BlogWorld 2010: 12 Insights from the World's Largest Social Media Convention: by Expat Women's Andrea Martins

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Hi Everyone!  As promised, here is my write-up from the recent BlogWorld conference that I attended in Las Vegas.  This article will actually be featured in our upcoming Expat Women December newsletter (but I wanted to share it with you in advance and would really appreciate both your feedback and/or your insights from other conferences as well). Thanks, Andrea

ps. If you do not already subscribe to our main Expat Women monthly newsletter yet, please support us by signing up now.  Thanks so much!


BlogWorld 2010: 12 Insights from the World's Largest Social Media Convention

In October 2010, I was privileged to attend BlogWorld 2010 in Las Vegas with more than 3,000 other attendees, mostly from the United States, but with a sprinkling of us based elsewhere as well.

As the world’s largest social media conference, many big social media names were there, such as Scott Stratten, Darren Rowse, Michael Stelzner, Mari Smith, Brian Solis, Yaro Starak, Jay Bear, Steve Garfield, Chris Garrett, Scott Monty – and even The Apprentice and Survivor creator Mark Burnett.

BlogWorld 2010 was a wonderful experience - so many genuinely educational sessions, so many networking opportunities, and so much to offer to bloggers and new media people alike.

But if I had to condense everything I saw and learned those three days into twelve key insights to share, it would be these...


The Speakers

1. Famous people, are just people

The more I travel and attend conferences with big name speakers, the more I realize that (most of) the big name speakers are just like you and I – normal, friendly people who are easy to approach, happy to answer questions and more than willing to share advice, tips, and many times, some key contacts as well. To me, this is a really important conference takeaway, because it liberates you from the excuse that you cannot ask them advice or that you cannot achieve what they have achieved.


2. You and I can keynote

BlogWorld 2010 had many speakers. With plenary sessions plus around twelve (!) concurrent sessions per time slot over the jam-packed three days, there were plenty of speakers to observe, enjoy, learn from and critique. Some speakers were awesome, many were 7 or 8 out of 10, and unfortunately others really should have prepared better or spoken more clearly - rather than relying on their laurels or latest book title.

But my message to you is that those speakers at this conference that usually charge US$5,000 - $10,000+ a day outside of BlogWorld, were not always better presenters than you or I (and the same is true for other conferences I have attended). Which begs the question, what can you and I do to package and market our own brand better, so that we can also grab a slice of the speaking action?


3. Learn from Barry Moltz

Barry Moltz is a professional speaker who ran a really enjoyable session entitled “Feeding Your Addiction: How to Create and Market Your Content to Drive a Professional Speaking Career”. Some of Barry’s most useful/interesting tips were:

• Tell people that you speak! Put it on your website. Simple, but not done enough;

• As part of the speaking contract/deal, request that the client passes you one or two new speaking event referrals;

• Think about putting some danger tape around the back row chairs, so people come closer to the front and the atmosphere feels more intimate; and

• Plan each segment of your presentation (such as the opening, part one, part two, part three and so on, and the closing) so that it has all of these three things: a takeaway; a story; and an action. This helps you to prepare more thoroughly with your audience in mind, and helps to keep your presentation valuable and focused.


For Bloggers

4. Say something important

Darren Rowse (who reportedly makes a six-figure-plus income from blogging), founder of Problogger (167,000+ subscribers), got lots of nods from the audience with these pearls of wisdom: “say something important” and “build something that matters”.

Brian Clark, CEO of Copyblogger (137,000+ subscribers), reiterated: “give valuable content that people want to share and say good things about”. This “share-ability” concept was repeated by multiple other speakers at the conference.

Sonia Simone, also a founding partner of Copyblogger media, on the plenary panel with Darren and Brian entitled “The 7 Harsh Realities Of Blogging For Bucks”, echoed their comments and asserted that “It’s not about you - it’s about your customers. What do they want and care about? If you don’t have a big readership, maybe you’re not writing about something people care about.”


