Wannabe Hippie

Description of panel from BlogHer:

How We Communicate: FAQs for Beginning Bloggers
FAQs = Frequently Asked Questions, and we've lined up a team of expert bloggers who know how explain the basics across many blogging platforms, protocols and philosophies. Do you have questions about the best tools? The right design? The latest in blogging "etiquette"? Look no further than these 4 kindly experts to give you the answers: Nelly Yusupova from WebGrrls Int'l, Melanie Nelson (aka Chilihead from Blogging Basics 101), Michele Mitchell (aka Scribbit) and Shazia Mistry.

Resources download available here: http://www.webgrrls.com/downloads/blogher2008/ 

Four panelist took about 5 minutes to share their areas of expertise.

QUESTION to the room: How many don't have blogs in the room?
ANSWER: about 30%

Welcome to a very full room.

Introductions of panel leaders

QUESTION: if reg at goDaddy, what platform should you chose?
ANSWER: Any. Plue Mapping vs Forwarding explained by attendee Krystyn Heide.  For site optimization, you want to MAP so that you'll show up in search engines.

Melanie takes on Blogging Recourses
Permalinks: what are they?

• Permalinks link directly to a specific page and can be found in different areas of your blog page.  For instance:
•  Could be found at timestamp (Blogger)
• Could be found on titles
• Could be found as an obvious “permalink” link
  

Hosted vs. Non-Hosted

• Fully integrated (i.e. fully hosted sites such as blogger)
• Pros: Easy to get started  
• Cons: less professional (in general view)
  Platform limitations
  Less control over CSS/HTML
  May not allow advertising

• Third party hosts the content
  
  • Pros: Control over platform
    Control over permalinks
    Control over archives management
  • Cons: Not as “changeable”

Michelle talks about Blog Etiquette

Analogy: being cutting off on the freeway – distance, just a car, you feel you can say whatever you want. Similar to how some people feel about commenting on blogs – it’s not another human, just a blog.

Golden Rule – remember that’s a person on the other side.
How do you want to be treated?
How do you want to leave a comment and how do you want to respond to comments on your own site?

“Comment policy” on your blog: Have a page that sets the ground rules, "if you do this, I’ll do this."

Link Etiquette – don’t just throw in a link with no name associated. Give an idea of the content you’re asking them to visit

If you use someone’s photo or idea, credit them with a url, lead them to the other site rather than giving their full content and tell how you found them

Lots of people just take a pretty photo and stick it on their site. NEVER. You need to give attributions or ask for permission. And never take a photo of someone’s child w/out permission.

Stuff will be stolen the bigger you get.  It's simply a reality so get in the habit of protecting your content:

Watermarking photos -- something that can be done with photoshop.  Attendee suggested that maybe there is sites online that make this easy, but no links mentioned [ Editors note: put a link in comments if you know of one!]

Nelly says you can use Flickr photos with attributions

COMMENT: Make sure you use Creative Commons license

Nelly is giving us the low down on RSS FEEDS

What do they do:  allows you to share content with others.
You can subscribe through feeder or aggregator in multiple platforms such as: phones, backberrys, facebook, mySpace, etc

In short, it allows you to syndicate your content

How do you sign up: Look for the icon (orange box, include image)
Chicklets: Graphics that are coded to allow person to automatically subscribe to reader of choice

Why do you need RSS?

• Allow you to distribute to many different outlets
• Drives traffic to your site
• Creates inbound links (Search engines look for inbound links and increase your ranking).
• Secure channel that can’t be spammed
• Subscriber has complete control over how they receive information from you

How do I provide feeds:

• Create a FeedBurner account which allows step by step instructions and stats
• Then add to your blog with chicklets

How do I find & read feeds:

• Most popular feed readers: Google & Bloglines
• Also via email (feedburner allows)

COMMENT: Paid services set it up for you

FeedBurner, you can move your blog from platform to platform and you don’t need to mess with your RSS feed

• Search engines
• Other bloggers you like, check out their blogrolls
• Links within posts

QUESTION: how do I add links when someone else has control (hosted blog)

ANSWER: need to look at your blog... no CSS access? You should switch! You want to have as much control as possible

QUESTION: Full or slim feeds?

ANSWER: Save for later (never was addressed in discussion)

Shazia takes on plug ins and widgets

plug ins and widgets extend your website

You can add an online store, contact form, can be added anywhere into your site, simple bits of code you can add in.

“Sidebar Bling”

Too many can slow down your blog load time so be careful of how bling you get!

Platform specific, so one bit o' bling may not work on a new site if you change platforms.

Require you to upload & activate; usually have configurations you can set.  Then generates code which you place into your sidebar

Shazia likes "Share This" for social networks

At this point everyone broke into session focusing on WordPress.org, WordPress.com, Blogger and TypePad 

[individual groups not liveblogged]

IF YOU ATTENDED THIS PANEL:
Please leave a comment saying you were there and include your blog name.  I'll bump it up to the body of the post!