BlogCatalog

Winner of an Amazon Kindle: Mike Magdaleno
Mike has been solving problems and studying human performance for over 25 years.  He has a Bachelor of Science degree (with honors) from the University of Redlands.  He has also been a student of Far Eastern philosophies and holds a second degree black belt in Korean Hapkido.  He brings a special talent to my coaching in that I have seen many of the problems people have and tested what works and seen what does not.

Winner of Bose on-ear headpones: Jay Ehret
Jay Ehret is Chief Officer of Awesomeness of The Marketing Spot in Waco, Texas. He is a small business marketing coach, consultant, speaker and writer. Jay started blogging about small business marketing in March 2007 and joined BlogCatalog in July. He blog specifically about marketing issues as the apply to specifically to entrepreneurs and small businesses. He give practical advice on topics such as branding, the customer experience, word of mouth, social media, advertising and promotion.
www.TheMarketingSpotBlog.com

Winner of a $100 Apple Gift Card: Robert Richardson
Robert has been involved in online marketing for about 10 years now. Currently he is the online Marketing Manager for a large bank. He also runs a number of websites including http://networkinvegas.com, http://offgridsurvival.com, and
http://richardsongraphics.com.

(posted by Jason Teitelman, Written by Deb Schroeder)

Have No Fear and Let Your Passion Lead You to the Next Level
The Opening Keynote at Blog World with Laura Fitton was very inspirational and a great way to begin the conference. Laura Fitton is referred to by many as the Queen of Twitter, wrote Twitter for Dummies, and founded Oneforty.com. Oneforty.com has reviews and information of all of the best twitter apps.

Laura recommends that you should just be who you are when twittering and don’t just post links, but ask questions and make connections.  She believes that in order for you to be “Awesome on Twitter,” you need to listen, learn, care, and serve.

Laura Fitton emphasized that you should not have fear or hesitance with blogging, twittering, and the use of social media.  We should always try new things since we all have something to offer.

If we hold ourselves back and don’t try, then we will be cheating everyone else out of something that only you can offer.  Discover your passion and let it lead you.

Internet Marketing for Smart People

The panel for Internet Marketing for Smart People consisted of Darren Rowse, Sonia Simone, Brian Clark, and Chris Brogan.   The hour long session had too many great points to jot down, so you can watch the entire session at JohnChow.com.  Below are some quick notes from the session.

• Posting: Keep a post rhythm with your blog so that your readers know what to expect.  If you post once or 5 times a week, be consistent with that rhythm.
• Content: Deliver valuable content to your readers.  Ask yourself “Is my content itself a reward for reading it?”  Does the content add value to your readers?
• Email Newsletter Marketing: Email marketing is still very important and email newsletters are the way to go.  RSS isn’t turning out the way they once thought it was.  More traffic is through email readers than RSS.  Some found that ads clicked doubled with email as opposed to RSS.  One way to get readers to subscribe by email would be a free e-book incentive.
• Community: Create a community among your readers so that they feel like it is “our community” not “your community.”
• What do you have to sell? Find something worth selling to your readers that provides value to them.  Build the audience first and create trust before trying to sell to your audience.  Get to know your readers and pay attention to them so that you know what they need and what is important to them.

Sponsored Conversations and the new FTC Regulations

Panelists were Ted Murphy, Jeremiah Owyang and Wendy Piersall

One of the common discussions at the 2009 Blog World Expo was the new Federal Trade Commission’s regulations for online advertising and sponsored conversations.  The new FTC regulations go into effect on December 1, 2009 and there was much debate about the topic.

What can be considered sponsored conversations?  Tweets, posts, and comments can all be considered sponsored conversations if the blogger receives payment, gifts or any other item for certain content.  It doesn’t matter if the blogger would have included the content with or without receiving payment.  Bottom line-- if the blogger receives a gift or payment, then it must be disclosed.

It is important to create transparency within your blog and having a disclosure policy encourages trust among your readers.  The disclosure policy should be up at the top of your site and clear to your readers.  The new regulations lack clarity, but from the discussions at Blog World, it seems that individual posts that can be considered “sponsored” would need a disclosure statement as well.