5. Improve your site’s call to action

Brian said that “free content is an attraction, but free is not a business model” – you need to sell directly-related products that solve problems, to make money – and you need to be good at asking people to buy your products. Brian used the bikini concept analogy to prove his point: he said that even if a site showed someone in a bikini that revealed nearly all of someone’s body, many people would still pay to see what was under that bikini – if you just asked them.


6. Focus on evergreen

Wendy Piersall is the founder of the new kids’ activity website Woo! Jr, who successfully sold her previous site, Sparkplugging, to a group of private investors in the fall of 2009. Interestingly, Wendy said that her strategy was not to get too caught up in Facebook and Twitter, but rather invest more time on creating evergreen content (aka content that does not really date) for her website that others can tweet, put on Facebook, link to, and which historically does well over time in the search engines.


7. Create your unique angle

Mark Burnett, creator of The Apprentice and Survivor, shared his advice, which was: don’t just copy what others are doing – you need to “take the risks…do things differently… and create things that other people want to talk about”.

Mark went on to give the example of Sarah Palin. He said that many media networks wanted to do a television series or documentary about her, but no one was able to secure a deal. Mark knew that Sarah loved both Alaska and adventure, so he proposed “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” to her – an eight-part television event that “takes viewers into the country’s ‘final frontier’ through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens”. Sarah loved it – and Mark successfully produced the series! (It was scheduled to premiere in the United States on 14 November 2010.)


For Authors

8. Bloggers can be better than Oprah

Ellen Gerstein, Director of Marketing at John Wiley & Sons, who has published many books by bloggers and is a great champion of social media, said that getting prominent bloggers to talk about your book can in fact be a more powerful force than going on morning television shows, or even Oprah!


9. Your books need to be e-books too

Justin Branch from Greenleaf Publishing revealed something authors should find scary: traditional books are now getting bad customer reviews on Amazon if the book is not available as an e-book! This means that regardless of the quality of your book, your book could potentially suffer from bad book ratings just because you did not offer your book in the medium that your potential customer wanted to buy it in.


10. Promote your book on the radio

Justin gave another great piece of advice: “The best way to promote your book is to do radio… you can do eighteen interviews a day from home – which is a very effective promotional strategy.”


11. Think about a manifesto

I am not sure which log I had been hiding under to miss the whole “manifesto” wave, but Jonathan Fields of Tribal Author book filled me in and I found it all truly fascinating.

Jonathan’s manifesto was The Fire Fly Manifesto, which served as a great prelude to his very successful book Career Renegade. He also talked about Chris Guillebeau’s manifestos: The Art of Non-Conformity; and the Unconventional Guide to Discount Airfare: Surviving Stress and Maximizing Fun.

In short, a good manifesto is an attention-grabbing, short book with an exceptionally-designed cover that is used to promote your main book, product or service. They can be a clever and potentially lucrative promotional strategy – think about them.


The Audience

12. Tech-savvy audiences are redefining our conferences.

As I mentioned in a recent blog update Taking Expat Women Around The World, never before have I seen what I saw at BlogWorld 2010 in Las Vegas. At every presentation, at least three-quarters (!) of the audience were always either blogging, typing, foursquaring, tweeting or reading Twitter updates from others in the room (or from other sessions at the conference), instead of looking straight ahead at the presenters. It was a real eye-opener – and I found myself mimicking this multitasking behaviour – tweeting things I was learning and reading the tweets of others around me.



Summary

• Think differently;

• Act creatively;

• Produce awesome content/products/services; and

• Believe in yourself – you are just as good as many of the famous people!

Missed Some Great Expat Links On Twitter?

