OFFICIAL LIVEBLOG: Business of You - Advanced Social Media

Session info: There are so many services that help you spread your content around. Twitter may be king, but other options, like StumbleUpon, kirtsy, digg and more abound. The issue is how to use them effectively. To know, you’ve got to become an expert at reading your analytics. In this panel, we'll make sure you're getting the most bang for your syndication buck. Featured speakers include Corvida Raven, a student who blogs almost exclusively about technology and social media, Denise Tanton, BlogHer's community manager (and a technophile in her own right), has helped online communities get their word out for the past 12 years, and Cathy Brooks, who for the last 25-plus years, has worked across a variety of communications and media channels. There will be Beginning Stats and Beginning Syndication tutorials in the Geek Lab, so if you don’t already know all the services and how/why to use them you can get the basics in the Lab. This session is intermediate to advanced only.

Business of You: Advances Social Media, Syndication and Stats

Corvida Raven, Denise Tanton, and Kathy Brooks

KB- consultant and storyteller. Huff Post, pitch buzz, OtherthanThat.com

Corvida Raven – 21yo Shegeeks.net, MrTweet, - The Oprah of the Web. SM is her thing.

Denise Tanton – BlogHer.com community manager. Most bang for buck, What SM tools to use to draw traffic back to BH and other blogs in the network. Is it worth it to use the tools? How do you determine to use the stats.

Important to know where your traffic is coming from. Want to know what tools they use. That's how you figure out how to better your blog. Clarity and direction for what to do with your blog -direction.

DT – It is about which content works for your audience so you can give them more.

Ask Patty – Why not just use Only Wire  and submits to lots.

DT - Becomes spam.

KB – Which sites are better?

CR – Twitter, FB, Friend Feed. But you have to focus on retention/bounce rate.
Look at your demographics. Look who submits to your site. Who are they? What kind of content are they searching for? Boils down to the type of content. Whatever you try to attrct those are the networks you should look to.
FB – intimate, family friends, personal, real life, lifestyle.
Digg – Tech, politics
Kirtsy – women...

DT – Digg not great for BlogHer, not even tech articles or politics.

Jessica from Bernthis.com – How do you look at the demographics?

CR – Easiest way to check out the demo, see what's popular on that SM site. Look at the most popular posts. Are they lists? Are they political?
Stumble is different. More about who's in your social network. Collaborative filtering – human and machine. Very random. Discovery content engine. Designed to be random. Learns your habits. The more you get involved, the more it gets to know you.
You can use your stumble profile to drive traffic towards you.

DT – Self stumbling doesn't hurt BH. But mainly because there are so many people who also stumble them.

CR – poll your community if you want to know what they want.

DT - “Ego feed” - track who's talking about you.

CR - Track your brand, your name. Know what's going on. Pay attention the space.

Sometimes if you don't get hits on one day, put it out again another day. Pay attention to the flow of how everything is moving. Even Mashable doesn't always get hundreds of retweets for EVERY post.

Audience – Is there a way to know who's following you on Twitter?

CR – No, not yet. Go back to the ego feeds and see who's retweeting and who's the most active in your following.

DT – Use bit.ly – tracks clicks and retweets.

Audience – How to track stats?

CR – Google Analytics is free. Free is good.

Audience – What to add to ego feed?

CR – Name, blog name, brand, key words
Yahoo! Pipes application – submit URL starts tracking stumbles, diggs, etc.
Feedburner for tracking RSS. Also implementing FriendFeed follows.
Do a Google search for “social submission tracking.”

DT – No matter what you do, you have to be transparent.

Audience – If you have 15 minutes a day for SM what do you do?

DT – Tweet 1 link. Talk to 5 people and build a relationship. Kirtsy 1 link. Stumble 1 link.

Elizabeth from Table for 5 – Giveaway question: When she started, if she gave people an extra chance to win for tweeting and stumbling. Someone got in trouble from Stumble for doing that.

CR – Stumble has very strict rules. But you won't get in trouble on Twitter.

DT – Watch the site policies and rules. Check them again. Go back. Get to know them.

Audience – Q re Twitter. Followers grow. Goes through Twitter followers. Why block the ones with no content?

CR – because they could get you in trouble. Steal content. Get your updates. Might be associated with you and put you in jeopardy. When Twitter does a database crunch they get rid of spam. You don't want to get caught up in the purge.

Audience – people at Twitter are watching. If you are too promotional they'll take you down.

DT – Twitter strategy – diff team members have things they are going to tweet about. So there's no overlap.

CR – Everything we know if by trial and error. Go out, try it. See what works for you.
K – The tools are new. We're all still learning.

DT – It's about the conversation. Talk to people. Listen.

Audience – Uses the 80/20 rule. 80% conversational 20% promotional.

Jessica Rosenberg (aka kikadesa, kikarose, and sometimes just
plain Rose) is an aspiring novelist and freelance writer who blogs
daily at It's My Life... and posts frequent reviews and giveaways at The Lemonade Stand