cruel to be kind

There is something else I really dig about speaking / giving workshops: The smile in peoples eyes when they come to you and tell you that your information helped them and made them understand “this stuff”. (And it is probably not what the organizers like to hear, but I don’t need huge audiences and am much more content to have a smaller audience and interact with them.)

When I submitted my usual session about “Think international” to BlogworldExpo I thought it would be a great idea to point out to the organizers Rick Calvert and Libby Durfee that there where other areas where this international angle would play well. Giving them a reason to put me on stage more than once, as an additional panelist or so in order to increase my chances of being accepted. A “take me and you get more than one” deal so to say. Little did I know that I would end up with three sessions – and only one of them I had material ready *cough*. :) As usual, the first time holding such a presentation is the hardest because after that you can refine the presentation and build on it – so if anyone like me to refine it for their conference, get in touch. ;))

Clicking with diverse Audiences
Togehter with three other panelists we tried to cover the area of clicking with diverse audiences and it surely was the most colorful of the panel – lifestreaming included. But it also had a slight drift towards talking about ethnicity, so it was not as much my area of expertise. Still it was an interesting session for me as there where many areas I had never looked into before. I hope moderator Hadji has the slides up for it somewhere and will link to it when they are available.

You might be interested in my older slides about A European view on Web 2.0 for the international angle.

My instructional sessions

Both of my sessions are geared toward beginners and the way I build them was to emphasize the basic principle behind things. I often see that users try to use tools but do not know in which direction to look for information and or how to combine tools. Once they understand the ideas and reasons it is much easier for them to get what they wanted. In the case below it is especially about the different types of traffic to your blog.

10 ways to build your readership
The last session of the last day I was surprised to see that many attendees but it only proved the point how curious and determine many of the visitors where to learn more about ‘beginner stuff’. It references the presentation below and it is suggested that you have a look at this first.

10 Ways to Build Your Readership
BlogWorldExpo 2008, Intro To New Media Track
“If you don’t know where you’re going anything will do”. There are more than ten ways to build your audience but where do you start? Do you need to do what the A-Listers use or can you ignore it? What are must haves and no-no’s? Comparing different approaches, this session will give you a better insight from when to use which strategies and how to make them work for you.

This session is part of the “Intro To New Media” Track and geared towards professional and businesses use of blogs and podcasts.

Where Do Your Visitors Come From & What Do They Do on Your Site?
As mentioned in the slides, I love data mining, analytics and logfiles. My best friend and I spend extensive amounts of time geeking out about search engine results and log file analysis. You do not need to be that deep into the subject, but you should give that data a chance to make your blog more accessible and also more attractive to visitors and search engines.

Session description: Basic Analytics & Blog Monitoring 101
BlogWorldExpo 2008, Intro To New Media Track
Do you know where your traffic comes from and how you can use this information to increase traffic? Who is talking about you in the blogosphere? Or how many feed subscribers you have? In this workshop you learn the basics about blog monitoring and analytics: how to set up a simple blog monitoring (also called Ego or Vanity searches) and how to set up and use Google Analytics, a free yet extremly powerful tool for all your website traffic. This is also a good session for Podcasters to learn how to increase their listenership / viewers.

Livetweeting the results
Kind of by accident I enabled people to live tweet my session – meaning that I have a first slide with my links on it so that when you walk into the session you already see a bit of my URLs. This is more of an information than actually a promotion but it helped people to include my twitter name into their tweets about the session. As they are also a nice documentation about what other people thought where the to be remembered parts of the session, I’ll include a copy of them below. (If one is missing, ping me).

With a special thanks to callkathy, AceMarketingonetakemovie, also thanks to everybody else who has done this (not only for my session), it helps others to be in two sessions at once! :)

• onetakemovie: summary of how to grow your audience: be passionate. be yourself. conduct outreach. have fun! – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• AceMarketing“>AceMarketing: @nicolesimon great presentation, thanks for having slides
• seoadvice: @nicolesimon thanks for pointing out the importance of SEO, category focus, and other tips on building blog readership #bwe08.
• EdGarrison: #bwe08 @nicolesimon says that blogs should have an editorial calendar just like magazines, i.e. prepare for important dates, events, etc.
• onetakemovie: good tip : have an editorial calendar – mark important dates so you can write ahead of time / “prepost”) – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• onetakemovie: be reliable. be consistent in schedule – at least 2-3 times a month / maybe more. manage expectations – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• AceMarketing: @nicolesimon taking about making sure you use ID3 tags on your podcasts to help people find it easier, and offer notes on the podcast.
• onetakemovie: “and please please please use ID3 tags!” – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• onetakemovie: same thing applies to podcasts: pick a format and stick with it. be consistent in delivery and length. – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• AceMarketing: @dan_patterson she’ll have a slide presentation on slideshare.net/nicolesimon
• onetakemovie: Split up blogs to be topic-centric and attract more visitors. Search engines are happier with topic-centered blogs. – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• AceMarketing: @nicolesimon talking about dosh-dosh as a niche type blog…blogging on a niche is easier to get readers…keep posts niche oriented.
• onetakemovie: be recognizable and authentic. use a photograph. be consistent. use the same one in all sites – @nicolesimon (echoing @mattdickman) #bwe08
• onetakemovie: social bookmarking services can deliver more interested visitors than search engine ranking improvement attempts – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• callkathy: is anyone live tweeting @nicolesimon’s session? Want to be there, but need to be here. :) #bwe08
• Genuine: @NicoleSimon picking out you tweeters! We need you for International flavor of the IBNMA
• callkathy: loving all the screenshots @nicolesimon is showing of actual blog analytics data. I get it now. #bwe08
• callkathy: not all traffic is equal. number of pageviews alone is misleading. need to understand your users and viewers. @nicolesimon #bwe08
• callkathy: Ego/Vanity searches: Your personal clipping service for yourself. Good thing to do. @nicolesimon #bwe08
• callkathy: webceo.com web tracking/ranking tool recomended by @nicolesimon. Check it out! (Check yourself and your competitors) #bwe08
• callkathy: @nicolesimon: When gathering data on your blog, store it localy. You can get current data online, but not usually historic data #bwe08
• callkathy: Next up: @nicolesimon on Where do your visitors come from (in room 219) #bwe08
• onetakemovie: “just be aware that there is a world there outside your door, and that they may be reading.” – @nicolesimon #bwe08
• onetakemovie: American attitude towards sex and things related befuddles @nicolesimon – “I’m European. I’m not that prudish.” #bwe08
• onetakemovie: “colloquialisms like ‘whole nine yards’ – nice to explain these once in a while for the benefit of those who don’t know” @nicolesimon #bwe08
• onetakemovie: date and time issues abound, according to @nicolesimon – calendar widget problems : U.S. week starts Sunday German starts on Monday. #bwe08
• onetakemovie: btw, crueltobekind.org is @nicolesimon ‘s blog #bwe08
• callkathy: RT: @betsyweber: In session @ #bwe08 bout diverse culture- @nicolesimon rocks! She’s great for an Int’l prespective. highly reco her blog
• trishussey: RT @betsyweber: In session @ #bwe08 bout diverse culture- @nicolesimon is rocking! She’s great for an Int’l prespective. I highly recom …
• betsyweber: In session @ #bwe08 bout diverse culture- @nicolesimon is rocking! She’s great for an Int’l prespective. I highly recommend her blog

To see all the other stuff which happened around the Blogworldexpo, I suggest having a look at the twitter search for bwe08 as well as on friendfeed! And see you again next year. :)

Tags: conference