This morning, I sat at the front of Rand’s “Search and Blogging Reporters Forum” with Lisa and Tamar, who made me look bad by tapping away and recording everything the speakers said, while I wrote half-sentences on Notepad. Andy Beal spoke about how more and more reporters are reading blogs to get story ideas. While most reporters have done this, around 52% do so on a regular basis, which is a smart move since reporters who don’t keep up with the technological times tend to lose their jobs!
Rand then mentioned how the New York Times has removed its paid content and is now monetizing that content with advertising. He also spoke about the difference between bloggers and reporters in terms of their mistakes. When a blogger messes up and says something he or she shouldn’t, they tend to discuss their mistake. Traditional media sources usually do the opposite, printing a small retraction which is buried deep within the publication. Personally, I like neither approach particularly much. There is a balance between over-hyping a screw-up with multiple follow-up posts and commentaries, and hiding a blunder. Bloggers usually come closer to achieving this balance than newspapers and magazines, but I dislike the lengthy conversations that the blogosphere sometimes gets into over controversial or mistaken posts. For anyone who thinks I’m silly for saying that, please be reminded that Vegas made me write it.
On to other topics. They panel discussed “owning” a space because of its lack of blogs. I think this applies not only to blogs but to a range of areas, especially forums. While I’m willing to bet that 99% of industries have forums to their names, some industries are far less competitive than others. Plus, there is no need to feel restricted to topics and areas where blogging has always been popular. You can always bring blogging to a community whose members have not used blogs before.
Lee Odden spoke about the formula that seems to apply to most successful blogs: passion, an understanding of the community, and inventive posts, such as interviews with industry leaders. I agree: there is nothing worse than a blog that is written by people who don’t really care about its contents. You see this sometimes (often?) with corporate blogs. They’re sometimes written by employees who are knowledgeable and intelligent, but they don’t have much passion for their topic. And it always shows.
Rand then made everyone feel bad for not being an industry insider by telling us that he’d been let in on some neat SEO secrets during the week but that he couldn’t write about said secrets for “at least a year.” So I’m being unfair: he was just highlighting how 90% of information is “out there” but the remaining 10 is not public because it’s either too sensitive or too valuable.
I don’t like these short paragraphs and sudden changes in subject, but the forum changed subjects pretty regularly as well. The educated writer in me should be coherent enough to come up with tactful ways to transition between each topic, but one of the Convention Center’s security guards is glaring at me like I’m doing something wrong (I’m blogging from the hallway outside the conference rooms) and I’m getting distracted… The next topic the panel discussed was the SEO-friendliness of blogging platforms such as Wordpress. The general consensus was that these services are relatively good for SEO, but they could still be better. For example, nofollowing tags links could make these blogs so much more SEO-friendly, as the majority of bloggers won’t know to do this themselves.
On to the frequency with which you should blog. Most people will tell you to blog every day. At SEOmoz, we try to post daily; hence our tagline. However, there are bloggers such as Todd Malicoat and Greg Boser who don’t post every day and yet are very successful.
Get ready! Another ill-conceived topic change is going to happen right now…
I am hesitant to write about the “Getting Into the Video Game” session I attended next, as Scott and Mel were also there and I don’t want to usurp anything they wanted to write about it. Basically, the session covered the necessities of creating good video content, not so much from a search point of view but from the production and quality perspective.
I have to go now. The sun has gone down and the Convention Center’s lights are way too bright. I’m also suffering from a jittery, nervous feeling that many people report when they come to Vegas. It’s not even that I don’t like it here. I do like it, in the strangest possible way. It’s like a paranoid, nervous feeling that has no rationale or explanation, but that you just can’t shake. Mel calls it The Fear.
