http://darmano.typepad.com (I didn’t realize who this was – for me this guy is a bloggers superstar and has an incredible following and for good reason!) He writes for business week – is this one article or is this multiple columns??

One word to focus on in his presentation: experience.

His blog came out of nowhere, but wants to share what has worked for him.

Starting at the beginning – we are all unique. We’re all individuals. Are our blogs as unique as we are, and the voice, and the experience and the brand. When we talk about 75M blogs, does our blog really stand apart? If your blog is your business you need to focus on this.

He say 34 reasons why peole unsubscribe from your blog, reason #5: too many posts that I see elsewhere. SO your blog does not stand out.

how do we define success? We all have to ask ourselves this question. (he defined it but I didn’t get it -I heard it but it didn’t click)

Blogs + brands – some have it (google, ipod, etc.) and others have lost it (burger king, kmart, kodak (all have red, all have big K).

Q: do you have a blog brand?? Seth has it, Guy has it, Kathy had it (but it will likely change)… any successful blog has blog brand.

Q: are you blogging or representing your personal brand? He uses blogs as an extension of his personal brand. A brand is a gut feeling about products, services, etc. how do you convey this GUT FEELING?

I’t not any one thing (community, voice, message) … it’s all of the things together to give a GUT FEELING.

Q: can you design a better blog experience? YES – and it’s not just in the asthetics, but the complete experience. You want them to have had such a great experience so they come back.

4 Cs of blogging:

• COMMUNITY
  • invest in the community, get involved;
  • Listen and facilitate,
  • Cultivate, ask their opinions
• CONTENT
  • frame our subjects, don’t just report but have opinions and seek opinions of others;
  • share – people are hungry for knowledge, don’t worry about your ideas being stolen because everyone is stealing from one another;
  • serve – we are 100% in the service industry – if you are not providing value then stop blogging!
• CLARITY
  • See where you are going, vision is everything;
  • communicate, be clear and articulate – rambling doesn’t make for good conversation;
  • vision IS NOT visionary – don’t let this word scare you off – you don’t need ot be a genious, you just need to “keep your eyes on the road”
• CONSISTENCY
  • Find your voice – speak up;
  • write about things you care about and be true to yourself (this is better than saying “be authentic”;
  • experiment, evolve and do it consistently.

This is his framework and it is working…he never writes about something that he doesn’t want to write about – no one is forcing him (perhaps in a business setting)

Clarity combines vision with agility. No matter how much planning we do we’ll have to improvise… we have to be flexible. We still have to plan but we have to roll with what life gives us – and same with the blog. He didn’t know his blog was going to take off like is has… so “have a plan butbe really good at improvising!”

Technology recommendation – SLIDESHARE. need to check that out. “it almost makes the content 3D in one single post”…

STOP calling yourself a blogger. As a brand, it has a lot of baggage. When we are thinking about our audience be empathetic (I need to incorporate this into my personal branding stuff ‘it’s not “be a blogger” it’s “develop your brand with tools”) — this is more of a change in mindset – we need to be (1) unique individuals that have interests that (2) use tools to do self-publishing. When you stop thinking of yourself as a blogger your blog will be effected by that !! very cool idea.

Bloggers are one-dimentional, but people are multi-dimensional (because we can be users, and all kinds of other things (producers, customers, etc.). There is nothing wrong with calling a person a customer but that is not the core of what/who they are. Ashley Cecil says that when we do this it expands our audience (as opposed to getting the blank stare (what is a blog)?

David: blogging is a commodity. Wow, that’s profound, but think about it, there are 75M out there… this is a COMMODITY.

a lot of readers don’t know they are reading a blog, just that it’s a website.

Really, this is less about what we call ourselves but more about what our core passion is. Many people go through life never figuring out what the core passion is… if we figure out what it is then we need to harness the passion, pinpoint it, analyize it and then harness it. He has figured out his own. And all the blogs that we admire have figured out their passions.