An online site created and funded by IZEA allows you to create a Free Disclosure Policy from DisclosurePolicy.org in which you answer a series of questions.  After answering questions pertaining to your blog, a disclosure policy is created for you to copy and paste into your site.

Blogging Super Panel Gave Live Feedback on Site Reviews

The Super Panel with live feedback on site reviews consisted of top money making bloggers Zac Johnson, John Chow, and Darren Rowse.  Below are some tips offered to the various sites reviewed that can be applied to most blogs:

• If you have a new blog, focus on content and getting readers rather than trying to focus on monetization.  Most bloggers shouldn’t expect to be making large amounts of money until they have been blogging consistently and gaining readership for about 2 years.
• Your signup box for email and RSS updates should be large and easy to find.  Many put the signup box in the top right corner.  It is good to end posts with an offer to signup to subscribe in addition to having the signup box.
• Newsletter updates are important and you should attract more readers with this. Offer incentives for them to signup, such as a free e-book or newsletters with free samples, discounts, or some educational material in your niche. You can use your newsletter to help monetize your blog by offering valuable products for purchase, ads, etc.
• Do not ask for the first and last names of your readers when asking them to signup for updates or to subscribe to the blog.  Make the process easy and seamless for them.
• A general estimation given was that if your site is getting about 1 million page views a month, then you should be earning about $10,000 a month if monetized correctly.
• As you grow, you can consider offering membership sites, educational material or e-books as a way to monetize your blog.
• View your site in multiple browsers to correct errors that others may be seeing.
• Don’t have a super-large header and make sure that your header design lets the reader know what your blog is about.

Drive Traffic and Build Readership Using Niche Communities

Kevin Palmer discussed the many ways to use niche communities to drive traffic and build readership.  Kevin runs his own consulting company, Social Media Answers, LLCwhich has an abundant of free resources for those interested in growing with social media.

1. Evaluate Your Audience: Who are they?  What describes them?  How are they using the internet?  What content would they be interested in?
2. Examine Other Bloggers: Look at other bloggers in your niche and find out what social media sites they are using to connect with readers.  Look at their sidebars and examine the social media buttons they display.  Do a search with their twitter name to see what they are doing and how they are using twitter.  You can useCompete.com to analyze the traffic that other sites in your niche are getting.
3. Join Niche Social Networking Sites:  You can find over 400 Niche Social Networking Sites with reviews at Kevin Palmer’s website. Use social networking sites to gain potential readers.  Social networking sites are smaller Ease your way into the community, engage within the rules and listen to the readers. Don’t just join and broadcast your message, but become an active participant to create trust.  Look at the message boards and join in the active discussion.  Completely fill out your profile and include a profile picture.

While the amount of mind-blowing, awe-inspiring new tools to play around with in the exhibit hall at BlogWorld Expo this year was a little lacking, I found a few tools that I think will be pretty helpful to bloggers.

1. wetoku: A tool from Zentium, Inc.that brings the talking head experience to your blog, wetoku makes it super-duper simple to record an interview online, save it and embed it on your blog.

What is required to record an interview? Well, at least one participant must have a wetoku account and both participants must have a webcam. To get a wetoku account just go to wetoku and sign up. To get a webcam...well, if you really don't know how to get a webcam contact me personally because you probably require more assistance than I can provide through this blog post ;)

Once you are signed up for a wetoku account, recording an interview just requires you to log in and click the Start Interview button. Then--unless you want to mess with the advanced settings--just title your interview, name both participants and click next. You will be provided with a invitation URL to send to your interviewee. All the interviewee needs to do is go to that URL and they will appear along with you on the weotku screen. Once you are both there, just click the red record button under the interviewer's screen and after a 3, 2, 1 countdown the recording will begin.

After the recording is finished, you will be sent to a new screen where your completed video can be viewed and the embed code for the interview is provided. Simply grab that code, pop it on your site and just like that you have a nice clean interview up on your blog. Like I said, it's super-duper simple! Here's a quick interview I did with Austin about the new BC dance we're developing Disclaimer: The dance is still pretty rough and we're both crappy dancers, so bear with us:

The only issues we had with recording the interview was the echo from the audio and a slight delay in the video. The echo is the same kind of echo I have experienced with some online seminars and conferences, and I'm not sure what can be done. I assume using headphones would solve this problem if you don't mind how they look. The video delay problem was minimized by bumping down the video quality and may have had more to do with the spotty internet connection in our building than the site itself. I'll have to try some interviews from other locations and see if that changes. Overall, still a good user experience despite the minor issues.

