Sportsman's Blog

Okay, so it wasn’t just a bunch of mommy bloggers per se, but yesterday I attended the 2nd Annual Minnesota Blogger Conference and it was quite enlightening. It was an eclectic group with a wide variety of blogging genres–marketers, food bloggers, lifestyle bloggers, yes…mommy bloggers, to name but a few. Even though I was likely the only hunting and fishing blogger in attendance…I feel I gained some valuable insight into blogging by hanging with this interesting group of bloggers for a few hours.

Here’s some miscellaneous take home information I gained from attendance:

• Out of more than 200+ conference attendees…when asked for a showing of hands only about 6 people stated they were NOT on Twitter. Bottom line is if you have a blog most bloggers understand the important connection of promoting that blog via social media(Twitter, Facebook, etc).

• Important to leave thoughtful comments on other blogs…in time your blog’s readership potential will explode.

• To dominate, your blog needs to stand out–for something specific. What does a blogger expect to get out of the effort? Simply having no blog plan in and of itself is a sure plan to fail.

• When a blogger is at a loss for blog post subject matter, one of the best places to turn for inspiration is to look on forums to see what questions people are routinely asking. Then use your blog post to answer the question. Great way to overcome writer’s block.

• Bloggers must have a disclosure policy for their blogs. Because more and more marketers are recognizing just what an effective marketing tool connecting with bloggers can be, to maintain integrity with the readership a blogger must disclose how they handle links, accept free products/services, etc. Click HERE for my new disclosure policy. When a situation arises when I have a specific connection with a marketer and I make some kind of endorsement contained within the blog, there will be a proximal disclosure contained within that specific blog post.

• Bloggers need to recognize that compensation in exchange for an endorsement can come in many different forms besides money or free products/services. For instance, an action resulting in more blog readers could be construed as value being received by the blogger. All relationships are best to be disclosed with the reader upfront.

• Another striking fact about the blogging conference was the gender breakdown. I heard many folks comment how the female to male ratio was about 10:1. Is it possible that across the blogging disciplines there is this much disproportion between the sexes? Interesting to consider.

• Even though most of us blog about uniquely different topics, it was interesting to see how we all face quite similar challenges. Whether the aspect might be deciding which platform to use, how to best use SEO, increase readership, improve our writing style, or to prevent violating laws or FTC guidelines…much of it is the same. In fact, I will go so far as to say blogging is 90% communication technique…and perhaps only 10% is specific topic-oriented.

• I’ll end this by saying the one comment overheard that made me thankful I am a hunting and fishing blogger and not some other type of blogger was this. Apparently one of the bloggers in attendance described a situation where a company sent her panties to do a product review. She went on to say she ripped the product in her blog because her boyfriend stated they looked like “granny panties.” Yeah, it was at that moment I counted my blessings for what I do on this blog.

©2011 Jim Braaten.  All Rights Reserved.  No Reproduction without Prior Permission.

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