Let your passion shape your blog, above anything else. What is your cause? Engagement, conversation and all that jazz is cool and impt but it’s not the cause – his cause is that design is in everything… he is passionate about it to the core.

Start with YOU, then what is your PASSION, which then leads to CONVERSATION, which leads to RELATIONSHIPS, and that leads to AFFINITY (feeling good about the experience that they just had – and it keeps people coming back). So then we become not bloggers but conversation architects…

Cycle –> Visit -> engage -> share -> (and back to visit again) .. this is not buzz marketing (when the are happy), this is the best word of mouth marketing there is. Succes is when people feel like they are PART of the content and experience… (jason: and this gives them ownership)

Has anyone talked to a seven year old that has just come back from a Disney vacation? They have a great experience and they’ll talk your ear off… Disney delivers this to an almost-lethal fashion — why can’t we do this on our blogs?? Provide a great experience and this is what’s going to happen.

****** the end – this was awesome… I’m jealous of artists anyway – this guy is over-the-edge.

Wendy eMom comment: 2% believe what we tell them, 20% believe what their friends tell them, and 100% believe what they tell themselves.

Q: what is the conversion rate (on getting people to visit to engage to share and back again) – she looks at her blog, sees that a whole bunch of people come, and to see who comes back it’s a real low %. A: you can’t look at just traffic… although he has 2000 RSS, 400 e-mail, 1200 referrals (those that click on a link to get to him)… and his mainstream traffic from magazines… (they aren’t talking about how many posts are spawned by your post (on other’s blogs) – another thing to look at is, how many peope IN YOUR TARGET (or industry) are looking at your blog? That’s huge,

Q: Christine Kane, says lots of musicians think that bloggers are just geeks. She is interested in knowing how to market this stuff to people who don’t get what blogs are? You can’t say Link Love … A: you have to do a lot more doing and a lot less talking. He says the idea of “tell them” “have them repeat” and then “have them teach” … the idea that you put it back in their court with more responsibility to teach others or us is more impt.

Q: how do we share the experience and passion that we have, we can’t do body language and all that. he thinks design is “incredibly valuable” to replace the body language stuff. (jason’s thought: I’d rather read excellent writing than care for excellent design – go back to the classic books – it’s about the excellent writing). A: you have to look at what’s out there – and you can mimick all of this “gesticulation” (sp) – look at Seth Godin – he doesn’t use images or anything like that – he is a master communicator. So the question is, what are the tools to accomplish? Words? Images? What else? (Jason: perhaps videos?)

Q: Ashley Cecil – she really downplays the “blogging thing” with her community — her q is: she feels baffled by all the advice about building communities, follows it, but wonders why she isn’t getting it as big as she wants it to be. She is wondering what the missing link is!! Huge question. A: if you really have something amazing it will find it’s way to the top. If it is different, provides value, it WILL find it’s way to the top. (from the audience: Audiences has different sizes. A community starts with 2.)

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.

Everyone is well-fed (I only had 2 or 3 plates, makes up for not eating)… there are 4 people in the room walking around with wireless mikes – the theme is “questions and conversations” and it’s kind of fun – wants to be awkward but it isn’t too much because we all know what this is and have participated in it already.

The music was awesome, our table chatted about Twitter, teaching companies to blog, talking about the difference between PR and Marketing and blogging, and how they intersect right now and how that will (and needs to) change.

I’m sitting at a table with a bunch of business bloggers (I’m surprised, I didn’t expect that, and even moreso (yes, bad stereotype) three of them are women (and seem to be quite successful and thought-leaders in this space). It’s cool, encouraging and I wonder if this is going to be an indication of the blogging demographics.

Speaking of demographics, it’s cool to be in this room with a ton of peeps with different background and demo’s – ages are all across the board (although I don’t see anyone that I’d call “old” here) – there are a number of young folks, I’d guess maybe half or more are women. The common thread is pretty strong her though.

