This July at BlogHer, Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita and I are doing a Business Blogging "Unpanel" on Saturday July 29th.
Here’s the scoop on the session:
This panel isn’t about us. It’s about all of us. Call it an “unpanel.” Call it a “rap session.” What we call it doesn’t matter. What we do, does. And what we are going to do is share our business blogging stories and then build a set of business blogging “best practices” based on our experiences. Everyone is part of the panel, and we’ll just do the best we can to keep up with the brilliance in the room.
Here’s the format. The first half of the session is devoted to case studies. Our goal is eight – we have three committed, so we need BlogHers who plan to attend the session to step up and volunteer to share yours. How do you do that? Respond to this message (Please respond on the BlogHer site at this link) and tell us “I’m in” and let us know about the blog URL you plan to discuss in July.
During the session you’ll have 5 minutes to tell us the objectives of the blog, what worked, and what didn’t. Giving us the URL in advance lets us all check out the blog so you have to spend less time in exposition. And please, participants, do at least take a look at the blogs volunteered for the session. It will help us all get to the meat, which is creating our best practices deliverable.
Because what’s an unpanel without a collective product [You can see, Susan (who wrote this) really is a socialist at heart.]
The second half of our session is devoted to a group discussion. And we aren’t there just to chat. We want to leave the room with at least the shell of a best practices document –things that work become our best practices, things that didn’t are warning signs. This is the critical piece of this session. Without the deliverable, we’ve had a nice chat. When we create this document, we’ve helped ourselves and others be better business bloggers. Cool, huh.
So, please, if business blogging is your bag, and you are planning to attend this session, consider sharing your story. Yvonne, Toby and Susan can fill the time, but we don’t want to. We want to hear from and talk with you. Way more fun 🙂
Here are the case studies already on deck. Add yours in the comments. First come, first served. Five spots left, and we will do the session in the order received on the BlogHer site.
Masi Guy at http://masiguy.blogspot.com/
Know Your Bones at www.knowyourbones.com
Our Fathers Who Art in Heaven at http://murak.blogs.com/
Research from Stephanie Hendrik, a doctoral student from the University of Sweden: Stephanie will present research about when companies do inauthentic things with blogs. Things like fake blogs and fake commenters. Due to ethical considerations, she is keeping the the blogs in the study anonymous, but she is preparing a brief abstract for us which we’ll post here.Two questions we know we’ll get:
Q. Can I talk about more than one blog?
A. Yes, but you still only have 5 minutes. Use them wisely.Q. Will you stop taking volunteers after the 5 spots are filled?
A. Nope, keep signing up. People may decide to go to another session, or that they don’t really want to speak. Some people may take less than 5 minutes so we’ll have extra time. Who knows what will happen. Until it happens! So please sign up. We’ll go in order received until the time allotted for case studies runs out.
If you are planning to attend BlogHer, please consider joining us and sharing your blog case studies. Please sign up on the post at the BlogHer site –it is a whole lot easier if all the sign-ups are in one place. Thanks.
(cross posted to Marketing Roadmaps and MarCom Blog)
Tags: blogging, business blogging, BlogHer
Anonymous says
Best Marketing Blog Award: Marketing Roadmaps
If you think this blog deserves to win the Marketing Sherpa awards, Mark It.
Debbie Weil says
Have fun! So sorry I couldn’t make it to BlogHer. I was excited about being part of this panel.
Jody DeVere says
I’ll be presenting the business care for Ask Patty at BlogHer on Saturday July 29th!
Here are some highlights:
What were the business objectives of the blog? What did you hope to achieve? Did you?
The Ask Patty blog and AskPatty.com was launched to become the neutral ground for women consumers and car dealers to meet and begin to ‘hear, learn and improve’ communications and their experiences at the dealership with each other. So far it is working better than expected! We help educate consumer women to be more prepared to communicater better at the dealerships and we train dealerships to be better prepared to communicate effectively with women, a win-win business model.
What worked in the development and/or writing of the blog? What would you advise others to do.
Stay on topic – Pick a theme and or basic idea and stick to it, be a specialist on your topic. Don’t be afraid to use all the technology tools and means available to publicize your blog. Be creative and experiment with different forms of media, ads and syndication! We find new ways to get the word out daily. The internet supplies endless daily new information on new ideas and gadgets for bloggers to help them “get read”. If there were only just more hours in the day!
Be and stay committed to providing interesting and on topic content at least three to four times a week, is my best advice for new bloggers. Serious business blogging takes a big commitment of time, creative energy, brain power and typing skill! If your hands have not needed to be soaked in ice yet…you may not be blogging enough.
What didn’t work? What would you advise others to avoid?
The questions coming from women consumers over-loaded our system and we were not prepared for the heavy traffic at first, we are working quickly to manage the process better so questions get answered within 24 hours, even over weekends.
Stage your blog feature launches a little at a time. I think we tried do do too much too soon which created somewhat of a golden problem…more traffic than we were prepared for!
More on Saturday the 29th…
Look forward to meeting YOU all there!
Jody DeVere
President
Ask Patty