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Need Blog Cred? Go to a conference

So conferences are crazy things! Drinking, music, slides and conversation – not in priority order, but after the event there is apparently a ramp your Technorati authority. The Conference Authority Impact (CAI) is a fairly interesting phenomena which appears to increase your Technorati authority just for attendance, more or less.

So here is what I’ve noticed: spatially relevant’s “authority” went from minimal to horribly mediocre in just days, with NO apparent justification. Oh wait, I know why this may have happened. A bunch of people linked the attendee list and created “blog reactions” which have since my last point of reference raised my technorati authority.

The CAI might just be an interesting thing to understand.   What is the credibility of any social media benchmark?

So back to being an opportunist….

So I’ve think there are 3 things I have decided might theoretically extend the CAI: Write (novel), payback (appropriate) and provide a little visibility to the lessons learned directly or indirectly from the event. This is an indirect post.

Conferences as an Authority Generation Strategy

Conferences aren’t just a narrowcast placement opportunity for sponsors, but apparently for the participants as well. Most of these folks hopefully descended on Chicago with products to position and promote. Events represent a promotion channel for the participants’ product, their blog. Apparently not only can brands become humanized, so can bloggers.

So as you think about attending a conference, it might be important to develop an outreach plan to manage the lead nurturing cycles which could deliver increased authority, visibility and a follow up plan on how to use the CAI spring board post conference.

At the end of the day it appears conferences are essentially promotional channels for hocking your brand/blog and sharing tip, tricks and links from others in the room.

With CAI potentially being a real thing, I’m gonna plan a little better….   I’m contemplating logo swag for the next conference and an iPhone giveaway for the most insightful post on currency fluctuation.

Question: Is Authority Generation an expected, warrented or unintended by-product of attendance? Curious, as I’m not sure I did anything new except write a check, eat a bunch of room service and meet some folks.

…Another consideration could be that Technorati’s authority algorithm might need a change.

May 9, 2008 by
(2)

SOBCon08: A narrowcast effort for sponsors’ brands

SOBCON08 – definitely a good event on all fronts – hotel, venue, food, people and content. There are plenty of great re-caps online about what took place at SOBCon from a content perspective, lessons learned, visuals and a even musical spins, but not a whole lot on the sponsors of the event which definitely help make the event a success. Several key sponsors participated throughout the Jim Beam, Utterz, Buzz Logic and Network Solutions, which I’ve labeled “platinum sponsors” based on my ability to remember mainly. There were a couple of bronze and tin sponsors thrown in, but since no of the other stuck in my head, I’m focusing on the platinum sponsors.

With a focused group of bloggers north of 100, each of the sponsors below innately improve the impression of their brand with the group and create awareness for their offerings and brand.

Jim Beam

They brought the brand manager and his pitch seemed completely honest, if just a little bit unstructured. Even a little humorous with his public declaration of “what is blogger casual”? I didn’t know either, so my laughter was for a different reason. Brand guy spent 3-5 minutes doing a recap of their nascent social media strategy while acknowledging this was all a new thing for them and they came to learn. Thanks to his rambling confession of lack of knowledge, every Sicilian Kiss I order going forward will be with Jim Beam.

What is a Sicilian Kiss? A Sicilian Kiss is a drink which is 1/2 Whiskey, 1/2 Amaretto and a splash of orange juice chilled (shaken over ice) and served as a shot.

Utterz

The bald guy was there – he pimped a Bessie or two, did some demos and did the video ad thing which Jen won. The selection process Sim engineered was very egalitarian and represented the voice of the people. The process also offered another opportunity to meet folks and share ideas.

Overall the Utterz participation was a cool thing all around. I just seem to like this company just a little more after their sponsorship and am wondering when I will just make the call and shave my head. What was your tipping point Sim?

Buzz Logic

A company I had previously not heard of which apparently does influence visibility, ok I have see folks post on them like Jeremiah, but didn’t spend any time figuring out what they did. Know that I know, there are just a bunch of uses for this for businesses and bloggers alike. Uses from companies range I suspect from competitive intelligence, brand influencing and as strategic planning tool for social media. It could also be used potentially for demand shaping. Buzz Logic invested throughout the event starting on boat night. Great music and a reasonable liquor thanks to their willingness to throw down some hard earned VC cash.