So the question to everyone is “when you aren’t here, what do you do” or “what do you do when you are not blogging” – it’s actually a cool way to way to do the”me in 3 seconds” or “elevator pitches” or something like that. There is a lot of laughing/humor here and I wonder how different a chamber of commerce dinner would be if they did this kind of open mike thing there.

And, one last thing, just because they ask you once doesn’t mean they won’t ask you again, Ann Michael was asked twice the same question, even though she said it wasn’t fair, they still made her answer again.

Wendy Piersall (emom) just came in and was handed the mike, didn’t know what we’re talking about. Very cool first impression imho :p

People walking the mikes around are Liz Strauss, Phil Gerbyshak, Chris Cree, and Terry Starbucker.

Now talking about Basil the Codewriting Donkey (a fictitious character) that got the audience to boo in a big way (we all thought he was real). Ben Yoskovitz (the Instigator blog) – he sent Basil around the world and had a bunch of cool expierences, but it will likely retire.

Now blogging tips:

• enjoy the word play
• wendy eMom – how to title a post on getting laid off… and then come out ahead, or come out on top, or stuff like that. It was excellent for her SEO (dirty stuff, cha).
• Dave Dalka – been at internet conferences all over the world, speaker with 7k people, says this is the first time he’s been with JUST bloggers (seems strange to me). Best blogging tip is the askismet comment issues, he has a post to solve the problem (I have no idea what the problem is).
• Troy – says he’s the anti-blogger. Tips: (1) connect the unconnected and (2) don’t wait for permission to succeed (screw everyone else)
• Steve (?) – tip for new bloggers – pace yourself. It’s a long race (it’s not a drag race).
• Connnie Reece – from texas, every dot connects, likes to Twitter.
• Liz Strauss says to say hi to the twitter friends
• Clare says to go out and live life
• LiveYourBestLife‘s tip is to write from and follow your heart, be yourself and just write.
• Activists tip: time management (she starts working at 7:30 and goes until bedtime)… it’s hard to stop so figure out the balance.
• Don’t write for/to other blogs. Write for/to PEOPLE.
• someone else: consistency (I’m really nervous talkng with a mike here, but give me a guitar and I can sing it)
• TheGoodBlogs – when you right a blog entry, think “there are actually 50million other bloggers that really don’t know what they are talking about <laughing>” – the ones that are most powerful and compelling are the ones where they are passionate and feel very strongly about what they write about. If you think “am I good enough” then go ahead and blog.
• Doug Bulleit: Social networking now is where seach was 10 yrs ago – believes the more serious social networking will comefrom the things that we all blog
• StickyVideos guy – been consulting with corps, says the bigger the company, the more petrified they are with blogging. They are all about control – and afraid to use control. The tip is wirte the best content you can right and share as much insight and knowledge as humanly possible. This shows you as “brand you,” passionate, etc. Be aware of your brand. VideoSticky is the new deal (he is a sponsor of SOBevent.com) – it is the evolution of videos, blogs, community and connections. Will be in public beta in about 30 days.
• OfficePolitics.com and FrankieJames.com (I don’t know the spelling) – by joining together and spreading the message around the web, we can actually help change the world <applause>
• tip from the fashion-concerned guy: SPELL CHECK FOR PETE’S SAKE
• Derrick Sorles – writes for BusinessBloggingTips – loves working for his own business, not having commute and all that jazz that goes along with working out of the home. He wants to give back and so what he’s doing is helping non-profits blog, that’s his charitable efforts. Started helping a guy May 1 of this year. Consider helping others as a way to give back (with free blog consulting).
• Mark Goodyear – a non-profit blogger – (1) don’t play the technorati rank game (2) blogs need to be well-written – if you want to be a good writer, you need to read a lot of good books (unplug and read books)
• Drew Mclelland – Don’t drink unless you are in draft mode, (2) if Liz calls you and says “I have a crazy idea,” beware
• Blogging tip, it’s all about your reader. He learned the hard way.
• in blogging, “they” are the authority, and “they” are all of the bloggers!

