BlogWorldExpo 2008 - Sep 21, 2008

Learn what it takes to create You, Inc. -- whether for yourself or a company -- online and offline in a crowded world. What are the right and wrong (and best) ways to get attention? What are the most important decisions? Where do blogs fit in, and are they ideal or outdated? How do you parlay "internet fame" into major media?

So you've made a video and you are getting views but how do you make money? Tim Street is one of the most viewed content producers who is getting other people to pay him money to create online videos. Learn from his experiences, successes, and mistakes. Walk away knowing the different types of revenue streams for online video monetization and what business model is right for you. Discuss what is working and the changes on the horizon in the online video industry.

Corporate blogs have proliferated the marketing communications ecosystem of corporate America. From Fortune 500 companies to startups they¹ve all embraced corporate blogging but the question remains? How effective are they in communicating to their user base who religiously subscribe to these blogs. This panel will attempt to summarize the best practices that the panelists have employed at their respective companies (Yahoo!, Facebook and LinkedIn) to start "the conversation" with their users. By the end of the panel discussion you¹ll learn of the 7 habits of effective business blogs that you can put to practice right away. Learn how some of biggest brands in the tech world practice the art of user communications in a brave new world of corporate blogging.

Three small business veterans streamline planning for the business blog. Becky McCray simplifies the business plan. Shama Hyder makes the marketing plan make sense. David Bullock lays out a sleek model for converting visitors into customers. Get the models you need to build a sleek and flexible blog business plan so that you can hit the ground running as soon as you log back in.

Democrats and Republicans broke new ground when they invited a few bloggers to their political conventions in 2004. Four years later, bloggers and new media mavens are everywhere in the political arena, both inside and outside campaigns. What are their roles, how do those inside and outside the campaigns interact with each other, and how, if at all, have new media experts changed American politics?

This session will include: Leveraging blogging, social networking and online video to drive traffic. Emerging trends in digital media and online content delivery. Harnessing the power of community interaction with sports bloggers and pro athletes.

Women have become one of the most active groups within the blogosphere, with 36.2 million of them participating in blogs weekly. They’ve also become one of the biggest drivers of the dollar, with online communities like BlogHer raising millions from venture capital firms like Kleiner and Venrock. This session will give an in-depth explanation of why women have become such online powerhouses and where they’re spending time online. Some of the details will surprise attendees—like the fact that 74% of paying online casual gamers are women—and knowing exactly how marketing to women is different from marketing to men will help drive the highly profitable female demographic to a site. The session will also review successful tactics used by popular sites and how to take the engagement bloggers get from women online out of the blogosphere.

The current media environment has traditional media outlets like newspapers and television news operations struggling to maintain relevance and profitability. The session looks at current best practices from traditional media outlets using social media.

Odds are your blog has grown organically without a lot of thought being paid to business basics. You may not have the time to spend a semester taking business fundamentals, but in an hour you can get the high points.

Musicians are immersed in a changing business forcing them to be entrepreneurs. Combining artistry with commerce requires mentorship to navigate pitfalls. Larry leads this panel for your look inside a secret society of musician entrepreneurs... An open discussion about:

1) The New Music Model 2) The 360 Deals 3) Are labels still Necessary? 4) Making Music is Promoting

Extend your reach and visibility strategy and relationships. Jonathan Fields presents the process of a blogger-publisher relationship. Prince Campbell will lay out the standards for producing and selling digital content. Geoff Nelson explains the ways to frame your proposal, statistics, and content to get corporate sponsors, even in the early stages.

Web 2.0 and social media have blown open the doors of communication in the entertainment industry. Now that the veil has been lifted, what does this mean for celebrities and the entertainment Industry as a whole? On this panel, we will be discussing examples of celebrities and entertainment businesses that utilize the concepts of openness and conversation to communicate with their fans and customers, refute rumors, take control of their image, transform their image, endear themselves to the public, manage their reputation, transform their reputations.

We will explore what the entertainment industry, and big brands in general, can learn from these practices in the greater context of corporate Online Reputation Management.

