SOBCon Update: Saturday

By Sonia Simone

My head is so overstuffed with ideas that I couldn’t possibly write them all down, but here are some selected scribbles from today’s workshops. I’ve got notes for about five years of blog posts.

Brian Clark:

• A lot of the keys to good blogging are the keys to good business. What used to work won’t be tolerated any more.
• Thinking of ourselves as entrepreneurs, not as bloggers.
• Your revenue model should be: "Yes, please."
• Attention by itself is not the game. It’s a critical part of the game, but once you have attention, there is more work to be done.
• You have to know what you want to say, even if you end up hiring someone to help you say it.
• Build as much authority as you can on one "hub" domain, with satellite pages or additional sites around it for side projects, promotion, etc.

Chris Garrett:

• If you don’t work out what you want to get out of it, you’ll get the wrong things out of it.
• A really good question can be better than a really good statement.
• Create an editorial calendar for the blog. [I didn’t get why this was cool until he showed us what that would look like. Figuring out how often to do linkbait, when & how guest posts fit in, etc.]
• Flagship content is an ambassador for what you do.

David Bullock: (supergenius who I didn’t know before I came here):

• "I do blogging wrong.  I just do stuff that works for my business."
• No money will move before the conversation line is in place.
• What kind of systems do you have in place to pay attention & act on what you learn?
• How does your story match the story of the marketplace? If the conversations don’t mesh, you get no action.
• The good stuff is you. Your uniqueness and your experience. Essentially, it’s your thinking people will pay for–the doing can be outsourced, the thinking is yours alone.
• You will find the language of your market in the testimonials of your clients.
• The Internet is links and pages. That’s all it is.

Chris Brogan:

• The big secret is that businesses are full of people.
• Build stories humans want to tell.
• Give your ideas handles.
• Make it useful.
• Hack–make things your own.
• Do more than you talk.

Liz Strauss:

• Come up with something they want (not something they need).
• Create your message with head, heart and meaning.
• Blog your experience.
• Leave room for your community. Don’t wrap everything up so damned neatly.

Wendy Piersall:

• Everyone is doing business stuff and heart stuff at the same time.
• It’s not pretty getting outside of your comfort zone.
• We need a BS filter for the stuff in our own head.
• Create micro "success for today" goals.
• There is no more time. Give me more you.

Oh, and a P.S., I met the brilliant Cliff Atkinson, who created Beyond Bullet Points. BBP is required reading not just for creating PowerPoint that isnt awful, but for sharpening and clarifying your thinking so you can create a message that actually conveys something. Very hard to do, but it’s work that has a huge payoff.