Ok, something fun to throw out there – everyone name a song with Love in it, but no one can name the same one… we’ve gone through about 20 right now and no one is skipping a beat.

I’m signing off, darn laptop battery. Now I got meet people face-to-face and stop hiding behind this laptop. Buenas noches :p

David Dalka put this together so you can post it to your blog if you want:

(btw, I’m ticked because it’s not in alpha order :p)

http://www.daviddalka.com/sobconchicago2007attendeelinks-wordpressformat.txt

SOBcon2007 Chicago Attendees:
Sandra Renshaw
Brad Shorr
Timothy Johnson
Tammy Lenski
Muhammad Saleem
Lorelle VanFossen
David Dalka – Mobile Search Marketing
Todd And
John Yedinak
Joe Hauckes
Tim Draayer
Jeremy Geelan
Carolyn Manning
Sheila Scarborough
Steve Farber
Dawud Miracle
Doug Mitchell
Jeff O’Hara
Dave Schoof
Jamy Shiels
Adam Steen
Hannah Steen
Chris Thilk
Barry Zweibel
Eric Bingen
Ellen Moore
Cord Silverstein
Jean-Patrick Smith
James Walton
Sharan Tash
Vernon Lun
Tony Lee
Scott Desgrosseilliers
Mark Murrell
Kammie Kobyleski
Easton Ellsworth
Mark Goodyear
Ann Michael
Kent Blumberg
Ashley Cecil
Robert Hruzek
Sabu N G
Mazur Krystyna
Lisa Gates
Franke James
Chris Brown
Troy Worman
Karen Putz
Jesse Petersen
Terry Mapes
Andy Brudtkuhl
Lucia Mancuso
Peter Flaschner
Derrick Sorles
Mike Rohde
Thomas Clifford
Rajesh Srivastava
Claire Celsi
Jason Alba
Cristiana Passinato
Sean R.
Alex Shalman
Cristiana Passinato
Brad Spirrison
Ari Garber
Dr. Rob Wolcott
Cheryll Cruz
Sharon Scherer
Jonathan Phillips
Jason Wade
Jill Pullen
Doug Bulleit
Wendy Kinney
Chelsea Vincent
Ayush Agarwal
Paul Mangalik
Premchand Kallan
Xochi Kaplan
Michael Snell
Ella Wilson
James Bergstrom
Raj Majumder
Keith Levenson

SOBcon2007 Chicago Speakers:
Andy Sernovitz
Phil Gerbyshak
Liz Strauss
David Armano
Mike Sansone
Drew McLellan
Mike Wagner
Terry Starbucker
Rodney Rumford
Ben Yoskovitz
Chris Cree
Robyn Tippins
Diego Orjuela
Vernon Lun
Wendy Piersall

I’m in Chicago, I got to my french hotel just a couple of hours ago. I feel horrible (physically) – I had about 3 hours of sleep and not much to eat today (two granola bar things). My body has felt wierd, muscles, headache everything. Someone said that sleep deprivation is a sign of a true entrepreneur and my thought this morning at 3:55 am, right before a shower was “I don’t want to be an entrepreneur if I have to live on three hours of sleep!” Alas, that is what my choice is though, I’m running hard and going strong and I’m going to keep doing it. And I can’t wait to get some sleep tonight.

So this conference is the SOBevent.com conference and it’s very very cool. Kent Blumberg, Phil G, Tom Clifford and many others that I’ve read before but to be all in the same room is just incredible. I hope to blog on various thing during the event … we’ll see how diligent I am on it (and how well rested I am tomorrow).

BTW, the conference in Vegas was INCREDIBLE. I wrote a post on the plane today, I’m not sure when I’ll post it or where (here or on JibberJobber).

Ok, so to kick of tonight’s thing we are listening to about 45 minutes of an awesome musician (Christine Kane), and then we’ll have a social. There has already been men hugging one another, and the weird look of “you’re taller (or shorter, or uglier, or whatever) than I expected.” Of course you don’t say this, but you think it :p