No matter what kind of blog you have, how to be a better blogger.

IowaBlogs.net (also watch “MyFeedStream” (sp?))

What does a blog coach make his clients do? Laps, pushups, etc.

3 types of blogs: journal lifestyle blogging, business that have a blog or blogging as a business

Drew – talking about learning how to ride a bike. The first time, where was your vision? Where were you headed? Why were you on the bike? Who did you want to ride with (alone, so no one saw)? This is how bloggers start. No vision, no direction, didn’t want people reading his blogs

So now we have all learned how to ride the bike… so this is all about taking the training wheels off the blog.

Mike Wagner – branding and blogging.

1. A blog is a free sample of your brand.
2. There are at least two kinds of brands – a default brand and an intentional brand. (cool concept)
   1. To build an intentionally brand you nust need two basic skills (1) the concept of being unique, remarkable, etc.. Being creative. Allowing yourself to be CREATIVE.
   2. You have to CARE.

Brands have to be remarkable and useful.

— now we break out into groups… I’m in the one for those that have a company and blog.

What are the things that we’ve done to take the training wheels off our blogging?

• consistency
• Tony (nest guy) tracked through comments based on who was reading his blog… and found who his audience was and blogs now to them instead of what his original messages.
• link love, active blog marketing (going to the other bloggers), returning the love
• use the technorati value tracker tool to show what (set up as an RSS feed) so that you can know who links to the sites that are your core values… you can then comment on the new bloggers that are linking to your competition (or like blogs) – sounds like a cool tool to use. You can do it for yourself on technorati but this sounds like a sweet tool.
• wrote a web plan, with the blog as part of your dev capabilities.
• MyBlogLog … big wave of traffic and readers (pay attention to this means -> just be involved, engage with who’s new, etc. Just engage the people in your community).
• blog carnival (alternative services, and allow peole who don’t have a business to advertise/post on my blog
• creating diverse voices within a blog – team blog concept
• reaching out to traditional media (in a complimentary way) to engage them… perhaps they’ll talk about you in their print
• spend investment time in relationships – give first
• trackbacks, especially with news stuff

What’s not working?

• learning the mechanics – trying to figure out all the widgets and stuff that takes so much time!
• mistaking a business blog for a personal blog (using all the crap from personal blogs on your business blog, cluttered, messy, etc.)
• believing that just because I wrote it people will read it
• themes that need really good index tools for previous posts… should make it easy for people to find posts.
• maintaining enthusiasm for a topic that you have already covered
• it is really hard to write a good headline (copyblogger is a great resource for fixing this) and ogleby on advertising (from the Nest Guy)

Other groups came up with:

• produce e-books
• top 10 lists
• practical articles
• season of life stuff
• press releases
• — and then the “we do this for a living” team – stuff that works
• affiliate ads
• videos
• text link ads
• sponsored posts
• amazon
• — oops stuff
• adsense didn’t work
• have a print this button
• comments need to be easier
• clutter needs to go away
• — folks in business and blog as well – stuff that works
• having a small checklist of things that yo udo every day (the maintenance)
• MyBlogLog
• reaching out to traditional media
• — oops stuff
• overthinking, you HAVE TO pull the trigger and go (this is a wrong perception)
• too many widgets to figure out :/
• the whole linking just to link thing
• people have a written plan for their blog