She is a publisher and first grade teacher and it’s an evil combination :p

she says it’s all about having fun – that’s what comment night is… that’s what it’s all about!

Lots of times blog posts are all about me, me, me me. What my cat had for lunch, all the boring, self-centric stuff. She wants to make one thing clear: When I tell people I have 160 articles of leadership on the web they get very impressed. When i tell people I’m a blogger they think I’m weird” This is from Kent Blumberg.

Think of yourself as a publisher – and publishing is a business. No matter what your publishing about. Because you are doing everything a business person is doing.

We find out how things work,

get to know the numbers and stats,

we have a vision (anything relevant has been started by a person with a vision – hold on to that),

connections – links fall away, companies go bankrupt, but relationships with people stay!!

Choose your customers, don’t just have them choose you – and then get to knwo them intimately. The biggest mistake of marketers and bloggers make is to just look at the numbers. Instead, talk to the people, to each person, know them by name.

Do what you love and service the people who love what you do

everything changes when you publish to the web (notice when you submit a blog post the button says “Publish”) — and the internet has no erasor – you are publishing for everyone, your descendents, internet archeologists, people going through google cache … that is a huge thing! “that’s a pretty big deal” VERY COOL – when she started blogging there were only 12M blogs (when I started there were about 50-55M). When magazine is printed it become inventory, and it’s done. When you publish on the blog that’s when the conversation starts.

Tom Peters has a story about the steel mills in the 70’s, in Ohio, that wasn’t going down the tubes with all the others, there were 1,200 people, no job descriptions, and it was going great. The pres said “we talk to eachother” when asked by Tom about the success. And that is what happens on theblogs – we talk to eachother like we are people – and if you do it the right way you get COMMUNITY. Relationship business lasts longer and is more fun (as opposed to business business)

Community is built on authentic relationships with people who like you. How do you build community? She tells the dating story about a girl who always whined about not having dates, but she never met new people! We build community by meeting more people. If you stay on your blog all night and never go out, you’ll never build a community.

Liz’ mistake was to stand at the podium and instruct. She says we have to get down from the podium! When she wrote all the great posts before, the comments where “good blog post liz, you are an excellent writer”… so she turned around and asked what was going wrong – she had a friend that basically said “leave us room to talk”… so she changed her post style and “came off the podium”… she said she is a pendulum (sp) learner and got too far into people’s faces, sometimes you have to back off and let people talk to eachother (by commenting in your post)… awesome

don’t buy into your own PR and take a look at how other people see you…

“we really can’t talk without talking about ourselves”… every word we say reveals something about us…

WE CAN LISTEN – that is the key. Like last night, with the open mic – we were talking, we were having conversations,

her question is, how can we turn a comment into a conversation?

(1) by asking a question

(2) by adding the “top commentator” thing on (and changing it to “comment” not “commentator”, but then changed it back because commentators are people that are contributing to the conversation… he wants contributors…

(3) let the comment go where it goes (without slapping hands)

(4) he really cares, about each person that comments – if someone comments on his blog then he reaches out and extends the conversation offline

(5) commenting is about enrichment, richness he gets from what others say -he is looking for the gem in what others share with him, how it touches or enriches them, etc.

(6) Genuineness – bloggers and commentors are genuine… he is not surprised to see exactly what he sees in this room because we’re all genuine

(7) Easton (businessblogwire) question is, isn’t it a waste of time to go back and “talk” – is it really worth it? Wendy eMom says that she has a ton of competition in the blogosphere, but the you have to have a mission behind the message… your business is what’s on the surface, the mission is what’s going to get you clients, etc. The mission is bigger than the business. The mission will bring you money, etc. The message behind it all is going to draw people to you and wnat to do business to you.

(8) Kent Blumberg is struggling with a transition to get off the podium, how do you do it??… liz says she had tohave some visual clues to make it more conversational , hence the image “I’ve been thinking…” when you right in a converstational style it’s not like you speak, it’s like you think. If you use the language that you think with it will trigger their conversational thoughts… like “chocolate vs. the tax code” as long as it’s written in conversational style – which tells their brain that at the end they have to answer. Cool – I didn’t think about the style thing.

(9) part of your responsibility as a blogger is to not say it all on other’s blogs… make a comment to encourage others to comment, perhaps ask questions,

(10) it’s about the relationship, never lose site of that, business does business with people –

(11) commentors develop a bond of trust, that relationship, and that’s who you do business with…

(12) comment on: why should a business care about blogging – she asks “do you remember 1996?” – she thinks going forward, it will be the same thing with resisting voice mail… you need to have a blog because eventually eeryone isgoing to be there, we aren’t even early adopters right now, we are more mainstream

(13) ann michael, manage to change, when she goes into a business she doesn’t go in to talk about blogging, she talks about what their problems are… and figures out how to solve those problems. She isn’t a blog evangelist, she is a “do you want to change or die” evangelist. And then figure out where the tools fit in to help solve the issues.

(14) Peter from BlogStudio – you can now point out success stories to illustrate the phenominal way to show how businesses are using blogging

(15) tammy “I can’t say that” – she sees herself as having learning conversations… that is what she does all day long. We have to be willing to learn… and willing to change.

Liz – 5 minutes left, on community stuff. How do you build a community. If you make laws then you are inviting people to circumvent the laws. Tom Peters – an environment can either support the overachievers or the underachievers, but supporting one will make the others alienated (because they are not supported/appreciated).

This premise works on the blog… we support people who are highly accepting of other people… and we don’t appreciate people who are not. Liz has only one rule there “BE NICE”

What jason wanted to say but couldn’t – if you don’t have the “send me an e-mail when someone comments on this” pluggin then you won’t be able to sustain an awesome conversation. I don’t have it here, but it’s on the JibberJobber blog.