As the date for the blogging conference, SOBcon, nears I will be spending a few minutes talking with some of the people who are making it happen, starting with Chris Cree of SuccessCreeations.

What was the inspiration for SOBcon?

Liz Strauss and I had talked some last year about possibly doing a business blogging conference in Savannah. But as we looked at it more closely, my wife and I felt that the project would be bigger than we wanted to take on ourselves right then.

At the same time a couple other people approached Liz suggesting that it would be a great idea to gather some of the crowd that meets at Successful-Blog every Tuesday on Open Comment Night.

Chicago seemed like a great central place to bring people together. And with the idea coming from several different directions at the same time, it made sense to move forward.

We decided to build the conference around the S.O.B. Award that Liz passes out each week. The idea was to come up with a different kind of conference experience. Instead of making our conference about the speakers we chose to make the conference about the attendees.

Using Open Comment Night as an inspiration, we’ve put together a large group of folks who will be leading sessions with the idea that they will be as interactive with the attendees as possible.

Blogging ultimately is about people and interacting with one another. The most successful blogs out there build a sense of community. So we’ve pulled together a truly dynamic group of folks and will have several shorter sessions rather than just a few speakers talking at you for a long time like you might find in

The overarching theme for the whole thing will be helping folks take their blogging to the next level. The way we’ve set it up there will be plenty to take away for everyone, from the novice blogger just getting started to the person who’s been blogging since Technorati was only tracking a few million blogs.

What will you (meaning Chris Cree) be speaking on? What do you want attendees to gain from this?

I’ll be moderating a panel about blogging tools with representatives from MyBlogLog, Evoca, and TheGoodBlogs. These three services are great ways that bloggers can add tremendous value to their own blogs and build community at the same time. We will be taking questions from the audience for each of these folks so it will be a chance for folks to find out what they want to learn about these tools.

I was offered the opportunity to have my own time on the platform. But I figure the conference isn’t about me. And with my background in operations, planning things out, making things happen, and solving problems quickly on the fly I felt I would add more value to the conference by helping out more behind the scenes the day of the conference.

By bringing together some blog tools that folks may or may not have heard of I figure I’m multiplying the value I bring to the conference more than I would by just speaking on my own.

Will the conference only benefit bloggers?

That’s a really good question that I hadn’t considered before. Obviously our intention initially was to bring together bloggers and help them take their blogs to the next level.

But when you think about it successful bloggers are also successful networkers. For someone looking at the possibility of getting started blogging, what better way to get a really solid network out of the gate than to get to know some folks who are already knocking it out of the park?

I mean think about an opportunity hang out and rub elbows with folks like Steve Farber, Mike Wagner, David Armano, Wendy Piersall, Phil Gerbyshak, Liz Strauss, Dr. Rob Wolcott, and Andy Sernovitz. That is just a tiny sampling of the folks who will be in the room at this conference. And not all of them are even speaking!

Is an opportunity to spend some time with these all these folks and more valuable to non-bloggers? There is no doubt in my mind the answer is a resounding yes!

Which speaker are you most looking forward to hearing?

I’m especially looking forward to the panel session from the Iowa contingent, Drew McLellan, Mike Sansone, and Mike Wagner.

I’m an operations guy by training and experience. These three will be talking about marketing. And that’s an area that I am always wanting to learn more about.

Which session do you think will be most valuable?

I guess that depends on where someone is when they get to the conference. If you are hungry to gain more insight on Networking, Marketing, Videoblogging or Podcasting, Design, or Word of Mouth Marketing, there will be a session for you. There will be sessions by Blog Coaches and there will be some blog critiques done right there live.

Ultimately, though I suspect the most valuable session for many folks will be the Live Open Comment Night that we have planned on Friday night right after the concert by Christine Kane.

I think that session will be the most valuable because it will be the most interactive of all the sessions and it will give people an opportunity to begin to get to know one another. It will be a great starting point for people to start adding to their networks.

Have you registered yet? What are you waiting for? It is going to be a great event - an event like no other!

Wendy Piersall of eMomsAtHome and Steve Olson are having a little competition. It involves MyBlogLog and Kiva.org. Wendy is trying to get more people to join Steve’s MyBlogLog community and Steve is drumming up members for Wendy’s community. Oh, and they are doing it all for a good cause - Kiva.org.

So Wendy was leading the contest until she caught wind of the tactics Steve was using to get members for her community and she decided it was time to take off the gloves! In the name of disclosure, Wendy has offered to pay me to blog about their little competition.
So go join Steve’s community so Wendy can win! If you want more information on this whole contest, check out Wendy’s blog and get involved.

And Wendy, you can take the amount you offered for blogging about this and add it to your Kiva donation kitty.

It’s my first Thursday Thirteen and I figured I would return to my roots on this one. Let’s give our sites a mini-audit using this checklist of 13 things every website needs!

1. Title - Do you see that blue bar at the top of your screen? What does it say? At a minimum, it should have the title of your site plus a few key words or phrases that will help your users find you in their bookmarks. 50-80 characters is optimum.
2. Description - You need an “elevator speech” for your site - a concise, descriptive summary of your site - up to 250 characters including spaces. You need this in your meta tags, but also keep it handy for when you register your site with directories and/or social marketing sites. It is also what appears under your site title (see #1) when being listed in the search engines.
3. Keywords - Not just any old words, but approximately 1024 solid characters of descriptive words used in your site. Don’t list keywords you think might be popular but don’t appear in or apply to your site.
4. Navigation - Is the navigation on your site intuitive? Is it laid out in a logical manner? Keep it simple and specific. You don’t want to lose your readers because they have to click through 8 layers of navigation to get to the info they need.
5. White Space - Make your site easy on your readers’ eyes by giving all the elements room to breathe. Ample white space around images and margins will give these elements more impact. See this article at A List Apart for more explanation.
6. Content - But not just any old copy. Your main page needs a minimum of 250 meaningful, content rich words. Remember, your visitors are in a hurry - give them the content they need in small, easy to read chunks, set off by subheads, bulleted lists and short paragraphs.
7. Fresh Information - When was the last time you updated your site? Create a news section or at a minimum, change out the content or images on your home page regularly.
8. Spell Check - Don’t tell me you forgot this one! Take the time to tend to the details like spell and grammar check - it will save you future embarrassment.
9. Images - A picture is worth a thousand words and a well-placed picture or graphical element will save your web site from eternal loneliness. There are plenty of places to get images for free or at a small cost. And don’t forget to tag those images, too!!!
10. Quality Links - Provide your readers with quality outbound links and seek out quality inbound links. Your PageRank will thank you.
11. Call to Action - What is the purpose of your site? To sell a product? A service? To get more readers? Make it easy for your readers to figure out what your purpose is and to act on it. And don’t forget to put your ads above the fold.
12. Copyright - Your content is yours and while the average, rule following individual can understand the Creative Commons License, others can’t. Protect your information.
13. Contact - How can anyone do business with you if they can’t contact you?

There you have it! I’m sure there is more to the list - feel free to share!

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