do I keep people on my site happy? Any recommendations for frequency of posting and responding to comments?
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Anne-Marie: There are too many blogs and not a lot of time. I want to teach new bloggers to think about goals they want to set for themselves so they don’t get burnt out. The more frequent you can update, the better. Try to at least say “thank you for stopping by.” Time is needed. Set boundaries for yourself and decide when it is best for you to respond.
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Esther: I have 17,000 friends on Myspace. It is important to them to respond promptly so people know that I value their readership. It creates a sense of community and encourages them to participate more.
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Audience member: I have tried various methods for increasing readership and they have worked. A lot of the traffic is from juvenile wack-jobs.” Wants major feedback from people about a topic but hates spending a lot of time to delete stupid comments.
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Anne-Marie: Similar to marketing, if you cast a wide net you will catch a lot of people. Some you might not like. Choose a smaller net and hope for quality, not quantity.
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Audience member: Her single biggest source of quality traffic has been from Twitter because she has relationships with people on there. Now is the best time to join because you can connect with people from the conference.
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Gwen: You can perform a search for BlogHer 08 at search.twitter.com and find everyone who has twittered about BlogHer. Also track your own name and see who is following you.
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Audience member: How do you feel about giveaways?
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Gwen: “People love free stuff.”
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Audience member: If products fit your audience, contact a PR rep on the website and find out if they’d be interested in your review.
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Esther: If you’re enthusiastic about a brand, send the link of your review to the company. Don’t be afraid to reach out. (This is how she began video blogging for Weight Watchers.)
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Audience member with New Media Strategies: Companies look for your level of passion and interest because they look at you as influencers.
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Audience member: I read nearly 100 blogs a day through a reader. I don’t feel like I’m helping them. What blog readers are more effective to reward those I follow?
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Anne-Marie: You’re in their RSS readership. You are helping them. Make an effort to go to their site and comment live. Get out of your reader.
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Kristen: I use Friendfeed. I hated it at first, but as more people joined, I became more interested. What Friendfeed does is combine all of your social networking sites into one place. People can follow you from one place.
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Do some tracking to see what is being said about your blog in the blogosphere. The reason it is important to see what people are saying is because it gives you a chance to create relationships. Experiment with Twitter Search, Friendfeed and Google Blog Search.
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Audience member: What do you recommend for posting content to BlogHer?
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Anne-Marie: Post an excerpt of a blog post and link back to your blog for the rest.
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Audience member (who doesn’t use Twitter): Why do you like Twitter?
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Kristen: That’s a big question. Does anybody have an answer?
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Audience member: What makes it so great is that you have all of these wonderful conversations going on and you can jump in the middle. You’re talking to people and the people following them then see your stream. They eventually follow you and end up checking out your blog. It is a giant social community.
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The session ends and there are still more questions. Anne-Marie and Esther will be at the unconference on Sunday. Gwen recommends to follow her on Twitter and she’ll answer your questions there.