Case studies: The Roxy Theatre, Jennifer Love Hewitt, The Office Cast, Wil Wheaton, Good Charlotte

With content spanning across social networks, miro communities, and media aggregators, comments, conversations, and responses are taking place on and around the original blog post. This panel will explore distributed conversations, fragmented expertise, and also the challenge of being everywhere - and whether or not it's not only necessary, but also feasible.

A few years ago, daily newspapers laughed off "pajama-clad bloggers" as a passing phenomenon. In the last couple of years, though, many newspapers have changed their tune. The average big-city daily now hosts at least a dozen staff blogs. In total, there are now thousands of newspaper staff blogs, producing tens of thousands of posts annually – and therein lies a revolution. Our panel includes those on the front lines of the newspaper blog revolution, as we look at how the post form is joining the article form in everyday journalism – and what that means for writers and readers.

From April 2006 to April 2007, social media use increased by 668%. With social media usage increasing every day, it is important to make sure you know how to leverage this powerful online presence. Learn how to create a killer online brand, build a virtual community of evangelists, and increase your revenues by using Facebook.

This is a must-attend session for anyone who has ever struggled to demonstrate the ROI and importance of corporate blogging to a CEO. As blogging is becoming an integral part of a company’s overall strategy, it is critical to have concrete measures and expectations around a corporate blogging strategy like every other facet of a business. In this session, Baggott is revealing practical tips with attendees on how to track, measure and adjust their corporate blogging strategy for maximum ROI. He is also sharing case studies of companies that have successfully turned their blogging programs into ones that produce measurable results, like higher organic search engine rankings and acquiring more customers.

You just wrote the greatest blog post you’ve ever written. You researched the subject, spoke with sources, conducted interviews and completed a well thought out, well written article. You hit the post button and your baby is up. Here comes the praise! The first comment you receive? “You’re stupid, you’re ugly and you’re writing sucks.” Whether you call them trolls, haters or griefers, they’re out there, waiting to ruin your day, harm your community and taint your world.

Or maybe the first comment was something like, “Hey, nice article, check out mine!” Just like there are people who’d like to harm you, there are also people who’d like to cheaply benefit from your work and your audience. Spammers can do their own sort of damage.

But, neither of these two groups need harm you, if you know how to deal with them. This panel will give you the knowledge you need to tackle it.

The majority of bloggers today, if they have chosen to monetize their site, rely heavily on Amazon or Adsense. With emerging technology there are a myriad of other monetization partners available. This panel will introduce several alternative monetization tools and strategies.

Whether they are aware of it or not, consumers are part of a largely creative, wholly collaborative Web-based community. With the advent of the Web 2.0 anyone with a computer and Internet access has a voice - and millions are speaking up! What are they talking about? Everything imaginable, including conversations about our brands, products and services. Turning a deaf ear to what's being said could be a death knell to late or reluctant adopters.

Blogs, wikis, social networks and online communities all function as practical mediums for engaging consumers in conversations that lead to the building of positive, trusted relationships. And, hopefully, business transactions.

Participants will learn:

• Why social media marketing is the wave of the future.
• How to use social media to increase word-of-mouth and new client referrals.
• How online conversations can lead to the building of long-term, trusted client relationships.

Get to know stat programs as a business tool. John Pozadzides outlines datamining for business, statistics as marketing, and key features to look for in statistical tools. Lorelle VanFossen discusses how aggregate statistical data can drive content, productivity, and decision-making. Liz Strauss explores the detail to uncover individual behaviors that inform building relationships, experiences, and community.

The mainstream media and the political establishment like to portray the political blogosphere as one monolithic beast. But like the United States itself, the political blogosphere is a mixing bowl of diverse personalities with niche audiences and different approaches. Some focus on specific states, others on the national scene. Some blog for themselves, others for institutions. Get your own ideas from this mixing bowl of panelists.

American public discourse has become harsh and unhealthy. This is especially true of political discourse. Unfortunately, many have "cursed the darkness" as though it would serve as an antidote to the problem. John Mark Reynolds, public speaker and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, will address some of the problems of internet discourse, what Godbloggers can do to raise the level of conversation on the internet, and we all can move productively forward in conversation and debate.

