Jason Clarke

Below are the unedited notes that I took during the “Promoting Your Blog and Building Traffic” session at the NorthernVoice blogging conference in Vancouver last weekend.

Introductions
Chris Pirillo
- Blogging before blogging was blogging – using email
- Won ’shameless self promoter’ from Business Blog Awards – award is named after him
- Easiest way to drive traffic “be involved”
– become involved in conversations about topics you’re interested in
– increases traffic in a qualified fashion related to things you’re interested in

Jeremy Wright
- Sold himself on eBay for blogging services
- High profile guy that got fired for blogging
- Sold his blog for $15,000 US

Suw Charman
- Chocolate and Vodka – personal blog
- New Media and Journalism – ex music journalist
- Business blog: ‘Strange Attractor’ for Corante

Derek Miller
- penmachine.com
- a website has to be useful to the people visiting it
- building traffic: why?
– you need to know what your reason is for wanting to build traffic

Darren Barefoot
- Moderator

Questions
- Is there any advantage to being on multiple blog hosting platforms?
– Chris: stick with one. Make sure your URL stays the same
– Derek: the theoretical benefit of having multiple sites linked together to boost pagerank is not worth it
– Suw: a community site like blogspot, typepad or livejournal may work for you depending on your needs
– Jeremy: there is a benefit to having highly topical blogs, which leads to multiple blogs, and that’s ok

- Isn’t having multiple blogs diluting the brand of the author?
– Jeremy: No. The topical information allows people to find what they need, and by mixing different topics, you dilute who you are in the context of what the reader is looking for. Jeremy’s personal blog is his ‘braindump’, but he maintains different blogs for different topics.
– Chris: ‘I’m big into making money’. He says he breaks the branding rule regularly. Gnomedex in Seattle this year.

- Darren: What is a reasonable expectation of rate of growth of traffic?
– Suw: Statistics can be fetishized; cool it.
– Derek: Impossible to predict.
– Darren: Traffic can be serendipitous as much as anything.
– Jeremy: 20% growth – perfectly diagonal.

- What do you do if you get slashdotted?
– Darren: Adwords, linkback to blog
– Jeremy: Provide context (linkback to blog)
– Suw: work out a deal with your hosting company
– Jeremy: Make sure your site gives more information than just the post info on a page, to try to retain readers ***
– all: You *won’t* get slashdotted.

- How much do you segregate your separate blogs (keep them under one domain)?
– Jeremy: Can be argued from both sides. From the users’ perspective they probably don’t care about your other stuff.

- How do you track your statistics?
– Chris: Pubsub, Technorati, Feedster – Google Adsense
– Suw: server stats, statscounter
– Derek: use stats for trends, not for absolutes
– Darren: be consistent; stick with your stats package

- How do you market your site on a local basis?
– Chris: Meetup.com – it’s where bloggers meet in ‘meatspace’.
– (audience member) urbanvancouver.com
– Suw: “The world is not entirely online.” Use offline resources that are locally targeted
– Darren: Has had Vancouver Meetup sessions

- Marketing has a variety of facets (online, offline, etc.) – how do you mix the online and offline world to build traffic?
– Chris: Started out as a simple newsletter with a strong personal voice. Personality is what ’sells’; it’s the thing that people remember. Built trust, and was able to take that trust offline to speaking, radio, tv, etc.
– Suw: “blogs are not about stickiness” – the most valuable blogs give links to other valuable resources. “The best way to get people to stay is to let them go” because they will come back.
– Derek: Google is most popular site in the world, and all it does is send you somewhere else.
– Audience member: T-shirts, business cards, etc. (his site is toastmedia.com)
– Suw: URL is your currency; use it in your signature, business cards, etc.

- Jeremy: “If you as an individual person can connect with people using blogging, than it’s for you.”

- (audience member): Stick at it for a long time to increase readership. (related to Long Tail)
– Suw: the more readers you have, the easier it is to get new ones
– Derek: content doesn’t have to be new. If it’s valuable, put it up.

- audience member: do bloggers actively exchange links to build pagerank:
– Jeremy: not in a traditional sense. Build a relationship, trust, authenticity. Link to other people, and they will link back.
– Derek: Link exchanges don’t hold a lot of value, since the person on the other end is probably just linking to a bunch of people randomly anyway. The best way to drive traffic is to offer something valuable/useful
– Suw: Take part in the conversation, using comments, links, trackbacks. Do it genuinely.
– Chris: “Leave a comment, not a plug.”
– Jeremy: “If you talk about me, you get yourself a link on my blog” but if it’s not genuine, you’re gone.

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General Notes
- Geeky T-shirts seen so far – ‘been there, downloaded that’, ‘blog widow’
- High percentage of Macs in the audience – blogging thing or Vancouver thing?
- Saw a very cool laptop stand (like a mini music stand)
- Long Tail article by Chris Anderson of Wired referenced continuously