Successful Blog

An Update from Brad Shorr

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Brad wanted to let the SOBCon community know what he has been up to:

Brad ShorrI have installed a new WordPress theme to better focus my Web site and blog on my core services:

  • Content strategy,
  • Copywriting,
  • and business blog services.

The navigation of the new theme allows me to highlight important Web pages that were practically invisible with my old theme. Since my site traffic is steadily increasing, I decided it would be worthwhile to start monetizing.

I’ve developed a long term plan and in July began selling ads on my blog, very selectively. So far the response has been positive. I have a couple of new online service offerings in development that I plan to roll out before the end of the year.

Brad Shorr
Word Sell, Inc.
www.wordsellinc.com

Good luck with your new focus Brad! Check out Brad’s site and let him know what you think of the new look.

Timothy Johnson – The SOBCon Update

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Carpe Factum LogoI recently had the opportunity to speak to Timothy Johnson of Carpe Factum and he gave me an update on what he has been working on since we first met at May’s conference:

Timothy JohnsonSince SOBCon I’ve been spending the summer doing some editing and honing on SWAT. SWAT (Systems Working All Together) is a story about Systems Thinking, but it’s also a story about learning. We tend to go about our business rather myopically and think that only people in our business/company can teach us about how to do our jobs better. Part of the plot of this book shows how a young manager learns how to improve the processes of his call center project by using the principles of a tactical police SWAT team. We all intuitively understand the principles of inputs and outputs, but few of us take the time to look at how the behavior of the system impacts how we do our jobs.

I’ve also been working on preparing for the second printing of Race Through The Forest (my first book) later this fall. We’re adding in some charts, pointers, and templates for project managers.

Tim actually spent some time with a SWAT team as part of his research, and this looks like it’s going to be a very exciting new book.
Thanks Tim!

Chitika – An Update from a SOBCon Sponsor

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Chitika LogoI have had couple of e-mail conversations with Jeff Sable of Chitika, and he asked me to share with all of you some of the new features of this service that have been incorporated since May.

Good morning. I would very much welcome an opportunity to introduce Chitika’s Premium ad program to the SOBCon audience. We have been known for years as a blog ad network but we were a strict product niche (i.e. we had product ad widgets for blogs that discussed products). With our Premium program we have significantly increased the advertiser base (we still have product ads but now we also have great ads for ALL blog sites) and we have improved our targeting technology.

The results? More money for more bloggers. Publishers with Chitika|Premium ads are seeing eCPMs are as high as $71 (averaging slightly higher than $2), with click through rates as high as 13.5% (averaging approximately 1.5%) and we now have high-performing advertisements for any type of web site (product sites and non-product sites in all verticals).

Note, Premium ads will only display to a portion of a blogger’s US traffic but when they display they perform very well. The ad units are available in 2 dozen sizes. For more information please visit Chitika or contact jeff at chitika dot com.

Thanks for the update, Jeff. I imagine that many of the attendees will be interested in this service as they work toward building their blogs into media properties.

Sheila Scarborough – The SOBCon Update

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Good day folks! Our next update on what the SOBCon attendees are up since the conference this past May is from Sheila Scarborough. She is getting a lot done with newcomers to the world of Web 2.0:

Sheila ScarboroughHere’s what I’ve started doing (with Connie and some others) since I was inspired by SOBCon08:

We want to reach people who are new to social media/Web 2.0 – they understand that they need to understand it, but they “don’t have time” to understand it! With the Every Dot Connects consortium of communications experts, Sheila Scarborough is teaching a series of entry-level, practical Web 2.0 Tools workshops in the Austin and San Antonio area. We cover the basics of using LinkedIn and Twitter, we talk about Creative Commons on Flickr, we demonstrate shooting video with a Flip camera and uploading it to YouTube, and we are planning a big one-day workshop on blogging.

Lessons learned so far, for others who may wish to parlay their social media knowledge into similar workshops, is that it is easy to be so comfortable with the technology that you forget that your students are not (I confused one student by using the term “widget,” which was new to her.) In the classic teaching conundrum, it is hard to not overshoot some students while simultaneously boring others. We use a brief survey when students register on Eventbrite, to find out what they already know, and then work very hard to calibrate our presentations. Other lessons:

  • Learning about LinkedIn is more popular than we thought – it’s seen as the most useful, professional Web 2.0 app.
  • People CAN be convinced that Twitter is worth trying if you can explain exactly why you follow certain people and give specific examples of how it’s helped your business or personal life
  • Teaching RSS is harder than we thought – there are so many readers available, people often don’t use the orange RSS button on their blogs and there isn’t nearly as much standardization of this feature as you’d think. Our students love Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which we present as an alternative to RSS.
  • Many people have never heard of Creative Commons and excited to know that you CAN find good free photography for blogs and other online content, if you follow some simple CC rules on Flickr
  • Students are amazed at the ease of the Flip camera, and the quality of the videos.

Fellow SOBCon-ers are welcome to contact either Sheila [sheila at sheilascarborough dot com]or Connie Reece for more details about how we set up and run these workshops.

Thanks!

Sheila

The Bigg Success Update

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Greetings once more, and welcome to the next SOBCon 2008 Update.

@Stephen’s mug@Stephen here again, to share with you some of the projects and business development that is happening in and around the SOBCon Community.
Today we are featuring Mary-Lynn Foster, the VP / Executive Producer for Bigg Success “THE HOW-TO, CAN-DO PLACE FOR PEOPLE ON THE MOVE.”

Bigg Success

Target for Bigg Changes

One of the sessions from SOBCON that really hit home for us was the one Lorelle hosted. She asked everyone to present a tagline about their blog in 10 words or less. To be honest, we couldn’t do it. We sat at a table of bigg thinkers like: Anita Bruzese, Kristin King, and Steve Sherlock.

We already knew we needed to niche down our concept more, but this session really fortified that for us.

We decided to “Work with Liz”…the great thinker, Liz Strauss, and we recently completed our 6 session consultation. We are so excited for what is coming to Bigg Success!

– a unique platform to stand on
– direction for setting up offline revenue
– a simple tagline that tells you what we are about and how we can help you (yes in UNDER 10 words!)
– an addition to our logo that enhances our tagline
– a fun way to personalize our blog better (think twitter). We were challenged with this b/c it is a two-person blog
– we’re now thinking vertically and horizontally with our upcoming content for better re-purposing
– we are thinking differently now…we see a bigger picture

We have a lot of work in store for us, but our target to have our bigg changes in place in the coming months.

We’ll let you know here and we can’t thank Liz enough!

I just have to add, if you are looking to lift your online business to the next level, Liz is an amazing person to work with!

One more thing, SOBCon was so good for us. We are so close to our business, this brand we have built. It really helped us to have professional outsiders looking in and sharing their insight.

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Connie Reece – The SOBCon Update

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Connie ReeceHave you ever heard of a “Plurkshop”? Well Connie Reece has been giving a series of them. Check out Every Dot Connects to “[get]… a glimpse into the minds of some of today’s social media practitioners and thought leaders, and give you a taste of what the plurkshops are like in case you want to join us for future events“.

PlurkshopOn Plurk, a newer microblogging/presence app, we have been having a series of “plurkshops,” an online DIY workshop where we start a topic and discuss it in real time, effectively turning Plurk into a chat room. This has been peer-to-peer knowledge sharing at its best. Some plurkshops have yielded over 600 comments in two hours, with the quality of the information shared being impressive. That’s a firehose of words, of course, so some of the participants have started writing recaps to summarize the discussion and put it into perspective.

In fact, the Plurkshop on Social Media Management is particularly insightful. Read about it all here [link].

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