Create a schedule ahead of time. Whether you’re blogging on your own or
with a team, pick which sessions and related topics you plan on covering before
the event. It’s very easy to get distracted while at the conference and with
live blogging, there’s no time to waste. Create draft blog posts ahead of time
and include as much information in the draft as you can. This will make it
easier to finish off the post as close to the session time as possible. One of
our goals is to post within 1/2 of the session ending if not before.
Whether it’s just you or a group, put together a grid showing session names,
times and who should be covering. I learned this from the master of conference
coverage, Barry Schwartz. When blogging with a team, it’s important to
coordinate sessions and post session activities.
Write the posts offline in an application like notepad. Then transfer the post
to the blog. Many session rooms have poor if any internet connection at all.
Make posts in an offline document and transfer them over to your blog software
when you’re ready to publish. Network
with other bloggers. When in the sessions or in the press room (if your blogging
on a press pass) be sure to connect with other bloggers. You have something in
common - the formidable task of taking a mix of presentations, some great and
some psychotically unorganized, and turning them into a story that makes sense
to a savvy search marketing audience - all in real time. Connecting with other
bloggers both offline and online can facilitate information sharing as well as
links.
Promote your posts. Once your posts go live, then be sure to make an effort to
promote the posts to your network and to interested communities. Promote screen
shots of your videos to Flickr with a link to the video post. Let interview
subjects and other bloggers know when you’ve posted relevant posts. Leverage
your social community networks to draw attention to particularly “promotable”
posts.
Tag your posts and media. For some conferences, the organizer will advise
the attendees to use a specific tag to make it easy for readers to find posts
specific to that event. For example, the recent MediaPost event in Park City
Utah used an image tag of: sisutah07. Generic tags are also useful. Use these
tags not only with your blog posts and Technorati, but also with photos, video
and social bookmark/news submissions.
Establish a few basic blogging guidelines or simple process. Here are a few that
we start with:
Create drafts of posts BEFORE the conference with notes.
After sessions posts are saved in draft form.
All posts must have images, ideally of the session panel.
All posts are associated with relevant categories and tags.
Alternate title tags with keywords are written.
Post titles start with a consistent naming convention along with a short
description.
Once posts are edited, editor makes them live.
Better quality posts are vetted for promotion within blogger networks.
Round up posts are published at the end of each day or at the end of the
conference.
Develop a SMO
strategy - define your objectives and set goals. Be fully aware of what your
desired outcome is as a result of performing these tactics. Reputation, sales,
influence, credibility, charity, traffic/page views, Make SMO part of your
process and best practices. As with good SEO, SMO tactics should become part of
your organization's best practices. Find ways to incorporate SMO tactics at the
"template" level of document creation and as part of information distribution.
Minor things like encouraging social bookmarks and rewarding incoming links as a
standard practice across the organization can go a long way.