2. Lijit: "Using the power of people, their content, and their connections, Lijit enhances the way your readers search for and discover information on the internet. You serve as a filter for all of the results your readers could possibly receive, ensuring they only receive the most relevant results from the source they trust…YOU." -Lijit.com

Lijit provides a search function similar to what our own BC 360 Search widget does. When someone uses the tool to do a search, it will pull all the relevant content from your blog, your other networks, your bookmarks and trusted sources and display them for your reader. The driving idea here is that since you are a trusted source for your readers and they are interested in what you have to say, the results you return will be trustworthy and relevant. This is a fairly simple explanation of what Lijit provides; to see a list of all of the features and to see a sample search page, check out their site.

3.Jing: Another easy-to-use tool from TechSmith that let's you create a screenshot or a recorded screencast of your screen and easily share it with your readers. A great tool for technical bloggers, Jing allows you to record step-by-step videos as you install software, make changes to your blog's code or complete any process that can be made simpler with a supplementary video.

Installing Jing is quite easy and I was able to make my first screencast without reading the instructions or watching the instructional video. Of course, if I had watched it, figuring out how to share my video would have been simpler. Still, after realizing the screencast I had saved to my hard drive was too big to share and that I had to go to screencast.com to get URL links and embed code, I was able to login and proceed without any trouble. After that, adding the screencast to my blog was pretty simple.

To get the URL or the embed code for your screencast video, simply login at screencast.com using the email and password you registered with when installing Jing. Once in, click the My Library link at the top left. My screencast was in a folder titled Jing. I just opened the folder and saw my video there. When you hover over the video's icon, smaller icons apprear beneath it that allow you to view, edit, share or delete the video. Clicking share opens a window that provides a URL link, an embed link and an embed code for your video.

Here's the quick screencast of my iTunes screen I made using Jing (I shrank it down a lot to fit on the blog. Just in case you were wondering, the original was about 1100 pixels by 900 pixels). It takes a few seconds to load and play:

Obviously there are many, many  more tools out there that bloggers love to use. If you have any tools you use and love, please leave a comment and let us know about them. You can also add your favorite tools to the BC Tools page where you can discover, review, and rate the best tools for bloggers.

While in Las Vegas for BlogWorld Expo 2009, some of the BC team had a chance to go to the amazing Stirling Club to meet up with bloggers Jason Falls, The Bloggess and Jay Ehret as well as Rich Becker and Hadley Thom from Copywrite Ink. I, and the rest of the BC team, wanted to take just a minute and say thank you to all of the people who made our evening so enjoyable.

I first want to thank the Stirling Club for an amazing evening. It was, overall, one of the best meals I have had in a very long time. The food, the service and the atmosphere were all excellent. A special thanks goes out to our waiter who made arrangements for a last-minute arrival and helped us take a couple group shots too.

Second, I want to sincerely thank Rich Becker for both his continued support of BC and BloggersUnite projects and his efforts in setting up this meal. Without you, Rich, this great night would not have been possible.

Finally, I want to thank Jason, Jay and the Bloggess for taking time out of their busy BlogWorld schedules to come share a meal with us. It was truly a pleasure getting to know each of you and being able to share a few stories and a few laughs. Hearing your insights on the opportunities we plan to bring to bloggers in the future was invaluable. I hope that we have the chance to meet again in the future and, in the meantime, wish you all the best.

This year at BlogWorld 09, BlogCatalog introduced HalfHourMeals.com and Broowaha.com--two sites that will give bloggers another outlet for their writing and the opportunity to share their writing with more specific audiences. HalfHourMeals.com is a place where anyone can come and find quick, easy-to-make recipes along with great cooking tips, a community blog and a directory of other excellent foodie and cooking blogs. Whether you are an experienced cook or you are making your first venture into the kitchen, this site has great recipes that you will enjoy preparing and eating! We hope that you will check it out and add some of your favorite recipes to the mix. Also, if you have a food blog, this is the place to list it and to connect with readers and other writers who are interested in what you are blogging about.