In order to properly review a product, you have to experience it first hand. How do you get past the gatekeepers and unlock the doors that grant access to people and products? What can you do to stand out from the crowd and achieve true credibility?From software to sports cars, this session shares the lessons learned in over a decade of working the angles, along with perspective from the communications and marketing side of the fence.

This panel will discuss how not to approach social media for people looking to promote themselves and/or their companies through blogs, forums, social networking sites and other types of communities online. We’ll highlight and discuss strategies and tactics that can damage you and your brand, such as introtisements and adverquestions (veiled advertisements), lying about your affiliations, never giving anything of value, being ignorant of your surroundings and much more. The end result will be a better understanding of how to utilize the social web to get the word out about yourself and/or your organization. We learn not only from best practices, but from poor practices. Who you want to be, directly relates to who you don’t want to be.

Open Source has played a critical role in shaping the media landscape in the world around us for the last decade by democratizing the world of publishing. This session will introduce attendees to the fundamentals of open source, but more specifically to open source publishing, syndication and distribution. It will introduce you to the software that powers the web sites of the world's leading media brands, and show how you easily can harness their power as well. This session will also look ahead to the future of open source and open source blogging, seek to better understand the social and technical obstacles that face the world of new media, and characterize the leaders and companies that will keynoting at BlowWorld two to three years from now.

This session will serve as an introduction to the world of open source and open source blogging.

Our expert panel will examine the blog monetization widgets out there today and talk about how you can use them to start generating profits.

Bring your questions and situations to this interactive session. Des Walsh, international social media consultant, will be leading the discussion with panelists Rich Brooks, Tony Bloomberg and Robyn Tippins to answer your questions on how to answer customer concerns about social media and how to get buy-in from possible naysayers on their teams. find out how to tailor an offer for specific customers, how to get owners and CEOs interested in your services, how to have a conversation around a customer's problem, how to ensure gatekeepers open doors and decisionmakers don't block you, and more.

"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.

This session will address the step-by-step process of making a direct advertising deal on your blog. It will include the following: how to answer sales inquiries, how to attract and land premium advertisers, how to put together a proposal, know what advertisers are looking for and what terms to know like "added value," "roadblocking," and ROS" * how to negotiate the best price * how to find "outside the box" monetization opportunities * how to write your "advertise" page * what to do during the campaign implementation (what to monitor, how to report, etc) and much more

A GBC Exclusive Screening presented by the Acton Institute! How is freedom born? This new documentary, released by teh Acton Institute, tells the story of how modern understandings of individual liberty were developed. Check out www.thebirthoffreedom.com.

Join Wade Tonkin of ChristianAffiliateMarketers.com as he gives an overview of blog monetization strategies with an emphasis on how to generate financial support for yourself or you ministry from your blog while "staying saved." We'll take a look at affiliate marketing, site sponsorships, Google Adsense and "Tipping" services to give you a solid base of knowledge and put you in position to generate blog based revenue that you can be proud of.

This special session will include a brief overview of the political landscape and the Godblogger's role therein from each of the moderators. The floor will then be opened for conversation among all in attendance with special topical consideration being given to the 08' election.

The New Media Frontier is a visionary new book that offers direction for how Christians can use the new media with discernment and grace. Several of the contributors to The New Media Frontier met and began dialogue about this book at the first GodblogConference, so we are very excited to have them present the completed project at GodblogCon's fourth annual conference. Roger Overton, editor of the book and blogger at the A-Team blog, will present an overview of the book, its importance to you and your readers, and how they envision it helping Christians engage new media technology well for the cause of Christ.

American public discourse has become harsh and unhealthy. This is especially true of political discourse. Unfortunately, many have "cursed the darkness" as though it would serve as an antidote to the problem. John Mark Reynolds, public speaker and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, will address some of the problems of internet discourse, what Godbloggers can do to raise the level of conversation on the internet, and we all can move productively forward in conversation and debate.

The International Blogging & New Media Association's annual membership meeting. All current and prospective members are invited to attend. Indusry topics and association goals for the year will be discussed.