Buzz Logic not only was nice enough to sponsor, but they sent two hotties as the demo team, Valerie and the other one. Both provided real-time product demos on topics of interest for each person they engaged – personalized demos WORK! Good stuff for everyone which got the opportunity to work with both of them over the conference.

Network Solutions

Active participants throughout the event. Provided web site analysis for the participants which I personally didn’t benefit much from, but I may not of asked the right questions or something which impacted the value. They even had a guy who was now going to blog after his attendance based his newly found understanding of blogging. Dude, let us know the the URL when you’re “online”, as I would like to see what you do. Your name would be cool tool.

A Humanized Brand

After re-reading my post so far, I’ve noticed a common theme – humanization. By deciding to engage people and not crowds with their sponsorship each company developed relationships with users/buyers/influencers/evangelists. While I may not remember all the components of everyone’s solution, stories or names – I do remember the effort. By sponsoring this event these folks have done more than an Ad, blog post or “coordinated” social media campaign could.

At the end of the day, that’s what SOBCon was about – meeting people, learning thier stories and trying to improve. There was very little personality driven discussion or focus it was more about process – trust me as the short guy with that cool chick Emily.

PLEASE NOTE: I authorized the use of the term hottie prior to posting with both Valerie and the other one, Sandra Ponce de Leon.

May 7, 2008 by
(5)

It’s official! I suck

That’s right – honesty is the best policy. So in full disclose this is Just a traffic update, yesterday was the worst traffic this blog has had since I’ve been paying attention! (Nov. 07). That’s right, celebrate the little things, because it appears y’all are transitioning to rss readers. Thanks team!

Maybe it is that no one is searching of relevant terms for what I’m writing about, so let’s highlight the top 10 search items, since we have analytics.

  1. bob’s ichthyosaur – A Great book and apparently the top search term.
  2. what is scientific management – High school students everywhere are googling.
  3. twing – Very cool, cool people
  4. mbifm – A made up acronynm, which apparently means Member of the British Institute of Facilities Management.
  5. calculating gross margin
  6. danielle pribbernow – Chick on the Check out blog, wonder if it’s just her searching on herself? Way too much traffic for a Wal-Mart employee. No I mean WAY TOO MUCH.
  7. dijouri – I made up this name for my second son, 12 years old. I think this IS my son searching on himself or people trying to figure out if I made up his name or people looking for movie made in 2003.
  8. things i am thankful – This is encouraging.
  9. afro – Right on.
  10. giggly quotes – Who searches on giggly quotes?

So if you don’t find anything interesting above interesting, perhaps one of the top 10 “trafficked” pieces, mainly produced via keywords – which you will notice via the relationships between keywords above and titles below. That being said,I REALLY am partial to the Stuck in the Middle series — and — I like the Mosaic piece the most, mainly because it plays well in my head. Yup, I’ve sucked you into a replay post, but a replay of posts everyone else seemed to like too, or at least this is 10 most visited posts here.

  1. Lessons Learned: What is scientific management
  2. 100 Things I am thankful for… – A thanksgiving post
  3. Spatially Relative: A community’s place… – A piece about a book I read
  4. About – Self-explanatory
  5. 5 Ways YOU can launch a Twitter stream remediation program – geeky thing I wrote and scoble called it geeky, that scoble effect is a real thing.
  6. Lessons Learned: How to calculate Gross Margin
  7. 10 Themes and concepts for YOU to blog on
  8. 10 Tips for dealing with the fact that you will never leave your Job
  9. WANTED: Social Media Antagonist
  10. The Death of Marketing? Mix it up.

Hopefully the new folks that have added me to your reader find some of these interesting. Cheers!

April 16, 2008 by
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It’s the economy stupid – package up, package down

Hugh’s recent I quit Twitter initiative took me back to his blog again. Hugh’s renewed focus on writing and creativity is refreshing to hear about. While browsing I again ran into the image below, which reminds me of the importance packaging a software product for the a given market segment and within the then current economic context. As I talk to product managers and technology marketers there is considerable churn and angst about managing their businesses into a tight spend cycle. Packaging up into value and down into customer acquisition with planned out year up sells are two themes I’ve been seeing in the marketplace.

Are you simplifying, enriching or repricing your solutions?

0804enrich.jpg

From my limited experience, economic states and packaging are temporary, price maybe not.  Thanks for the reminder Hugh!

April 12, 2008 by
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