Hi Everyone, Here are some expat-related articles and links that I have tweeted about recently, that might interest you:

Expats: Looking for a way to shop conveniently from any US website? Check out our new Sponsor: US Global Mail! http://bit.ly/cNHNu2

Number of expat executives set to grow in next 5 years...? http://bit.ly/9tTjwe

Clements Receives 2010 Communicator Award for Expat Youth Scholarship Website http://tinyurl.com/2aln3t6

Many Expatriates - Many Voices - a study by Prudential: http://wp.me/p12mbU-1N

Did you move between 2008-2010? Take Association's PCS survey to win 1 of 2 $50 gift cards. http://bit.ly/PCSsurvey

Expat Focus 2010 Survey - Can You Help? http://bit.ly/boJleS

Use Social Media To Make Your Overseas Move A Success http://bit.ly/bUTocT

Worldwide ERC's October edition of Mobility now online http://bit.ly/cCxqXK

UK and US Expats wanted for brain mapping experiment at university in Beijing http://bit.ly/aigzbG

Global Mobility Summit - Presentations from New York Conference now online http://bit.ly/9zdRMM

Thinking of becoming an expat? 6 things to consider http://bit.ly/do1NGr

Interview with Robin Pascoe on Expats Radio http://almerimarlife.com/a-broad-abroad

FAWCO registration open: Morocco conference March 2011: American Expat Women & FAWCO Club members invited: Get 30 Euro discount http://bit.ly/bh4wRi

Expats in Vietnam? 101 Reasons To Love Living In Hanoi http://bit.ly/c9VXCw

Congrats Expatica! 4000+ visitors at their expat fair in Amsterdam http://bit.ly/cZlgeQ

To follow me in 'real time' and keep up with even more great expat links on Twitter, please click here.

Thanks for your support! Andrea

Expat Women August Newsletter Highlights

Hi Everyone, Here are the highlights from our Expat Women August 2010 members' newsletter, sent out this week:

(If you are a member and did not receive your newsletter, please email us here, thanks)

* Success Story: Toni Brendish, Managing Director, Danone Dumex (Malaysia);

* Business Idea: Little Broadway, Tiffany Jansen;

* Home Exchanging: Tips For A Successful Home Exchange, Zoe Hine;

* Boost Your Brand: 10 Ways to Boost Your (Relocation) Brand Online, Andrea Martins;

* Learning Disabilities: The Evolution Of Learning Disabilities: A Global Guide For Parents, Kristina L. Dooley;

* Expat Confession: He Wants To Go;

* Mothering Abroad: Nora Kohri, Founder Of Care The World;

* The name of our Explorer Publishing mini-guide pack winner; and

* Our winning story by Expat Women member Lauren (again!) (an American in China), entitled The Strays of Dingbo.

Read our August Newsletter Here

If you are not a member of our main site, ExpatWomen.com, please join today to support us (and receive a link to download our free Expat Women e-book "Winning Stories"). This will also mean that next month your newsletter will be delivered directly to your inbox.

Thanks Everyone! Andrea

Brilliant Social Media Video

Hi Everyone, If you only watch one this month, I highly recommend that you watch Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh).  I believe it is put out by Erik Qualman (author of SocialNomics) in association with Hult International Business School.  The video is lively, it's professional, it's insightful and it's... brilliant.

Is Social Media a fad, or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

Some of the facts it shares at the beginning (to groovy music):

• 50% of the world's population are under 30;
• 96% of Millennials (aka Generation Y) have joined a social network;
• Facebook tops Google (!) for weekly traffic on the web;
• 1 in 8 couples married in the United States met via social networks; and
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world, behind China and India.

But that is only the beginning... I encourage you to click here and enjoy it for yourself. 

Expat entrepreneurs, freelancers, relocation companies and service providers, take notes.

Have a fantastic weekend, Andrea.

90+ Essential Social Media Resources

Hi Everyone, Mashable published yesterday a really, really great list of social media resources that I highly recommend you take a look at if you are at all interested in social media, or growing your personal or business profile online. 

Just looking at the number of times their blog post has been retweeted (nearly 2,000 times) and shared on Facebook (more than 500 times) in less than 24 hours, I am sure it is not just me who sees this blog posting as a real gem of a collection of social media resources and tools.

Click here to read their 90+ Essential Social Media Resources! Andrea :-)

Twitter Updates For Social Media

Hi Everyone, Here are 8 recent 'social media' tweets I have made that might interest you, especially if you are an expat entrepreneur, or anyone helping their company's online strategy...

