Queen of Love and Beauty

DB Ferguson gave a great talk about her experiences about the No. 1 Stephen Colbert fan site. Got an opportunity to talk to her a little while later. Really cool chick!

• Become an authority
• Be conscious of your presentation – authoritative tone even if you get your informati0n from a second source
• blog with a neutral tone
• appeal to a large audience
• stay positive
• credible content – accurate and informative
• one-stop resource
• present clean accurate news and bring original content
• hungarian bridge – translated the website for this and was the only person who did so
• networking – think outside your niche
• community – without community you have no readership; core readership – additional source for information
• exclusive reviews
• strong, reliable server – can your site stand being dugg, reddited or stumbled?

Giovanni Gallucci gave a super cool presentation on search engine optimization. His slides are here.

I didn’t mention it before but sorry if my notes are kinda crazy. This is just how I roll.

• get noticed – get people to follow you without breaking the rules
• works with DOD – got someone there “off the napkin” in two weeks
• bluehat marketing – good guy applies some bad guy techniques in a way that will be accepted
• don’t go tell everyone about your brand and to come watch you; Geekbreif TV is a good example – they had a plan, they knew what they wanted and stuck to it
• social media – focus on taking care of people  – you will have more success
• sponsors – I know what you are doing, here is how I can add to that
• We don’t “Sell” – We influence
• your opinion can have influence – ex. review of a camera
• click thrus – humans
• keywords & phrases – humans
• backlinks – search engines
• anchortext – search engines
• no-follow tag -test a comment, something that will not get any interest and then search it two days later
• bruceclay.com – all the seo companies share data
• 15-30 min a day helping and complementing people – they will be inclined to help you and further your brand; human nature – when you do something they will want to help you.
• levels of trust = reputation = social capital
• how much reach do you have? – 2.5 times factor of pass-along
• line that you cross that makes you a used car salesman
• seven reason why ms loves opensource
• advertising – you stop paying, it goes away;editorial content – lives on forever
• ad – caries no authority; edited content does
• IJustine – would rank #3 among viewership; 2.5 million views per video
• Google keyword tool
• use the terminology your audience is using
• Facebook – worst return on ad investment
• Facebook – get new users by buying the cheap ads
• social bookmarking sites – associate competitor with keywords that they don’t want to be associated with
• search for email addresses by @domain.com
• Linkedin – create real account and throwaway account
• all-in-one seo in Wordpress
• optimize videos – titles, descriptions, etc..
• Tubetoolbox – youtube application; will not allow you to break the terms of service
• Flickr – will forbid you from promoting commercial content; use only descriptive text
• Tweet Adder – will quietly add followers, but then remove them if they don’t follow back; $40

Dave Moyer is only sixteen and already an internet rockstar. When I was sixteen Prodigy was the latest and greatest thing. I was more likely to be tying up the phone line with a modem than I was by actual conversation.

• XSPF Player
• Podcasting – PowerPress
• Simple Video Embedder – powerpress – supports youtube, google, metacafe and other video sites
• WordTube – youtube access
• rss feeds – make sure if you use some type of media you also incorporate a feed
• enclosures – tech term, tags for any media throuhput – tells the podacast where your stuff is; these are built into wordpress
• feedburner – takes care of what you need to podcast though itunes; powerpress also does this; if you move your blog it is easy to update your links in feedburner
• wordpressmu – multiuser; this must be part of what I missed yesterday by leaving early.

Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins talks about money makin’ methods for blogging.

CPM – content per mille (page views per month) – how much money are you getting per 1000 page views? get paid regradless of traffic

CPA – cost per action – when someone clicks on something and fills out something; affiliate advertisements

if they like the content they may ignore the ads

CPC – cost per click (adsense)

Sponsorship – effective but will have diminishing returns

Donations

engagement factor – metrics and methods; how much audience interacts in a measurable way determines how/when you get paid

move past ad networks and establish a brand

Matthew “Spamboy” McGarity talks about doing local install of Wordpress. Not something I will be doing in the near future but still interesting.

• advantages – creating a test environment; prevent you from taking down your blog unintentionally.
• requirements – php, mysql, apache
• tools – xampp, wamp, mamp
• there are other products to use
• can be installed on local hard disk or removable media

Lorelle VanFossen talks about Star Trek. Oh… and tags. And categories.

Bad Tags/Categories

• exaggerated persistence
• indecision
• covers many, focus on few
• babbling rambles
• un-categorized

Purpose of tags and categories – BE FOUND!

Do’s

• identifiable message
• clear message
• recognizable

Tags

• tags – index words, links, microdata, if enough posts have the same tage they are a category
• indexed by Technorati tags
• indexed by Google and other keywords
• tags can be any link

Categories

• Categories = Table of Contents
• categories should be defined – not too broad; it is about being found (keywords)
• know the difference between categories and tags
• 10 posts = category
• when one category dominates another – subject matter fo yout blog?

Liz Strauss smacks John Pozadzides around over his blog design while talking about what goes into good design.

• readability – white space is your friend. Echoes from those technical writing classes.
• John P. edits his CSS on the fly… and gets crap for it. Hehehe.
• adjust the type based on the font
• different headers should have different font sizes – h1 twice the size of the default font
• you should care about what your blog looks like and that it doesn’t look like everyone else’s – who else with
• a canned theme feel like they are being lectured by the pricipal?
• using archives – using dates vs not using dates and archives
• related posts – put key words on every post
• look at the wall and then look back at your blog – where is your eye drawn to?

Cali Lewis relays knowledge from her experiences.

• know thyself, know thy blog
• add value – what can you say that will be helpful to those paying attention?
• the red and black tiger print shirt – I have that. Target. $10
• tweetdeck – harry potter example (meh); downloaded.
• make friends, not fans – talk with, not at; friends are more forgiving when you make a mistake.
• show appreciation
• google alerts – thick skin required
• take breaks – yeah, I got this one down.

My sparse summation of the “Turbocharge Your Career with WordPress” given by Tony Cecala.

• communication
• collaboration – who is doing what? how are things getting done?
• creativity – video blogging, videopress via wordpress acount
• facebook – walled garden, data hidden away on fb servers, hidden from google, google’s blindspot, wiredmagazine article – “facebook is a walled garden”
• facebook – don’t count on it to promote you
• post your resume online (or on a tshirt)
• google is your new resume – what shows up there?
• wordpress – you own your own data; with fb you don’t
• plugins to improve seo
• DFWWP – local wordpress group

Attending WordCamp Dallas this weekend. Currently waiting for things to get going.