Here is Chef Clive at BlogWorld Expo 2009 speaking about the connection between food and socializing, how connecting with others over a shared meal is such an important part of our world's many cultures and how HalfHourmeals.com can help the even the busiest of us find time to participate in these important rituals.

Chef Clive and HalfHourMeals at BlogWorld 09

For those of you thinking it may be too late to get your pass for BlogWorld, think again! There's still time to register and get yourself to Las Vegas. You can even still get a discount; check out the letter below form BlogWorld Expo Co-Founder Dave Cynkin for details:

World's Largest Social Media Conference, BlogWorld & New Media Expo, is coming to Las Vegas Oct. 15-17 and Blog Catalog will be there!

Blog Catalog community members can register online at http://www.blogworldexpo.com and Save 20% off any pass with this Discount Code: BC20

Check out the incredible Conference Schedule, with more than 90 sessions and 300 presenters:
http://blogworldexpo09.sched.org/

Take a peek at the Star-Studded Keynote Presenters list:

• Richard Jalichandra - CEO of Technorati

• Guy Kawasaki - Co-Founder, alltop.com , Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures, author of "The Art of the Start", "Reality Check"

• Chris Brogan - President, New Marketing Labs, Co-Author of "Trust Agents"

• Kara Swisher - Co-Executive Editor, allthingsD.com , author of author of "aol.com : How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web"

• Leo Laporte - Radio Show host, Host and Producer of leading podcasts including This Week in Tech, The Daily Giz Wiz

• Scott Monty - Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company

• Kevin Pollak - Actor, Comedian, Twitter user, Host of internet TV show: Kevin Pollak's Chat Show

• Joanna Drake Earl - COO of Current TV

• Laura Fitton - Founder of Pistachio Consulting and oneforty.com

• Jeremiah Owyang - Altimeter Group - Partner, Emerging Technology Strategy Consultant

• Ted Murphy - CEO, IZEA

• Wendy Piersall - CEO, Sparkplugging

• Don Lemon - CNN Newsroom anchor

• Jermaine Durpi - American record producer, rapper and Grammy winning songwriter and blogger at Global14.com .

• Brian Solis - Founder of FutureWorks PR and New Media Agency, author of PR2.0 blog, bub.blicio.us and author of "Putting the Public Back in Public Relations"

• Jay Rosen - NYU Journalism Professor, author of "Press Think" blog, Advisory Board Member, Wikipedia, author of "What Are Jornalists For"

• Hugh Hewitt - Radio talk show host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" on Salem Radio Network, Law Professor, author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World"

• Chad Vader (Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan) - Youtube star with 25 million episode downloads

• Jenny “The Blogess” - author of The Blogess, Ask the Blogess and more

• Anthony Edwards - Actor best known for his leading role on the NBC hit medical drama "ER", utilizes the internet and social media to raise support for charities

The conference is bigger and better than ever for 2009...and if you haven't already met your fellow Technorati and BC friends face-to-face, this is a perfect opportunity to meet up for great networking. Come join us!

Be sure to check out Jason Falls' post on Social Media Explorer:
"10 More Reasons You Should Come To Blog World"
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2009/09/11/10-more-reasons-you-should-come-to-blog-world/

Hope to meet you in Vegas at BlogWorld & New Media Expo!

Best Regards,

Dave Cynkin
Co-Founder, Sleep Deprivationist and Thrill Seeker
BlogWorld & New Media Expo

Well it's here; today is the the day we announce which lucky blogger has won the 3-day, full-access pass to BlogWorld Expo 2009 and 1 million ad impressions for their blog on BlogCatalog.com. Making this decision was no easy task and we want to sincerely thank all of the bloggers who took time out of their days to send in an entry. Once it was all said and done, there were two entries that the BC team agreed stood out from the rest.

The first was "Why Me?" a laugh-out-loud post about the uniquely beneficial condition JD (BC username JDh888) feels makes him the best blogger for us to take to Las Vegas. If we only had one word to describe this entry it would be "wow!" Everyone loved JD's humor and energy, and we know he'd be a great guy to meet in Sin City.

