What makes a Blog? A Summary of the Blogger Summit @ PhoCusWright
The blogger summit at The 2007 PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando, Florida was a huge success, at least in my opinion. The room was filled to capacity with approximately sixteen delegates around the tables and another twenty or so sitting in chairs and on counter tops around the room. The discussion was lively and at one point trailed off topic, but was quickly brought back to subject. Here are some points that were discussed during the summit and proved to be salient.
I opened by pointing out that blog posts illicit conversations where as articles are a monologues. Although this is changing somewhat with traditional media, generally speaking articles do not prompt discussions.
Vicky Brock, a fellow blogger from Scotland noted that there appears to be a culture shift from email to rss when it comes to the delivery of knowledge. For example, more and more readers are subscribing to RSS feeds instead of subscribing to email newsletters. The reason for this seems to be that email newsletters are more like traditional corporate PR and PR is manufactured whereas blog content evolves.
Part of the growing popularity of blogs is based on the fact that blogs are not just collections of information that cannot be confirmed as credible, many blog authors are aggregating information available through other media and filtering and sorting the information for the purposes of their audience. For example, travel industry bloggers will search out, sort, and compile information around articles in their area of expertise.
The other aspect of blogging that is attractive is the fact that the moderation and filtering is now done by networks of people. The community will moderate and organize the content and comment on inconsistencies or inaccuracies. Although Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, and World66 are not blogs, they are excellent examples of the wisdom of crowds. Blogs are similar, although not entirely, in that they allow readers to participate in the evolution of hte information through comments.
Participants in the summit also discussed the SEO benefits of blogging. One delegate explained the concept of “Link Baiting” or “Inviting people to the party”. Link baiting refers to the concept of inviting known authorities to your blog by linking out to them in posts. The delegate went on to describe that you can do this without reducing the authenticity of the content. I think this may be a subject for further comment.
Here is a great guide on the subject of Link Bating.
I hate dropping links into comments because they tend to get stuck in moderation. So…
Search Google for the phrase “Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM”
Aloha,
Dave.
Thanks Dave. That was a really useful comment. Here is the link that Dave talked about…
http://tropicalseo.com/2007/andy-hagans-ultimate-guide-to-link-baiting-and-social-media-marketing/
Based on some of the points that were raised in the summit and on the aforementioned post, it seems to me that being able to write well for a blog is still an important first step before tackling link baiting.
nice post
nice post