Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the BlogWell conference in Chicago…and it was well worth the trip. This was my first time attending a conference like this, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the experience. After a two and a half hour flight from Denver and a thirty minute cab ride from Chicago-Midway Airport we arrived at the Gleacher Center for the conference. To my amazement the place was packed with attendees from startups, small companies, large companies and some well known Fortune500 companies as well. There was a total of eight case studies scheduled throughout the four hour conference for the day as well as a review from BlogCouncil.org regarding “Disclosure Best Practices” for employee interaction with consumers through Social Media.

The conference was divided into two large rooms, so I couldn’t listen to all eight case studies. However, the four that I was able to attend were fantastic. Each of the speakers shed a little bit of light on how their company/corporation used Social Media to reach out to their customers. A few things that I took away from the four case studies that I attended were:

• There is little or no expense involved in getting started with Social Media
• Many of the companies were doing it with a small staff (Sharpie’s Blog is managed by a single individual)
• Start out small and build over time…don’t rush it.
• Listen to what your consumers/readers want and build around that
• Engage your consumers/readers…give them a voice

It all sounds very simple, and in fact it really is simple. Using Social Media in business is a fairly new concept, but it shouldn’t be scary. Sometimes you have to just jump in and get your feet wet. I thoroughly enjoyed the BlogWell conference and learned a lot from it, and I have only one regret. I wish that I would’ve chosen a later flight out of Chicago or stayed overnight. I would’ve enjoyed having more time to network and enjoy some of the Molson Canadian that @molsonmoffat brought to “break the ice”.

Thanks GasPedal and BlogCouncil…I had a great time. I’ll definitely try to attend future BlogWell conferences. Thanks also to @sharpiesusan for the cool Barack Obama commemorative Sharpie!

~ GrandmasterB

For more reviews and feedback regarding BlogWell Chicago visit these links:
Successful & Outstanding Bloggers: BlogWell 2 Chicago: Some Big Companies Do Connect
Radian6: Perfection Isn’t a Prerequisite

Over the past few weeks, I have been researching the meaning of “linkbaiting” and its effect on blogs and what it might do to assist a newer blog in getting off the ground. As we all know the popularity of your blog goes hand in hand with how many links you have back to your content from other sites. This of course helps out your Google PageRank as well as your Technorati authority and rank; which is also key in bringing your site and its content higher up the ladder for searched terms.

Throughout my research I came to a realization about the term linkbait; there are two school’s of thought about the subject and also two types of linkbaiting. There are those that believe that linkbaiting is a way to trick other bloggers into linking you. The term “baiting” gives off a sense of it being a dirty or underhanded activity; which, in some cases is an accurate belief. Others believe that if the content is well-written and informative, by all means it should be linked to.

I have found that the idea of linkbaiting is a tightrope walk that could go either way…good or bad. I found a great Introduction to Linkbaiting by Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) where he summarizes the idea of linkbaiting being good or bad as “My own opinion on whether link bait is good or bad is that it depends upon the type of link baiting that you’re talking about. I think some techniques that people use are just good standard blogging techniques – while other things that people do in the pursuit of links are destructive to the blogging community and I’d argue against them.” In an essence some linkbaiting that borders on the destructive path could be construed as spam or malicious to the community.

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Guest post written by Cuzzy of Cuzoogle.com

I was only a kid when disco was cool but looking back I still don’t understand it. The style, the music and even the overall vibe seems a little goofy to me. Sure it is cool now but only because people love retro and movies like Boogie Nights. Just like the disco days of the 70’s, using digg to bring in more traffic was an ongoing mystery for me. At least until now…

I signed up a few years ago when it seemed like the cool thing to do but unlike platform shoes and flashy pants, I can actually see a reason for using digg. If you manage it properly it can take your blog from bus boy status to king of the blogosphere in only a matter of months. The best part, you don’t have to be hung like a horse to get there (It may help?).

Here are a few tips on using Digg that were passed along to me from one of the superstars of the blog world, Don Chavez.

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I am a firm believer in using all types of social networking sites to bring traffic to GrandmasterB.com, and I try to spread the love around so I don’t put all of my eggs into one basket. Unfortunately, yesterday I counted on StumbleUpon to bring in some major traffic for my latest tutorials and it killed my stats:

How To Create Killer Metallic Text – Part One
How To Create Killer Metallic Text – Part Two

I say unfortunately, because I had planned on submitting the tutorials to Pixel2Life and Tutorialized once published. What I didn’t take into account was that after 24-hours of submitting each part of the tutorial they are still in PENDING limbo. I know that is must be difficult to get all of the submitted tutorials approved within a relatively quick amount of time, but I guess I was just looking forward to the quick boost in traffic.

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A few weeks ago Forest (TheRandomForest.com) had posted about getting together a small group that would stumble each others posts to build up traffic. I’m not sure what happened to the post as I was the only person willing to jump in the mix. Since then Forest, Jeff (BuzzMyBlog.com), Cuzzy (Cuzoogle.com) and myself have all gathered together and formed the base of the StumbleUpon Crusade group to help each other out. Basically, if you want us to check out your site post a comment and we’ll put you on the radar. Apparently, StumbleUpon frowns upon soliciting stumbles so we can’t have you asking us to stumble. But if you would like us to browse your latest posts we can do that…you get the picture.

If you’re interested in joining us in our “StumbleUpon Crusade”, simply comment here that you want in. Our only goal is helping each other by forming a small network of bloggers to make getting your blog noticed easier. We are not asking you to commit to anything just browse around and if you like what you see stumble it…if not no big deal. What do you think? If you’re interested comment here and we will do what we can to help each other out.

~ GrandmasterB

(I’ve just edited this post as to not break the TOS of StumbleUpon. I guess we cannot ask you to stumble a post, but we can point you in the direction of reading our posts and if you like them you can stumble them. Symantics)