For the past 2 years, the BlogCatalog team has had an absolute blast hanging out with other social media professionals and meeting some of our members at BlogWorld & New Media Expo. The generous hosts of BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009 want you to be one of the members we have the pleasure to meet there this year! We are going to give away a free 3-day, full access pass (valued at $1195) for this year’s event being held October 15-17, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV...PLUS 1 million ad impressions for your blog on BlogCatalog!

Winning is quite simple. There are only two things you need to do. First, you have to be a BlogCatalog member. If you're not currently a member, sign up is super easy! Second, you have to tell us why we should pick you to attend this event with us. We will pick the most creative and innovative entrant as the winner.

Write a blog post, make a YouTube video, record a podcast or use any other form of new media to tell us why you are the BC member who should be chosen to party with us in Las Vegas. Just link or tag your entry to the BlogCatalog Site and the Blog World and New Media Expo site, leave us a comment here letting us know you have entered and leave a link to your blog post, your YouTube Video, your podcast or whatever form of submission you are submitting. To get inspired check out the winning entry from BlogWorld's SXSW contest. Can you top that?

Entries will be taken until Midnight (12:00 a.m. CST) on Sunday September 20, 2009. The winner will be announced on Tuesday September 22, 2009. The winner will receive the 3-day full access pass for BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009, and a dinner in Las Vegas with the BlogCatalog team. Winner receives an event pass only. Travel and lodging are not included. The winner also receives 1,000,000 ad impressions for their blog on BlogCatalog.

All BlogCatalog members can receive a 20% discount on BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009 tickets. Our BlogCatalog community discount code is: BC20 and can be applied to any package from now until the event. This discount can be applied to already discounted prices (BlogWorld's discount pricing ends on 9/14/09).

Check out our NEW Aggregate Search

In case you haven't noticed, the last few months for the BlogCatalog team has been all about making improvements to the site. Sitting at the top of that list has been our search functionality. Well, starting today we are launching an all new aggregate search that helps users looking for your content find what they are looking not just faster, but easier too!

The new search engine delivers search results from the BlogCatalog blog directory, member blog posts, the BC discussions, and more than 20 social networks, giving you up to the minute content from across BlogCatalog. You can also narrow the search field to focus in on each search category. This means a better variety of results when you do a search, and that your blog content is now even easier to find!

Check out some of this week's most popular topics:

Blackberry
Presidential Debate
Twitter
Halle Berry
Social Media

Or start your own search at: http://www.blogcatalog.com/search.

What's Coming Next?

All New Bloggers Unite
Blog Ratings Update
New Widgets

What Happens in Vegas, Gets Blogged in Vegas

Last year, the BC team was invited out to BlogWorld in Las Vegas. We had so much fun hanging out and meeting some of our favorite members that we headed out again this year and it was a blast!

Someone asked what our goal was for being there but the truth is we just went to hang out and meet the people behind the avatars. We also got a chance to hear from dozens of social media pros like Carolyn Abram from Facebook; novelist Austin Bay; popular blogger Chris Brogan; new media entrepreneur Brian Clark; and problogger Darren Rowse.

If you haven't made it out to BlogWorld yet you really should next year. There are a lot of really great bloggers and speakers that you normally wouldn't get a chance to meet. Oh, and don't forget to stop by the BlogCatalog booth and say hello!

Did You know?

Blogger & Podcaster Magazine now features a column written by our very own CEO, Tony Berkman. We get to listen to him talk about social media everyday here in the office so if you like what you read let us know and we will send him to your office so we can get some work done!

BlogWorld, the blogging world's largest show, will be in Las Vegas on September 20th-21st. Along with blogging and social media gurus including Guy Kawasaki, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clark, thousands of bloggers, vloggers and podcasters will be there too. It's that big.

The BlogCatalog team will be at BlogWorld and you'll be able to find us at booth #328. BlogWorld is offering BlogCatalog members a 20% discount. To take advantage of this discount visit the BlogWorld site and sign up with the discount code: BCVIP. Hope to see you there!