WEGO Health

Ria

Blog Marketing

I spent the first weekend in May in Chicago at an event called SOBCon (Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference) that was billed as Biz School for Bloggers. My mind is still aflutter from all the great information that was shared that will help me in my role as a food allergy resource and advocate. We heard from heavy-hitters in the internet marketing and Web 2.0 world like Brian Clark of Copyblogger, social media guru, Chris Brogan and Chris Garrett, co-author of ProBlogger. Here's just some of my takeways from the weekend:

- blogging and ethical/social responsibility
- authenticity
- blogging is not a business model
- establishing your "true line"
- traffic vs. readers vs. customers
- addressing heart, mind and meaning in your blog
- process (hobby vs. business): brainstorming, scheduling, managing writers, etc.
- community-building
- don't sell to your community; sell to your market

Thanks to Adrienne for suggesting that I blog about blogging! Ha! I was hesitant since I felt it's a bit of a tangent from my role here at WEGO. If anyone is interested in more information, I am happy to share and elaborate!

Here's the full list of Successful and Outstanding Bloggers!

Tags: blog, blogging, marketing

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7 Comments

Ria Comment by Ria on May 14, 2008 at 11:45pm
Business came first, then blog.
Adrienne Comment by Adrienne on May 14, 2008 at 3:43pm
Ria, thanks so much for adding this post. I know I probably asked you this long ago, but remind me... Which came first - your blog or you business? Meaning, were you writing your blog before your started selling?
Ria Comment by Ria on May 14, 2008 at 11:26am
Yes, Ellen... if your intention is to grow a blog so that you are actually generating an income from it, then you would want to focus more. The "true statement" is an internal exercise, you don't need to post it on your blog as much as know it for yourself. It's similar to an "elevator pitch" that you can tell someone in 10-12 words or less, what your blog is about. In my case: "I give families of food allergy kids tips from my own experience."
Ellen S Comment by Ellen S on May 14, 2008 at 10:37am
Ria,

Taking into consideration your response to Sarah H, the answer to your question to me would be "all of the above"... hobby, advocate for a cause, and to be part of a bigger business plan. Three distinctly different and unrelated blogs.

So, I need a true statement for my blogs which should include what I am offering and to whom it is offered. Anything else I should include?
Ria Comment by Ria on May 13, 2008 at 11:19pm
Ellen, as you may know, Darren and Chris have a book, which I read over this last weekend. It provides a good overview on blog marketing and some strategies for generating income from blogging.

Do you have any specific areas or questions? Perhaps I can address those in this thread.
I happen to agree with Brian Clark when he said that, "blogging is not a business model." It's a communication tool. I was joking around last weekend that nobody refers to themselves as Successful and Outstanding Emailers! :)

Given that, I think it's helpful to clarify for yourself what you intend for your blog and how it fits into the bigger picture. Are you doing it as a hobby or to advocate for a cause or as part of a bigger business plan? So we went through that exercise in our groups... 1) what are you offering and 2) to whom. We tied it together to form a "true statement" for our blogs.

Sarah H, another point that was made was to stay focused! http://www.dooce.com/ is not the norm! Readers visit certain blogs because they are looking for info on a certain topic. It's better to have five blogs on five different topics than to have one that has posts on all five. Does that make sense? For example on the Check My Tag blog, I discuss strictly food allergies. Hopefully, my readers take away some useful information from each post.
Sarah H Comment by Sarah H on May 13, 2008 at 1:34pm
Ditto what Ellen said. You could always do blog entries about it on your site and link to them here.
Ellen S Comment by Ellen S on May 13, 2008 at 10:31am
Ria,

This is such a great opportunity! Please do share some of what you learned so us newbies can become better at this as well! Thanks for giving a good list of bloggers we can visit and peruse for good ideas too. Some of them I already frequent for ideas. Problogger is my favorite so far, but I'm going to spend some time at the others now as well...

Thanks!

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