Here we are at the Blog Karma and Social Capital session featuring Katja Presnal and Kelby Carr.
Thanks to WorldWinner for sponsoring me at the Type-A Mom Conference. (Monopoly Downtown is my favorite game.)
Katja and Kelby are going to start by telling their stories and how they “pay it forward.”
Kelby has been creating Web sites since the early ’90s. She created KelbyCarr.com less than two years ago in order to centralize everything. She added every mom link to her blogroll, and she was surprised when people were actually visiting her site. She saw that people started re-tweeting her more. She started having Stumble parties to help other people out, and the links back to her started rolling in tenfold. Lots more traffic, friends, and followers by putting herself out there to hok everyone else up.
Katja started by creating an online store. She then found blogs that were featuring products, and she introduced herself to these bloggers, who started mentioning her personally, not just the products she was selling. When people helped her out, she wanted to help other people out. So she started her blog to create a community where she featured other bloggers who made and sold their own products. Dude, she created a gift basket for Tom Cruise! Oprah went to Tom Cruise’s house (post-couch jumping episode) and Tom showed Suri’s shoes on the show, which were from the gift basket! She called all her friends to let them know, and everyone else blogged about how Katja was the one who sold those shoes. Her take on it was, “I’m a mom. I work at home. If I can do this, so can you.”
Give back in your daily actions every day. You never know when you may need to cash in on your karma. (That doesn’t look right in text, but it wasn’t meant to come off as helpign people just to get stuff in return. It’s more of a “you never know” type of thing.)
Kelby points out that, when you help people on Twitter, you never know who’s going to shoot through the roof tomorrow. She talks about how she helped Amy Lupold Bair when she started out, but she didn’t help her out thinking that she was going to be as awesome as she is now.
When you attack other people, that damages your social capital. Even if people aren’t blogging about it, they’re going to be Skyping about it or whispering about it in bars at conferences. (*cough*) People don’t forget.
Every blogger is a businessperson. Don’t damage your personal brand. It’s good PR for you to be known as the helpful one.
Speaking of PR, if you get a pitch you can’t use, why not suggest other bloggers who may be able to benefit from that PR relationship? You can even help newbie bloggers and see if PR will give them a chance. You can boost your reputation with both the PR contact and the bloggers you recommended. People will be grateful, and they won’t forget that.
You can see boosts in your followers, your links, your PageRank just from being helpful to others. You can set a Google Alert for your name and the names of your sites to see when people are talking about your or linking to you. It’s good to know when someone else has blogged about you. It’s also helpful to find out when people have stolen your content.
Katja is making @PlusSizeMommy stand up. She’s talking about how she got started. She won a contest where she headed to meet the ElevenMoms. Katja helped her set up her blog and a Twitter account. She’s only been blogging and tweeting for a year, and we all know who she is. 🙂
How do you build your fan base without being obnoxious to your friends? It can be a struggle. Make sure you don’t make it all about you all the time. But you may be surprised to learn that you have more in common with other people (i.e. Facebook friends) than you thought you did.
We don’t have time to read all the blogs we want to read every day, and that sucks. So it’s not a bad thing to let everyone know what you’re doing on Twitter and Facebook. Talk about other stuff and be humble so you don’t come across as being annoying.
Some of us are really bad about commenting on blogs, but we can tweet about the post we like to send more people to read the awesomeness. You can do it undercover so that people don’t know you’re being helpful. It’s far more powerful to have people whisper you’re name than it is to have peopel shouting your name.
It’s best when you go into it saying, “I don’t care if it ever comes back to me.” Be zen about helping people. Someone will still notice.
There’s a secret team of power Stumblers who have been Stumbling posts for little known bloggers. But they do un-friend people who send them daily “Stumble me please” requests.
Don’t forget email. Comments. Twitter. StumbleUpon. Links. Pull someone aside at a conference to let them know how much a certain story impacted you.
From Cecily – If you’re sick of StumbleUpon, use kirtsy – It’s the StumbleUpon for women!
We’ve got a giggly baby in the back of the room.
Let’s stop being so competitive. We may get sick of Dooce getting all of the media attention, but there’s room at the top for multiple people. People don’t visit one blog or one Web site per day. Figure out what you can do to get noticed. There’s room for all of us in the community. Don’t let the jealousy drag the community down. Let’s take each other to the higher level instead of dragging each other down. If we want better opportunities, we can’t come across as being catty to each other, or those opportunities aren’t going to happen anymore.
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[…] of 10 different sessions at the Cutest Kid Ever, including recap of the two sessions I spoke at; Blog Kharma and Social Capital and Blogger Outreach and Online Public Relations. The Blog Kharma was my favorite subject to speak […]
Thank you for posting all of this info! I wasn’t able to attend the kharma session so this is fabulous. I can’t believe what great notes you took! You must’ve been a straight-A student in school! 🙂