Facebook Now Commands 41% of Social Media Traffic- http://bit.ly/92J1aw @mashable

Here's what Chris Brogan told ABC news about making money via blogging - http://bit.ly/cW5EmQ @chrisbrogan

Mark Cuban's "Why You Should Never Listen To Your Customers" http://bit.ly/bx1WyD ...interesting Thanks @RachelleGardner's blog

2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report http://bit.ly/SMMIR by @mike_stelzner 1,900 peers surveyed

Very interesting slide about Kavit's 'Blog versus Website' positioning recommendation for all of your social media tools http://bit.ly/dkxT8B

Looking for work? Read Little Pink Book's Social Media Job Hunt article http://dlvra.me/s/3ellT

Mashable’s Weekly Job Listings in Social Media - http://bit.ly/b8ORJw @mashable

Please click here if you would like to follow me in 'real time' on Twitter. 

Many thanks and have a fabulous week!  Andrea

Twitter Updates: What Have You Missed?

Hi Everyone, Here are some of the tidbits (not mentioned in this blog) that I have tweeted about recently, that might be of interest:

Fabulous list of Social Media events coming up! (Multiple countries) Thanks @mashable http://bit.ly/a1vgrT

Gilman Scholarships deadline 6 April! For US undergrad students planning to study abroad http://ow.ly/1uKlU
RT @goinglobal @ConnectStateGov

The 14th annual WebAwards are now open. Awards given in 96 industry categories. Entries close May 25.
http://www.webaward.org/

Hats off to @talentdiva for switching directions at 40. Already her radio show has 5000 listeners and her mag due soon!
http://bit.ly/dCNaDM

1 in 10 British pensioners are #expats? Maybe more?
http://bit.ly/c6fDzo

Travelling in the U.S.? Find wireless options for U.S. airports
http://ow.ly/1uOPA
RT @goinglobal

Loved this cartoon about Twitter on Social Media Examiner
http://bit.ly/9kqT8v

10 Social Media Metrics Your Company Should Monitor
http://bit.ly/aQU6Id
via @addthis

If you would like to follow me in 'real time' on Twitter, please click here. Thanks, Andrea.

Excellent Video Interview For Bloggers

Hi Everyone, Whether you blog for business or pleasure, I highly recommend that you to take ten minutes and watch this excellent (and enjoyable) Social Media Examiner interview with Wendy Piersall.

Wendy is a blogger who has found online fame in the United States. But despite her online success, health issues almost forced her to give up her online blogging activity. She encourages bloggers to think carefully about why they are blogging and the return on their blogging investment.

She also talks about a very interesting Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruling in the United States regarding bloggers' financial disclosure. Great interview.

10 Of The Best Social Media Tools For Entrepreneurs

Hi Everyone, We came across this good article today on Mashable that we wanted to share, that talked about 10 of the best social media tools for entrepreneurs.

In brief, their top ten were:

1. Google Apps for Domains
2. LinkedIn
3. Basecamp
4. Facebook
5. Twitter
6. Get Satisfaction
7. Mail Chimp
8. User Voice
9. You Tube
10. Monitter

If this interests you, enjoy the full article here. Best wishes.

Chicks Who Click: Social Media & Women

Hi Everyone, We recently heard about Chicks Who Click, which might interest you if you live in the US/Canada and have an interest in connecting with other women in the social media arena.

"Chicks Who Click is a community of women that are growing and flourishing through Social Media... Our vision was to create a conference, a think tank, if you will, for women to come together to listen, teach, experiment and connect with like-minded women face to face, stay connected through Twitter, Blogging, Facebook or Flickr, and to empower each other in achieving great heights in our careers and journeys; and lastly, to collaborate our efforts as women in the male-dominated field of technology."

They are running social media conferences in Kansas City, Vancouver, San Jose, Dallas and Raleigh this year, at very reasonable prices. Click here for conference details.

Confused About Social Media, Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Podcasts, Twitter And More?

If you politely smile when these topics are mentioned, but are secretly confused about what they really mean and how they might apply to you, try visiting the CommonCraft Show. This online source of quick, user-friendly video explanations "in plain English" is excellent. Bravo CommonCraft.

Thanks go to Martina, an expat woman in Europe, for reminding us about CommonCraft.