Continuing my review of the 2006 VA Bloggers Summit…
After the two speakers, the first actual blogging workshop was entitled Enhancing and Promoting Your Blog, led by Jon Henke and Waldo Jaquith. Waldo is the rock star of local bloggers, not just because he’s been at it since he was, like, twelve … but because he is smart and approachable. His “aw shucks, I’m just one of you†demeanor is completely genuine, but his output and influence are legendary in these here parts.
Waldo demurred to his co-presenter, Jon Henke, one of the minds behind QandO. Just to show how unhip I am, I had never heard of QandO before. While they were talking, I looked it up and discovered that Jon had written this line about Congressman William Jefferson: “Jefferson is not being judged by the color of his skin, but by the content of his refrigerator,†so I liked him immediately.
We stayed on the topic for roughly five minutes before veering off into sideline discussions, but that was just fine. This was the first opportunity we all had to speak up in a public forum, so that was to be expected. The gist of the presentation was this: content is king, and people will read your blog if you have interesting things to say. Also, the best way to get people to come check out your site is to go to their sites and add relevant comments. (Waldo added that he has only deleted comments twice, and one of those times was an obvious troll by someone just to get their URL listed on his site).
Jon runs QandO on software that he helped develop called .BLOG. Waldo uses WordPress (in fact, Waldo turned me on to WordPress for this site) and mentioned several plug-ins that he uses to keep out spam and other unwanted comments, including Bad Behavior and Spam Karma 2. For monitoring site traffic, Waldo recommends Mint (and both Jon and Waldo recommend that you stop using SiteMeter!) *
At the end of this session, I rushed to buddy up with Vivian Paige and Josh Chernila for dinner, but lost them in the crowd.
You’re doing a great job with this series of posts. Keep it up!
Comment by Vivian J. Paige — June 20, 2006 @ 8:45 pm
It was nice to meet you, Sean, even if only briefly. Hopefully, we’ll have more opportunities to do blogger confabs. Couple minor points for the sake of the historical record, though:
1) Dale Franks was responsible for creating .Blog (DotBlog). My input was limited to feature suggestions and layout. Dale is the design guy, and he did a great job with it. Incredibly easy to install, use, etc. He offers the platform for only 20 bucks.
2) I don’t recommend you stop using sitemeter. In fact, I quite like sitemeter. As far as 3rd party tracking tools go, it’s quite good. It’s imperfect, but good, nonetheless. What I think people should stop using is Blogger/Blogspot. It’s a useful place for rookie’s to give blogging a whirl, but it’s not a permanent platform for serious bloggers.
Look forward to reading more of your impressions about the conference. I intend to write something up covering some of the major themes of the panels and speakers, but life has intervened. In due time…
Comment by Jon Henke — June 20, 2006 @ 9:17 pm
Well, I recommend that you never start using SiteMeter, but that’s just me. 🙂
Comment by Michael Hampton — June 20, 2006 @ 10:44 pm